This tension is important to understand in relation to the issues of inclusion and diversity. (Buechley, personal communication, August 20, 2014) Customers of Make are basically rich white guys this is a great foundation to build a business on but not a great foundation for a social movement. The problem is that this may not be a successful business strategy. The magazine is the face of the movement, and as face of movement, it has a responsibility to be more egalitarian and more diverse. The conflation between brand and social movement creates tension. It also develops “getting started” kits and books that are sold in its Maker Shed store as well as in retail channels. Located in Sebastopol, CA, Maker Media is the publisher of MAKE Magazine and the producer of Maker Faire. The launch of MAKE Magazine in 2005, followed by Maker Faire in 2006, jumpstarted a worldwide Maker Movement, which is transforming innovation, culture and education. Whether as hobbyists or professionals, makers are creative, resourceful and curious, developing projects that demonstrate how they can interact with the world around them. Through media, events and ecommerce, Maker Media serves a growing community of makers who bring a DIY mindset to technology. Maker Media is a global platform for connecting makers with each other, with products and services, and with our partners. This is largely because Make Magazine has identified itself as the face, and leader, of the movement.
#Themaker culture series
Many times throughout this blog series we have described Make Magazine as being representative as the movement as a whole. The discourse implies that ‘making’ is a social movement, a movement that Make Media is the face of. This positions Making firmly in the realm of white masculinity, sustaining assumptions that masculine use of technology is normative and women need an invitation and an incentive or special ‘female’ reason to engage in this masculine space. We are all makers of spaces, and these spaces are makers of makers.
We should not just be open and welcoming to new people but we should also export what goes on in a makerspace into other locations in the community such as libraries, schools and museums. We need more women and people of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds to participate. I’d like to see makerspaces reach new audiences - it’s not just a “guy thing” or a “geek thing”.
#Themaker culture full
The women themselves cause the problem they lack confidence, they are unable to learn in the ‘normal’ STEM environment, they do not embrace their full capability in math and science. When gender is discussed in relation to the maker movement, the conversation starts with the notion that Making creates a unique opportunity for inclusive participation, and is quickly followed by the question ‘how can we get more women to participate?’ Generally, the responses focus on transforming women, on areas that need to be corrected, such as raising confidence, creating more woman/girl friendly learning environments, increasing ability in math and science, and so on. If technical tinkering, STEM, and digital fabrication are the economic forces that will empower Makers, and women and people of color are not participating in these activities in a visible way, that power will remain unequally distributed. Only certain types of Making are truly considered as part of the culture, for example, fixing a car as a hobbyist is considered and promoted as Making in a completely different way than a mechanic who fixes cars for a living.
As it stands now, the Maker identity and technical DIY activities are not for everyone in many ways it actually reinforces an engrained culture of white masculinity in the design and deployment of technology while rhetorically claiming universality. However, this type of rhetoric tends to ignore social inequalities that impede access and participation, where privilege, oppression, and domination over some groups of people are not acknowledged (Dunbar-Hester, 2014). Spaces and ‘Maker’ activities are promoted as being inclusive, open spaces. This blog post is the fourth of five of the blog post series, “Making and the maker movement: A democratizing force or an example of cultural reproduction?” See the first blog post, second blog post, third blog post, and final blog post.
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