ABSTRACT
An emerging do-it-yourself (DIY) biotechnology movement has gained media traction as a promising democratization project. Once costly laboratory equipment and methods are now increasingly available to populations outside of exclusive public–private research walls. As announced by Meredith Patterson (2010) – a widely cited spokesperson for the movement: ‘We the biopunks are dedicated to putting the tools of scientific investigation into the hands of anyone who wants them’ (emphasis added). This science-for-the-people ethos, in convergence with a commercialized maker culture, has propelled the DIY biotech movement from geeky fringe to hip populist technoscience. Its practices are dubbed do-it-yourself biology, amateur biology, hobby biology, and outlaw biology. Its more site-oriented terms include non-institutional biology, garage biology, kitchen biology, backyard biology, and basement biology. Additionally, its practitioners are called biohackers, biopunks, citizen scientists, and makers. Many of these terms have gendered inheritances that bear scrutiny in this chapter.
