In recent years, the maker movement has captured the imaginations of policy makers and planners across the United States. As with any large, potentially paradigmatic idea (think “sustainability” or “resiliency”), the phenomenon has quickly become freighted with overlapping, competing, and sometimes contradictory meanings (Markusen 1999). Making is sometimes characterized as a distinct mode of production, enabled by the widespread commercial availability of design and prototyping platforms and fabrication tools (Stangler and Maxwell 2012; Milstein Symposium 2014). Other definitions place consumption center stage, highlighting people’s desire to eat, wear, and use products that have been created locally (Heying 2010; Roy 2015), or that are customized to personal specifications (Maker Media and Deloitte Center for the Edge 2013; Bryson, Clark, and Mulhall 2014). Still other definitions center on individuals’ yearning to reconnect with the material world, to “engage passionately with objects in ways that make them more than just consumers” (Dougherty 2012, 12)
