Paper short abstract:

“Maker spaces” are an old brand in a new wrapper, designed to create a discursive rupture with older forms of material production. What would it take to redesign them as spaces for local mētis-centered approaches to research, development, and production?

Paper long abstract:

"Maker spaces" are as old as tools: a kitchen, garage, or vo-tech all share qualities in common with the current brand of Fab Labs. While some would argue that the differentiator is "digital fabrication," Computer Numerical Control has been around for over 50 years, and "fablabs" share more similarities with prior techniques than differences. At best, "making" is a marketing phenomenon rather than a social movement.

That said, "maker spaces" present an opportunity. In particular, their locational specificity offers the possibility of introducing alternative technical trajectories. Global capital and transnational corporations are responsible for most of our material culture; alternative technologies offer a critical form of resistance. Local knowledge, what Scott calls mētis, is "part of a political struggle [against] institutional hegemony by experts and their institutions…[S]trategies of production [are] also strategies of control and appropriation." Local sites for alternate forms of production may offer the opportunity to hone metis-centered approaches to research, development, and production.

This paper draws on Innovation research around "user innovation" (von Hippel) and technology- and product- oriented social movements (Hess), as well as social movement theory, to speculate on ways that community shops can hone and amplify mētis.