Paper short abstract:

The paper reviews contemporary approaches to DIY and proposes three analytical perspectives to productively study DIY across different contexts while taking into account the multiplicity of approaches to DIY. To illustrate these, the paper draws on a research into DIY in the Czech Republic.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to present and discuss conceptual frameworks for the study of DIY and to offer a multi-layered analytical perspective for empirical case studies. First, we review principal streams of research literature and relate them to expert discourses that have been established around DIY in recent decades. Second, we contextualize DIY in a wider European context with a focus on the East-West divide and its legacy in post-socialist Europe. Third, we present three analytical perspectives that can help us discuss DIY across different approaches and contexts: 1) placing DIY practices in socio-cultural, political and economic contexts, 2) exploring the dynamics behind DIY materialities, and 3) analysing effects of DIY in terms of aesthetics, identity and memory. We illustrate these approaches using examples from our ongoing research into DIY practices and how these practices have been impacted by the fall of socialism and altered by the ensuing post-socialist transformation in what is now the Czech Republic.