Solarpunk as a maker imaginary

The characteristics of ‘solarpunk’ as an eco-feminist future vision resonates with maker cultures that espouse autonomous development of products and technologies that use renewable energy sources, foster community resilience, accord with principles of environmental justice, and highlight symbiosis with nature and natural systems, even in urban contexts. In this study, we examined solarpunk in online discourse, project descriptions, Fab Academy project concepts, and academic publications, to see how it has travelled from its origins as a sci-fi literary genre to other creative fields, especially design, engineering and fab lab contexts. While there is no agreement on what constitutes solarpunk and what not, we see potential for the concept as a sociotechnical imaginary to motivate fablabbers into more environmentally oriented work in the face of environmental and social crises. Solarpunk may provide impetus in maker culture for alternative organizing and community governance models, to strengthen resistance to capitalist encroachment, precarity and collapse, in a way that is still pragmatic, anti-dystopian and materialist. The study also provides STS insights into how sociotechnical imaginaries may be shaped from below.