Making in the making

Samantha Cenere

Making in the making

Performing new forms and spatialities of production

During the last two decades, we have witnessed the spreading of shared spaces of work and production in different urban contexts, attracting attention from both policymakers and scholars in economic geography and urban studies. The book offers an original theoretical framework inspired by the recent strand of post-structuralist economic geography, together with a reliance on ontological tenets coming from Actor-Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies.

Pages: 272

ISBN: 9788835131618

Edizione:1a edizione 2021

Publisher code: 11111.5

Info about Open Access books

During the last two decades, we have witnessed the spreading of shared spaces of work and production in different urban contexts, attracting attention from both policymakers and scholars in economic geography and urban studies. In particular, Fablabs are considered open workshops for grassroots innovation, which is enabled by the availability of shared digital fabrication machines and by the possibility to share knowledge with peers and work together on a project, either in person or online. People attending Fablabs are usually called Makers and, according to the discourse surrounding them, they are deemed the harbingers of a democratisation of production and part of a broader transformation of urban economies and work in the era of digital capitalism.
The book is the result of a PhD research on Makers and Fablabs in Turin, mainly based on an ethnographic observation conducted at Fablab Torino. It offers an original theoretical framework inspired by the recent strand of post-structuralist economic geography, together with a reliance on ontological tenets coming from Actor-Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the study is therefore of interest for scholars in different social sciences who study the reconfiguration of work and production in cities and digitally mediated economic transformations.
The analysis unpacks the enactment of Making as a new form of work and production through three different conceptual foci - knowledge, materiality, and work. Notably, the inquiry looks at how Fablab Torino and the urban 'Maker scene' in Turin are performatively enacted through the entanglement between economic theories on the phenomenon with specific socio-technical arrangements aiming at making those economic theories true.
The geographical relevance of the phenomenon is identified not in some static spatial configuration but, on the one hand, in the heterogeneous and emergent spatialities that emerge from individual practices of Making and, on the other, in the sociomaterial practices of organising that bring into being economic organisations such as Fablabs.

Samantha Cenere holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Development. She is an Urban Geographer and she is currently a Postdoctoral researcher at DIST - Polytechnic University of Turin. Her research interests include the sociospatial reconfiguration of work and production in cities, retail gentrification, and the relationship between universities and urban transformation.

Introduction
(Overview of the book)
Setting the scene. The rising of Makers and Fablabs
(Introduction; Making a new productive paradigm; Making urban workplaces: between co-working and manufacturing; (Re)making craft and handmade production; Conclusions)
Performing, enacting, practising. How do we account for new urban economic objects?
(Introduction. A confession of sorts; The performative turn in cultural economy; Interlude: on failure; Performing economies and spaces; Epilogue: a plea for a performative approach)
Methodology
(Introduction The choice of a methodology; The importance of reflexivity and researcher's positionalities; Field-making; Conclusions)
Knowledge
(Introduction; Knowledge in economic geography; When knowledge enacts the social: from knowing Making to making Making; Knowing how to make: performing knowledge, enacting spatialities; Conclusions)
Materiality
(Introduction; Organising and equipping; Representing; Conclusions)
Work
(Introduction; Archetypes of Maker work; Emerging arrangements of Maker work; Conclusions)
Conclusions
References.

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