The History of DIY – from Punk to Everyday Culture

The slogan Do it Yourself currently keeps flourishing in many countries all over the world. It comprises many different ideas and practices of a so called self-made-culture: Whether in the context of home-improvement, or in the music-scene, by software-engineers or in the creative scene the DIY-culture spreads everywhere. While in the home-improvement-movement or the punk-scene the DIY-culture has a very long tradition, it became popular in other fields of everyday culture not until the last few years. Today many people like to make their clothing, assessors or furniture by themselves and often those self-made products are as well offered for sale at appropriate DIY-websites like etsy or dawanda. While in the youth culture of punk DIY was interpreted as a kind of counterculture and a critique of consumerism, you can ask if the new DIY-trend is based on the same motivation. Although current DIY trends are often labeled as an acquirement of manufacturing processes, we should keep in mind what Boltanski and Chiapello said about the ability of capitalism to absorb its critique.

Following Foucault’s program of the history of the present I am going to trace the changes of the practices and ideas which are linked to the DIY-culture across the years. In doing so, we can learn more about the causes and preconditions of this transformation which exerted influence not only on the relation of the globalization and localization of youth cultures but as well on the relationship between youth culture and everyday culture.