JOURNAL OF PEER PRODUCTION ISSUE 12: MAKERSPACES AND INSTITUTIONS VOLUME 1 OF 3 Makerspaces are subjects in a plurality of institutional advances and developments. What kinds of hybrid arrangements emerge through these encounters, and what becomes of the occupied factories for peer production theory? This special issue features 13 peer-reviewed papers that report rich, empirically-informed insights into makerspace institutionalisation and the possibilities for transformational change, and 7 alternative reflections from key practitioners in the field. TABLE OF CONTENTS: VOLUME 1 EDITORS' INTRODUCTION: LIBERATORY TECHNOLOGIES FOR WHOM? EXPLORING A NEW GENERATION OF MAKERSPACES DEFINED BY INSTITUTIONAL ENCOUNTERS ......................................... 1 INSTITUTIONALISATION AND INFORMAL INNOVATION IN SOUTH AFRICAN MAKER COMMUNITIES ... 14 MAKING IN BRAZIL: CAN WE MAKE IT WORK FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION? ................................................. 43 MAKING HARDWARE IN NAIROBI: BETWEEN REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICES AND RESTRICTING IMAGINATIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 60 MAKERSPACES AND URBAN IDEOLOGY: THE INSTITUTIONAL SHAPING OF FAB LABS IN CHINA AND NORTHERN IRELAND ....................................................................................................................................... 78 THE SOCIOMATERIALITY OF FABLABS: CONFIGURATIONS OF A PRINTING SERVICE OR COUNTER- CONTEXT? ......................................................................................................................................................... 92 THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MAKING: THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP OF SOCIOMATERIALITIES THAT MATTERS ........................................................................................................................................................ 111 The Journal of Peer Production New perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change Journal of Peer Production Issue 12: Makerspaces and Institutions http://peerproduction.net — ISSN 2213-5316 EDITORS' INTRODUCTION: LIBERATORY TECHNOLOGIES FOR WHOM? EXPLORING A NEW GENERATION OF MAKERSPACES DEFINED BY INSTITUTIONAL ENCOUNTERS no matter what the utopian aspirations, by Kat Braybrooke, Adrian Smith makerspaces were irredeemably and inseparably part of a hegemonic technological society. To the INTRODUCTION saboteurs, the popularisation of digital fabrication and culture in La Casemate connected directly to In October 2014, issue five of the Journal of Peer the oppression of dominant social institutions, and Production described makerspaces (or sites for they had to be challenged. In an echo of the anti- making and learning with technical tools and automation protests of late 1970s France levelled on mentors, also referred to under many other names) computer companies by the Committee for as the “occupied factories of peer production Liquidation of Subversion of Computers (CLODO) theory” (Maxigas & Troxler 2014). Authors who described the computer as a tool of repression, contributing to that special issue compiled a the sabotage assaulted mainstreamed notions of theoretically and empirically grounded analysis of social progress through technology. member-owned spaces like shared machine shops, Like others, we were shocked by this act. Even if hacklabs, hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces such violence were ever justified, which is — spaces that appeared to signal a revolution for debatable, there are many more obviously new commons-based, peer-produced modes of oppressive technology installations ripe for sabotage design and manufacturing. On closer inspection, and critique. The trouble with violence is that a however, the contributors found a variety of deplorable medium inevitably does a disservice to tensions and contradictions amidst the exciting its message. Whilst the violence itself must be possibilities. Whilst some practices anticipated condemned, its underlying challenge nevertheless democratic transformations in making and remaking warrants further examination. Today’s makerspaces things in society, other practices appeared to be need to reflect upon how, precisely, they provide epiphenomenon for neoliberal business-as-usual, progressive social possibilities. Hope in such such as the exploitation of precarious creative possibilities are held by many, including us – but labour by various business and government where is the proof? Who is liberated by the institutions. liberation, and who is not? Three years later, the darker side of makerspaces Technology is never neutral, as the saboteurs st burst into flames. On the night of 21 November remind us in their communique; but neither should 2017, a group that others labelled anarchists burnt digital technologies be viewed as hard-wired and down Fablab La Casemate in Grenoble, France. deterministic (Matthewman 2011). Technologies Fortunately, no one was hurt. The communication by embody and advance ever-evolving constellations of the perpetrators stated that hacker notions of social values, choices and power geometries. liberation through technology were illusory, and that Technologies are adaptable, depending upon the Volume 1 of 3 © 2018 by the authors, available under a cc-by license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) | 1 The Journal of Peer Production New perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change Journal of Peer Production Issue 12: Makerspaces and Institutions http://peerproduction.net — ISSN 2213-5316 situations in which they are produced and put to 1980s (Noble 1984), even as their more accessible work. Technologies form part of dominant technological descendants are celebrated today for sociotechnical regimes which can be both enabling new kinds of agency, learning and hegemonic and hackable, and whose trajectories of communities for makers (Gauntlett 2013). development can be opened up and altered. The experience of using, say, a router in a community- Can the technology of digital design and fabrication project dedicated to the participatory provision of really escape their origins in earlier waves of street-furniture that reclaims a public space, is quite manufacturing as automation? Just how open to different to that of machining for one’s boss in a radical sociotechnical reconfiguration are they? factory, where the operative has no control and is Whilst primitive anarchists like John Zerzan might alienated from the flat-pack furniture being sold. argue that any historical turnaround in the The sociotechnical configurations are different. The significance of automating technologies is a mirage, significance of the technological element employed and that activity today is still based in an inherently within these configurations is different. The social technological (and therefore oppressive) society, relationships tied together and mediated by the social anarchists like Murray Bookchin might be technologies are different. The value created and more hopeful and enthusiastic regarding their distributed is different. Makerspaces enable such alternative technological possibilities. Fifty years sociotechnical experimentation. But is the ago, Bookchin, like other activists, welcomed a post- experimentation not as open, inclusive and scarcity future in which technological progress progressive as many of us had assumed? would give collectives the opportunity to own tools and organise production non-hierarchically and BACKGROUND TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE sustainably, harnessing ‘liberatory technologies’ for socially useful purposes (Bookchin 1967). In this These were the questions raised in a conference view, as Janet Biehl (2007) has written, the onset of track in September 2016 that became the genesis of technological innovation would not merely lead to this special issue. The track – Whose ‘liberatory embourgeouisement and complacency, but would technologies’? Digital fabrications amongst hackers, instead provide everyone the freedom to build a makers and manufacturers – was organised by more cooperative society. Adrian Smith, maxigas and Johan Söderberg as part of the ‘Science and Technology by Other Means’ In a different setting, organized workers in conference held in Barcelona by the Society for Scandinavia and other countries worked with leftist Social Studies of Science and the European researchers in the 1980s for the introduction of Association for the Study of Science and human-centred computer technologies into Technology. Revised versions of some of the track’s workplaces, and in ways that would democratize the contributing papers feature in this special issue. labour process. Whilst they failed to convince owners and management, in pursuing a different The conference track began by noting the fact that sociotechnical pathway, they did pioneer methods in many of the digital design and fabrication participatory technology design (Ehn 1988; Asaro technologies promoted in makerspaces hold 2000; Smith 2014). Do the grassroots appropriations particular historical ironies and contradictions: for built today in hackerspaces and makerspaces and in example, the early introduction of computer- open hardware groups on the web mean we are numerical-controlled machining (CNC), computer- closer to this democratic, tool-based creativity? Or aided-design (CAD), and computer-integrated- does the design entrepreneurship also practiced in manufacturing (CIM) threatened skills, livelihoods makerspaces merely feed into (and actually