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| Blueprints for Utopia |
Trapese Collective (eds), Do It Your- self: A Handbook for Changing our World (Pluto, 2007; ISBN 978 0 74532 637 5; 320pp; £12.99)
Reviewed by: BEN DISS
In Do It Yourself the Trapese Collective have succinctly compiled a practical snapshot of DIY culture: the idea that we can build meaningful social change ourselves, here and now.
At 300 pages the book does not set out to comprehensively cover all areas, but instead invites readers to feast on numerous practical suggestions and fill in the blanks with their "insurrectionary imaginations". By its own admission, the book neglects important areas such as transport, housing, economics, race and gender, but, true to the Trapese Collective's principles of "popular education"  born out of preparation for the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland  the book starts from the authors' own practical experience, encouraging readers to do the same.
Chapters on sustainable living, decision-making, health, education, food, cultural activism, free spaces, media and direct action, are neatly paired to detail both theory and practical case studies. For example, Chapter 3 ("How to make decisions without leaders"), precedes Chapter 4 ("How to make decisions by consensus").
Buy this book, read it and pass it on: be part of the DIY revolution!