An interesting interview of Deepa Butoliya by James Auger at Speculative dot edu. Based on a recent CHI workshop paper she wrote about non-western maker and DIY cultures, Butoliya describes the notion of “critical jugaad”:

Critical Jugaad is jugaad done as an act of everyday resistance and survival. Critical Jugaad is a term I have coined that is based on an inquiry that explains how people use ingenious making practices like jugaad as a tool for resistance, subversion and criticality against colonial powers of oppression. Jugaad is a Hindi term which means making do with what you have at hand. Jugaad-like practices form cultural binders and empower people to find a collective force to fight oppression while practicing creative self-expression.

Why blogging this? This notion, and the way she described it more thoroughly in the interview, is interesting both because it describes a counterpoint to Western visions of Maker culture, and also because it highlights a similar phenomenon to my earlier blogpost about gambiarra: DYI as a way to re-appropriate technologies and goods.