DIY Utopia: Cultural Imagination and the Remaking of the Possible

At first glance, contemporary popular culture, filled with bleak images of the future, seems to have given up on the possibility of positive collective change. Below the surface, however, alternative culture is rife with artist-led projects, activist movements, and subcultural communities of interest that seek to spark the collective imagination and to encourage hunger for alternatives. More playfully self-conscious than past utopian movements, today’s are often whimsical or ironic, but are still entirely earnest. Artists invite us to re-author city maps, or archive individual ideas for the future, while maker collectives urge us to rethink our relationship to consumer goods. All seem to have grown out of a similar do-it-yourself ethos and alternative culture. One of the central conflicts informing these case studies is that while it remains immensely difficult to envision anything outside of the current system of consumer capitalism, there is nevertheless a powerful desire to take it apart in piecemeal ways. We see the longing for new social and political narratives, new forms of communion and sociability, and new imaginings of the possible, longings that are currently unmet by mainstream culture, but that are taking expression in myriad ways at the local level. Taken as a whole, this collection examines what our grand ideals and playful daydreams tell us about ourselves.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Introduction: Creative Play and Collective Imagination Amber Day Imagination and Play: Asking “What If?” Opening up UtopiaStephen Duncombe Civic Imagination and A Useless MapCatherine D’Ignazio Implausible Futures for Unpopular PlacesRob Walker DIY Subcultures Repair Events and the Fixer Movements: Fixing the World One Repair at a TimeLorenzo Giannini Our Knowledge is our Market: Consuming the DIY World Jeremy Hunsinger DIY Radio Utopia: What is So Funny About the Tragedy of the CommonsLinda Doyle and Jessica Foley Protests and Peripheries Remaking Street Corners as “Bureaux”: DIY Youth Spaces and Shifting Urban Ontologies in GuineaClovis Bergère Whose City? Art and Public Space in ProvidenceMartha Kuhlman Livestream Production and Livestream Community in the Black Lives Matter MovementChenjerai Kumanyika Popular Culture and Utopia Making Do and Mending - Domestic Television in The Age of Austerity: Kirstie Allsopp’s Kirstie’sHomemade HomeDeborah Philips Everyday Utopias, Technological Dystopias, and the Failed Occupation of the Global Modern: Dwell Magazine Meets Unhappy HipstersJoan Faber McAlister and Giorgia Aiello “Change Your Underwear, Change the World:” Entrepreneurial Activism and the Fate of Utopias in an Era of Ethical CapitalLisa Daily

About the Author :
Amber Day is associate professor in the English and Cultural Studies Department at Bryant University

Review :
This volume showcases the creative practices and collectively imagined worlds that constitute, in Day's words, 'homemade strivings for utopia.' Contributing to the nascent field of DIY studies, these explorations illustrate the intimate connections between art and politics, between Utopian visions and material practices of maker culture.