Enlarging what exists. Revealing what has been ignored
This post is a response to a 12 week seminar on Arturo Escobar’s book ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’. The seminar was delivered by Cameron Tonkinwise at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2021. As part of the seminar, PhD students were asked to present briefly on how the reading of the text and the discussions have impacted on their research.
First, the visual summary:
On my research
My research will investigate how to make visible those things which have been concealed from view in order to advance the interests of the powerful. In particular it will look at how a region dominated by coal mining can see itself as something other; to reveal a diverse community with assets and skills beyond the extractive economy.
This need for making visible was confirmed as important through reading Escobar. It has reignited a respect for visualisation skills I had all but rejected in pursuit of supposedly higher order forms of design (that itself is a misreading of Buchanan’s Four Orders which were never intended to be seen as a hierarchy].
Of note from the Escobar seminar are the following clues as to how design can be of service in sustainable transitions:
No analysis of existing recurrent structures is a full account of the possibilities [1]. Design can play a role in presencing — to draw attention to the alternatives—to reveal and unconceal [2].
Enlarging what exists and has been made absent [3]—for example relationality which has been concealed through the over-promotion of rational thought [4]—can be achieved in part through naming something, which is to hold space open for it [5].
Tim Ingold has said that design is not planning, but unfolding—revealing the pathways to future possibilities [6]. This at times involves the creation of focal things which gather people around them in what they are doing [7]. In particular, Transition Design is presencing that which has been ignored to break the ontologies that are holding power in place [8].
Theoretical foundations
The research—so far—is framed through four themes, each supported by the theoretical foundations shown here:
- Centering the community’s knowledge and concerns draws upon participatory design and participatory action research. For designers, in particular, I am thinking of a redirected practice of design which joins in with humility, meeting the community where they are.
- Being able to envision positive futures starts with revealing the best of what exists and has a foundation in appreciative inquiry and asset-based community development (although since this presentation I’ve discovered equity-based community development which I need to investigate more).
- Considering how to move toward the future draws upon the theories surrounding the culture of care and repair, where we develop connective and relational practices that repair and renew community bonds.
- And finally, thinking about building a positive platform for change reveals design’s potential for making visible what has been concealed so that it might be considered as evidence (alongside scientific and technical expertise) as we draw the path toward the future, together.
NOTES
[1] Week 3. This is a quote from Flores & Winograd (1986, p.170).
[2] Week 9.
[3] Week 8.
[4] Week 6.
[5] Week 4.
[6] Week 2. Gatt & Ingold.
[7] Week 4.
[8] Week 6.
WEEKLY READINGS
Week 1:
Orienting interviews with Escobar.
Interview 1. Interview 2. Interview 3.
Manfred Max-Neef — What are the Fundamental Human Needs?
Week 2: From Anthropology to Design pp54–62 and Design Practice according to Escobar pp35–48.
Week 3: Understanding Computers and Cognition — Winograd & Flores. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 12.
Week 4: Abby Mellick Lopes – Ontological Design
Anne-Marie Willis’ — Introduction to ontological design
Week 5: pp110–133, and then pp15–19 + Tony Fry’s Design Futuring.
Week 6: Concerns the way Escobar contrasts the One World World’s Scientism with more pluriversal ecologisms: Modern Rational Design pp81–91 + Amodern Relationality pp92–103.
Week 7: pp 62–75 on Ontological Politics and pp 140–150 on Transitions in the North and South
Week 8: Manzini’s Design for Social Innovation pp159–164 + Transition Design
pp153–8.
Week 9: Ontonomy and Autonomy — pp168–183 + Autonomous Design — pp184–199
Week 10: Decolonizing Transitions — pp205–222
Week 11: Escobar’s article Habitability and Design
Week 12: Presentations.
REFERENCES
Agid, S. & Chin, E. 2019, “Making and negotiating value: design and collaboration with community led groups,” CoDesign, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 75–89
Cameron, J., & Gibson, K. 2005, “Participatory action research in a poststructuralist vein,” in Geoforum, 36(3), 315–331.
Dantec, C. & DiSalvo, C. 2013, “Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design,” Social Studies of Science, 43(2), pp. 241–264.
De la Bellacasa, Marîa P.. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. University of Minnesota Press.
Disalvo, C. 2009, “Design and the Construction of Publics,” in Design Issues, Winter.
Ehn, P. 2008, “Participation in Design Things,” Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Participatory Design, PDC 2008.
Escobar, A. 2018, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Duke University Press.
Fry, T. 2010, Design as Politics, Berg, Oxford, New York.
Gatt, C. & Ingold, T. 2013, “From Description to Correspondence: Anthropology in Real Time,” in W. Gunn, T. Otto & R. Smith (eds), Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice, Bloomsbury, London, pp. 139–58.
Grasseni, C. 2012, “Community Mapping as Auto-Ethno-Cartography,” in Advances in Visual Methodology, pp. 97–112. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Hendriks, C.M., Ercan, S., & Boswell, J. 2020, Mending Democracy: Democratic Repair in Disconnected Times. Oxford University Press USA — OSO.
Ingold, T. 2013, Making anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.
Jackson, S. 2014, ‘Rethinking Repair.,’ in Media Technologies: Essays on Communications, Materiality, and Society, pp. 221–239. MIT Press.
Kretzmann, J., & McKnight, J. 1993, Building communities from the inside out : a path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University.
Light, A., & Akama, Y. 2012, “The human touch: participatory practice and the role of facilitation in designing with communities,” in Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design Conference, pp. 61–70.
Manzini, E. 2015, Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. The MIT Press.
Merzian R., Quicke, A., Bennett, E., Campbell, R. & Swann, T. 2019, Climate of the Nation 2019: Tracking Australia’s attitudes towards climate change and energy. The Australia Institute.
Robinson, C. 2020, “Transition Talk,” in Stewarding Loss. Accessed 23 March 2021 from https://www.stewardingloss.com/blog/transitions-talk.
Schultz, T. 2017, “Design’s Role in Transitioning to Futures of Cultures of Repair,” Research into Design for Communities, Volume 2, pp. 225–234.
