Claims of Equity and Expertise: Feminist Interventions in the Design of DIY Communities and Cultures

• In Event: STS, Critical Design, Critical Digital Humanities I

Abstract

Universal design strategies attempting equality have long been problematized by feminist scholars, critical race theorists, and disability scholars. Feminist theorists have critiqued design and the co-construction of technology and gender by calling for feminist design strategies within a typically male-dominated field. Meanwhile, scholarship on infrastructural design works to make the invisible visible by highlighting maintenance work and exclusionary practices within design that are often normalized and remain unnoticed.

This paper presentation will examine what these critiques might reveal in Do It Yourself (DIY) and maker cultures, where claims of the user as designer often comes with a baseline assumption of broad inclusion. Within makerspaces and fab lab communities, there is often an outward facing discourse of inclusion and equality – that everyone makes and everyone can become a maker: thus resulting in equitability of designs. Yet implicit barriers, particularly in terms of gender, race, and class, still persist in maker cultures and communities. Often, the knowledges, skills, and technologies that are seen as indicative of a technological mindset exclude particular lifestyles or expertise from staking their claim as important contributions to the technological design landscape.

In response to this, taking up arguments initially delineated by feminist and queer scholarship within design and Science and Technology Studies, feminist hacker collectives such as Femhack, Spanning Tree, Liberating Ourselves Locally, and many more are making the case that in order to be more equitable or inclusive, the design of such DIY spaces and cultures needs to be reflexive within their organizational design and skill-sharing tactics. This paper presentation will examine the biases within the discourse and design practices of skill-sharing communities known as makerspaces and hackerspaces, with a particular focus on alternative possibilities within the counter-narratives of feminist hacker collectives, repair groups, and library spaces that focus on marginalized narratives in technology and design.

Author

• Ellen Foster