Tinkering

At a time when the labour market is failing as a source of security and identity for many, domestic tinkering is emerging as a legitimate occupation in a way we have not seen since pre-industrial times. In Australia, practices of repair, invention, building, improvising, and crafting, that take place in sheds, backyards, paddocks, kitchens, and home workshops, are becoming an important part of the informal economy and social cohesion, complicating distinctions between work and leisure, amateur and professional, production and consumption.

Building on the work of historians, sociologists, psychologists, and economists, but with a journalist's impulse for the currency of her story, Katherine Wilson documents domestic tinkering as an undervalued form of material creativity, social connection, psychological sanctuary, personal identity, and even political activism.

Tinkering: Australians Reinvent DIY Culture mounts a surprising case for the profound value of domestic tinkering in contemporary Australia.

'A rich world emerges in this well-crafted and well-researched book. The journalistic writing belies the deep theorisation of the topic, and Wilson moves fluidly among theoretical, ethnographic, and narrative elements to make an original study of maker culture. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.' - Kirsty Robertson