Samenvatting

In this chapter on makers, the authors provide a critical overview of the different cultures of making, their motivations as well as the socio technical infrastructures that encourage these forms of peer production. They draw on a growing body of scholarship on making and hacking in the social sciences, in human‐computer interaction, as well as in arts and design research. Under the premise of one of making's central commitments, the democratization of technology production, ongoing interest rests to some extent on the possibility of empowerment and emancipation of a passive consumer society: “[M]aking challenges whether there is a gap between designers and engineers on the one hand, and between designers and end users on the other”. Studies on characteristics of communities for making and their cultures draw upon ethnographic research of mostly single shared machine shops or multi‐sited examinations within one geographical location.