Situating do-it-yourself: a hybridizing perspective from central and Eastern Europe

This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe focused on the material culture of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Central and Eastern Europe. It examines DIY as a lens for understanding societal transformations since the 1980s, shaped by post-socialist transitions and global capitalism. While DIY has been widely studied in contexts such as activism, gender, housing, and subcultures, its role in vernacular creativity and material culture remains underexplored in this region. The article situates DIY within historical and contemporary contexts, analysing its intersection with economic, social, and political structures. It highlights DIY’s hybrid nature, bridging traditional-modern, state-market, and socialist-post-socialist dichotomies. Using Czech DIY (kutilství) as a case study, it argues that DIY serves as a crucial tool for comprehending broader societal and material shifts. This introduction provides the theoretical and contextual foundation for the special issue, which explores DIY’s implications for identity, agency, and socio-material realities in a rapidly changing world.