What moral, material and affective work is involved in making things and what kind of work are the resulting things intended to do? This paper seeks to explore values and attachments in DIY work and works of DIY, and how changes in these can be tracked by "following the work".
Paper long abstract:
This paper is part of an ongoing PhD project on making, and takes its point of departure in the freely written answers on a questionnaire sent out by the Swedish Literature Society in Finland in 2012. People were asked to tell what they make or have been making themselves, and what roles these practices and products have played in their lives. The answers that the questionnaire generated are predominantly written by women born in the 1930s and 1940s. This means that they have lived through times of post-war shortage, when "everything had to be made", which is often taken up as a contrast to present day affluence. This generation also tells in a very multi-faceted way about the moral, material and affective work involved in making things and how the things made were intended to work in different relations and circumstances - sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
How does making things relate to changes in what can and should be made? What moral, material and affective work is involved in these practices and products? I want explore the values and attachments in DIY work and works of DIY and how changes in these can be tracked by "following the work". What kind of worlds do DIY work sustain or challenge?