Design and the Social: Intersections between design, critique and STS

From the introduction: The notion of society provided by the French philosopher Gabriel Tarde challenges the idea that society - or rather societies - are exclusively human. Rather, societies are all around, above, below, besides and inside of the human and on a scale ranging from the minuscule to the interstellar, arguably. Such a definition of society is fascinating, since taken for granted notions of society and the social that implicitly rely on society as being exclusively human, become in return destabilized. We are invited to think, study and act the social and society differently. This special issue constitutes an attempt at such an invitation. &nbsp

Design and the Social: Intersections between design, critique and STS

From the introduction: The notion of society provided by the French philosopher Gabriel Tarde challenges the idea that society - or rather societies - are exclusively human. Rather, societies are all around, above, below, besides and inside of the human and on a scale ranging from the minuscule to the interstellar, arguably. Such a definition of society is fascinating, since taken for granted notions of society and the social that implicitly rely on society as being exclusively human, become in return destabilized. We are invited to think, study and act the social and society differently. This special issue constitutes an attempt at such an invitation. &nbsp

Design Anthropological Futures

A major contribution to the field, this ground-breaking book explores design anthropology's focus on futures and future-making. Examining what design anthropology is and what it is becoming, the authors push the frontiers of the discipline and reveal both the challenges for and the potential of this rapidly growing transdisciplinary field. Divided into four sections – Ethnographies of the Possible, Interventionist Speculation, Collaborative Formation of Issues, and Engaging Things – the book develops readers' understanding of the central theoretical and methodological aspects of future knowledge production in design anthropology. Bringing together renowned scholars such as George Marcus and Alison Clarke with young experimental design anthropologists from countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Brazil, the UK, and the United States, the sixteen chapters offer an unparalleled breadth of theoretical reflections and rich empirical case studies. Written by those at the forefront of the field, Design Anthropological Futures is destined to become a defining text for this growing discipline. A unique resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in design anthropology, design, architecture, material culture studies, and related fields

Design Rituals and Performative Ethnography

This paper proposes a course for ethnography in design that problematizes the implied authenticity of “people out there,” and rather favors a performative worldview where people, things and business opportunities are continuously and reciprocally in the making, and where anthropological analysis is only one competence among others relevant for understanding how this making unfolds. In contrast to perpetuating the “real people” discourse that often masks the analytic work of the anthropologist relegating the role of the ethnographer to that of data collector (Nafus and Anderson 2006), this paper advocates a performative ethnography that relocates the inescapable creative aspects of analysis from the anthropologist's solitary working office into a collaborative project space. The authors have explored the use of video clips, descriptions and quotes detached from their “real” context, not to claim how it really is out there, but to subject them to a range of diverse competencies, each with different interests in making sense of them. Hereby the realness of the ethnographic fragments lie as much in their ability to prompt meaningful re-interpretations here-and-now as in how precisely they correspond to the imagined real world out there-and-then. We propose that it is precisely the investment of one self and one's own desires and agendas that lifts an ethnographic field inquiry out of its everydayness and into something of value to further-reaching processes of change and development of attractive alternatives