The Do-It-Your(Self)

Abstract

This chapter concentrates on &s;do-it-yourself&s; (DIY) links to self-actualization in three related though distinguishable historical milieus. The first historical milieu is the early post-war period of 1950s North America, when the DIY phenomenon as we know it first emerged, and was later exported to Britain. The second historical milieu relates to the 1960s and 1970s countercultural movement in North America, when radicalized how-to publications were targeted at an alternative "do-it-yourself-obsessed generation". The third millennium relates to the discourses and practices of DIY urbanism and the allied &s;maker movement&s;; both of these forms of DIY remain closely associated with North America but have spread elsewhere through online global networks. The countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s saw the extension of the DIY ethic into the experimental, dispersed communes of the mostly rural North America. This geographical relocation of DIY was accompanied by a parallel shift in its social focus from the conservative suburban family to the liberated countercultural collective.