DIY: The Search for Control and Self-Reliance in the 21st Century

From the driveway mechanic to the backyard gardener, many diverse people are "e;doing it themselves"e; by building or repairing the stuff of their daily lives without the aid of experts. Do It Yourself uses Habermas's colonization of the lifeworld as a frame and mobilizes Marx's concepts of alienation and mystification to examine how social behaviors can be a conscious reply to a complex and fast-moving world, a nostalgia for simpler times past, or a just an economic impulse. Each main chapter is anchored by an extended empirical example: back-to-the-land, home-schooling, and self-government.