Paper short abstract:

Employing a comprehensive understanding of doing things yourself these practices represent a key characteristic of late modernity - much more and even the opposite of just being a counterculture.

Paper long abstract:

Facing actual movements of makers, hackers, urban gardeners and repair cafés (so called "DIY"), practices of doing things yourself recently acquired the notion of mainly being defined by their countercultural characteristics and their criticism of modern industrialized economy. Here, characteristic of doing things yourself is reduced to be a secondary feature. Other pertinent practices without this countercultural notion like the trend to private home improvement since past WWII does not fit easily to this definition.

Employing a different definition of doing things yourself by consequently highlighting the fact that these practices are not delegated (e.g. to professionals) cover a much wider array of practices: not just urban gardening, knitting or home improvement but also booking your tickets yourself and not having it done by a travel agency, monitoring your blood pressure yourself and not (or less frequently) having it done by a physician, or publishing your texts yourself and not having this done by a publishing company.

From this perspective the phenomenon of doing things yourself becomes a core characteristic of the postindustrial society mainly boosted by digitalization. Here, the trend to do things yourself can be interpreted very differently, as democratization of practices, as well as a neoliberal responsibilisation of the individual, as a general de-expertisation or - the other way around - an expertisation of the complete society.

In this light doing things yourself represents a key characteristic of late modernity - much more and even the opposite than just a counterculture.