Maybe the most persistent of all forms of external authority in our lives are the day-to-day tyrannies of specialists and experts. The Fifth Estate’s next issue investigates strategies of resistance to and liberation from this insidious system of technocratic mystification and domination with a look at the culture, ethics, and aesthetics of do-it-yourselfism.

Is DIY a creator-centered cultural activity intended to build a community? Or, is it self-centered and self-serving? Is it subversive intervention or counter-cultural lifestylism? Is it political, apolitical, or antipolitical? What are the relationships between do-it-yourselfist practice, radical free expression, creativity, and pleasure? Is DIY the cornerstone of autonomy?

Other possible topics may include:

• folk knowledge, informal learning spaces, mutual aid skill-sharing
• guerrilla arts-‘n’-crafts
• homespun alternatives to mass production & consumption
• participatory journalism & pirate broadcasting
• outsider art, lo-fi music, folk architecture
• wildcat communal clusters, squats, & intentional communities
• raves, Reclaim the Street parties, Critical Mass swarms, flash-mobs, guerrilla gigs
• home remedies, alternative medicines, underground clinics, folk science
• astroturf movements (public-relations viral marketing; Working Families for Wal-Mart; MoveOn; Tea Party) faking spontaneous, grassroots connections in order to counterfeit authentic, popular appeal
• the histories & futures of DIY

Please submit manuscripts for short pieces and proposals for longer essays, along with graphics and photographs to: fe@ fifthestate.org or FIFTH ESTATE, POB 201016, Ferndale, MI 48220

Deadline: SEPTEMBER 1
Publication date: OCTOBER 15