Agree!!! Making is about countering the anonymizing, standardizing effects of a globalized capitalist economy for needs (and wants) provisions. It seems to me that the other holistic, humanist pursuits (maintainer, caregiver, educator, etc) that she mentions also fall into some larger umbrella of counter-culturalism which seeks to produce an integrative, rather than reductive system for producing culture. The trouble with “not identiying as X” within this system (as I see it) is that it further promotes the idea that there ought to be specialization. Why not identify as a maker AND teacher (as I do 
) Or a Caregiver and maker, or maintainer and maker? Jacks of all trades may be masters of none, but they are much harder to disentangle, and then replace, as globalized economics is wont to do.
My father’s role in caregiving was often to make things that would make his kids’ lives better – wheels for a guitar amp, fixing a broken toy or building a hidden ‘laboratory’ under the stairs. Often these were things we did together, which not only helped us have some time with him, but also gave my mom a much-needed break. Really, once he came home from work, the kids were his, and we were co-conspirators in his second job of maintaining the house.
This artificial line about what constitutes caregiving and men’s work/women’s work really had no place in our blue-collar household. My mom refinished furniture, painted rooms and window frames, preserved food, my dad grew vegetables, built and repaired everything inside and outside the house, and often cooked. There was always a lot to do, and no money to hire it out or buy things we could make ourselves.
What’s really shifted since then are the moves to more disposable goods and the perception that working with your hands and/or power tools is something too dangerous for our precious offspring. That and the shift to higher-density housing that makes it hard to have a safe workshop area.
I hadn’t pulled an all nighter, but it was a lot of work over several days:
Flickr Set: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/sets/72157626852268457/
Fucking-A.
I love how as soon as something popular with BBers gets tagged as politically “problematic”, there is a chorus of “I never liked it/them anyway!”
So will the magazine have to change its name less egregiously offensive? “Integrate”? “Nurture”?
“Make (not that making things is better or more interesting or important than the things not traditionally valued by our patriarchal regime) Magazine”?
How did my grandma put it? Sakes alive? Something like that. I feel like it was something more Pennsylvania but … yes. “Oh fer goodNESS’s SAKE.” I feel better now.
This isn’t a call to stop referring to people as “makers” so much as it is to examine why it’s being applied specifically to men while ignoring women’s contributions.
When someone says “I don’t call myself X because it perpetuates a problem” there is a strong implication that calling oneself X is bad.
I don’t know anyone who uses “maker” as an all-encompassing identity to the exclusion of all else. I’m an educator and a maker and a maintainer and a cleaner and groomer and a hairstylist. And that’s just today.
If I say I’m a maker on a website dedicated to sharing info on making stuff it doesn’t mean I don’t value educating. When I share class management tips on an education forum I’m not denigrating making stuff.
There is such a thing as being too sensitive, too ready to take offense, too zealous in finding fault.
Reminds me of a discussion I had recently with a fellow who asserted that little girls aren’t encouraged to learn practical skills as little boys are. Apparently he was thinking of things like car maintenance. “What about cooking?” I asked. Being able to feed yourself is a pretty darn practical skill…
Did you know that after “Make” magazine started there was a sister magazine called “Craft” which had a pink logo instead of a red one? It had sewing and knitting and cooking projects. It ultimately was unsuccessful and the content was rolled back into “Make.”
Eh. Regardless, is that particular term more important than dealing with the underlying structures of oppression? I would argue (admittedly as a trans woman), no.
No one is telling you that making gizmos or other cool projects you found is unimportant. In this context, they’re just telling you that you shouldn’t undervalue, for example, whoever is making the meals in your living arrangement just because those meals don’t get as much attention on Make magazine.
a studious marxist friend once told me that, in surveying all of Marx’s works, Louis Althusser found that what essentially defines a human being to Marx is production: everybody makes things. And, to me, this extends a lot further than a lot of other people would see it. Even someone sitting in bed watching and re-watching “South Park” is taking material in and using it to structure an idea (however limited) of the world around them. I think that’s making as well.
The maker movement is yet another of Tim O’Reilly’s hobby horses and should be treated (like its mirror of disruption theory, another favorite of Tim’s) with suspicion for its nebulousness and lack of articulated political stakes. In the context of this conversation, “making” gives the political problems of production a “makeover” that’s all concealer.
Chachra is right to bring political reality to bear on the movement, but the reason it persists (and why this comment thread is so long) is because of how nebulous the subject is. No-one here is talking about the same thing, and yet most will assume that they are. The target moves.
More directly, to a website:
Then just say that, instead of pretentiously declaring that one “is not a maker”. Instead, she is linking the term “maker” with a cultural bias of devaluation of other kinds of work (with the implication that people who use it are the problem…even though most self-described makers tend to be far more inclusive and progressive than the average bear.)
Where have I seen this sort of dissociative rhetoric before?
Ah yes.
Does everything have to have “articulated political stakes”?
…much to the annoyance of those who prefer engineering (everything you do to make things is in effect engineering) over people’s pet flavors of politics.
Lay down the Marx (or whoever) and pick up (say) Handbook of Corrosion Engineering, it’s less to argue about and more useful in practice. And when in doubts, instead of shouting at each other across The Internets you can validate the thoughts with an experiment.
Of course, according to various warriors you are wrong when you don’t want to join their pet wars or grumble about their shrapnels in your soup.
Sure. Though the occasional “craft” project does appear in Make these days.
And that’s good. Hacking, making and crafting are more similar than different.
The Sauron’s Eye of Politics has to be brought to hear on every single facet of every single person’s life. There can be no respite, no relaxing, no tolerance. Otherwise some people might have the Wrong Opinions, and in a diverse, progressive world that cannot be allowed.
Has there been this much fuss over nomenclature since Hydrocarbons?
Ew, icky.
That one bothers me. It takes a term that people were trying to say, hey, this is not a gendered term; move over, boys, we’re here, get over it, and this article says, “Hey, you know what? Fuck it, not only is it gendered, but we’re going to fall back on all the negative stereotypes about gamers, and try to make a new term stick.”
Ugh. Get that crap out of here.
I’m not sure that I “buy” that maintainers are primarily women and that makers are primarily men, either, because it seems awfully broad. Quilting is traditionally an activity performed by women, and MAKE: has run articles on that, and other artistic categories; on the other hand, mechanical work and maintenance, and IT, are dominated by men.
I have to wonder, though, because I’m a little insulated from it: are there really people out there who call themselves “Makers” who look down on teachers? I’m completely serious. The author is teaching people how to be productive members of society. How is there anything wrong with that? I thought Maker culture looked down on the notion of just consuming things and throwing things out or paying somebody to fix the broken thing when things stop working.
