Hegemonic+Background+EF+2


 * HEGEMONIC BACKDROP MEMO II (minor changes) **

My object of concern is, in a broad sense, sites of scientific engagement with the public, although, I am considering narrowing my research down to makerspaces. One hegemonic idea surround making and makerspaces is that they are historically white-male dominated, which may stem from the historical trend that the use of tools and tinkering/inventing is primarily male-dominated. This also seems to be the case for sites of scientific engagement in the public sphere in general, particularly in the realm of those who are engaging the public.

Without thinking critically about the system or mode of knowledge and learning it propagates, makerspaces and other scientific engagement strategies often fail to engage the social aspects of scientific knowledge and fail to relay this to public communities – science is taken as objective, base fact, whereas there is a place within “making” and other STEM engagement that could ask critical questions or point to the sociotechnical system involved in scientific research and knowledge production. Pulling further back from the situation, one could also indicate that there is also such sociotechnical system involved in public engagement within the sciences. The social underpinnings of various sites of science and public engagement are incredibly important, but are often overlooked in lieu of the supporting the deficit model and trying to give people as much scientific knowledge as possible, regardless of importance or relevancy.

Underlying this issue is the hegemonic viewpoint that seems to nail down work within the public understanding of science, that if you make available enough scientific knowledge for the public they will grow to love science and all become scientists within their everyday lives.

Makerspaces often fit into this framework as they make workshops or have programming that the people already interested or involved in the space would think are cool and fun – the assumption being that outsiders would be interested as well. It creates a cyclical trend wherein makers beget makers from people who were always already interested in making/tinkering and conditioned on some level.

Out of these thoughts, here are some hegemonic ideas that have relevancy to my research:


 * STEM education is good, especially when it is interactive: If people are taught what the science is in the right way, they will accept it and understand it perfectly as the objective truth


 * Innovation and small business entrepreneurship is the most positive end-goal of Makerspaces


 * More STEM educational initiatives, including classroom Makerspaces, will lead to a workforce of engineers that is ready to compete in the global economy -- this is the ultimate goal


 * Quantity over quality in terms of public engagement of the sciences. The more programming the better

available to the people of their own volition (wikiLeaks, sharing of academic papers/articles), this is bad and based in actions of terrorism
 * When companies make things opensource, or when the government decides to be transparent this is good, but when people try to hack proprietary material for innovation or make data