Dear Thomas

I am thrilled to hear about your success in bringing serious design 
research into a design school and this is indeed something that we have 
been trying to do with little success at NID although much discussion 
and policy statements have been made about the need for such an activity 
on a sustained basis.

I am also in complete agreement with your that design needs to draw in 
methodologies and people from other disciplines and trying to locate 
design studies in a non-design setting may not be as effective, but you 
seem to have figured out the way to do this even if it is slow and 
painful at times.

However, when we started our discussion on this thread, the question was 
whether design needed to be seen as a separate genre from science and 
the arts (and humanities, math and language). I still feel that there is 
this difference that we may need to be taking into account, not to 
retain a discrete position for design but in order to understand when 
the activity starts moving away from what Nigel Cross would call  the 
"Designerly Way" of doing research and if this could be different from 
the similar work being done by scholars rooted in traditions that stem 
from other disciplines.

My own experience in doing field work on bamboo culture in India was 
that although we borrowed heavily from anthropology and ethnography for 
methods and procedures we were doing something different and in the 
field we did meet many anthropologists from the formal streams and they 
seemed to be driven by other concerns and the results too were quite 
different. My note books and those of my two other designer colleagues 
on my team were full of diagrams and sketches and these were punctuated 
with notes and recordings in words and jottings in the field and I 
simply assumed this was a result of our training and the ease with which 
we could use sketching and drawing with a degree of skill that came 
naturally to all three of us in the field. We spent a year in the field 
and came back to NID with over 400 baskets which we analysed for 
structure and form again using drawing as a primary means of analysis 
and this analysis revealed to us a wealth of new information and 
insights about the material, about the people who made the products and 
about the culture in which the activity was located, and for me this was 
design research, since we were doing all this work not to generate new 
knowledge,. although it did give us a whole new angle on the local 
culture but our intention was to understand hoiw this material could be 
used for future development initiatives that could bring social and 
economic prosperity through the use of design and local entrepreneurship 
using bamboo and the local skill sets as the basis for going forward 
where financial capital was hard to come by easily. This resulted in our 
book, the "Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India" and many people 
saw this as a mere documentation of the local traditions and could not 
see the intentions and the embedded strategies till much later when the 
prototypes and demonstration training programmes had commenced in the 
field. It is very difficult to communicate design intent and it may be 
easier to just describe it as a creation of knowledge exercise if we are 
looking for funding support, at least in India today.

My comments were therefore based on these assumptions and experiences. 
Design is very complex and it may need a whole new way to promote 
although deep down we may all recognise it, our acceptance of its 
importance still falls far short of what is needed. How to do this is 
the big question for me.

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
28 July 2007 at 2.15 pm IST
from my office at NID

Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India

Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090
Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
Fax: 91 79 26605242

email: [log in to unmask]
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
blog: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com


Thomas Rasmussen wrote:
> Dear Ranjan,
>
> thank you for your reply. 
>
> The design research discipline shall and must grow from 'within'. The question is, how do we accomplish that? After more than 30 years, design research is still an emergent discipline. If one considers the creative rage in other fields, where new disciplines and lines of thinking emerge and disappear, massive libraries are written and discarded... then the progress of design research after so many years is saddening.
>
> The most important reason for doing design research, I think, is to secure the grounding of design sensibility. This aim should direct discussions of relevance in design research.
>
> In other words, if methodology from anthropology, design history, informatics or comparative literature can be adapted to suit this aim, we should welcome it. 
>
> The key issue is the adaptation. The questions of how to make methodology from other disciplines grow within design research.
>
> For the past five years, I have tested a really simple way to do this. I have recruited research faculty from anthropology, engineering, business schools and the humanities. They have all worked with design  and earned their research merits in their respective universities and disciplines.
>
> Of the senior research faculty, 11 in all, only two are designers in the traditional sense. The rest have been picked from other universities. 
>
> The reason for bringing them together (in stead of buying their books for our library and have them give occasional lectures for our studio faculty and students) was to develop new criteria of relevance.
>
> There is a lot of important design research outside design, but generally design schools and the design research disciplines do not profit very much from it. I think this has to do with the fact that relevance is defined differently within different institutions. Design history, for instance, could be very relevant for designers. But the way it is taught in the university, design history becomes irrelevant for designers - the criteria of relevance simply don't match.
>
> Once design researchers from anthropology, engineering etc. begin to work, teach and do their research in multidisciplinary teams within a design school, they naturally begin to define new criteria of relevance together and in collaboration with practicing design teachers.
>
> This way, their analytical and scientific methodologies begin to merge with design knowledge. 
>
> It is a slow process... but in five years, I think we have made more progress than we would have, if we had insisted on growing research from within by limiting design knowledge to what our studio faculty already knew.
>
> Best,
>
> thomas
>
> BTW  in order to secure the design knowledge of practicing designers, we recruit designers in residence who become part of the research faculty for periods of three years. It is very, very important to have a mixture of basic, applied and practice based research  but also to secure constant communication with design practice. Otherwise, the criteria of relevance might tend to shift too much towards theory.
>
>
> : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
> Thomas RASMUSSEN
> Head of Research / Danmarks Designskole
> Strandboulevarden 47 / 2100 Copenhagen
> Phone +45 3527 7593 / Mobile +45 2523 1215
> : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design pe vegne af Ranjan M P
> Sendt: to 26-07-2007 20:04
> Til: [log in to unmask]
> Emne: [Fwd: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] SV: Mythologies of anthropology and design]
>  
> Dear Thomas
>
> Thank you for your thoughtful comments. My suggestion that anthropology
> may be considered a New Discipline of Design was really tounge-in-cheek,
> and stated as a provocation for Dori so I do not disagree with you that
> design is a general discipline that is mighty hard to define, if not
> impossible. Yes, design is a natural human activity and the politics of
> separate disciplines comes from the professionalising of the discipline,
> its tools sets and knowledge resources and the need to differentiate the
> services offered by different groups of profesionals and by university
> departments in need of segregated funding as well as from industry
> interested to meet their vested interst for a particular kinds of
> professionals for their immediate and near term needs.
>
> However we will still need "to bring design into" all kinds of human
> activities and all of us will be asked to help explain, if not define,
> what we mean by - bringing design into - all these human activities and
> suggest ways in which this can be achieved. In India we have been
> struggling to get attention to design as a profession while most science
> and technology activities are supported by a very substantial and
> serious system of supports and the same kind of support is not yet
> forthcoming for the design sector, although this is changing slowly.
> Design is easily equated to fashion and style due to greater media
> coverage to these aspects and the other aspects tend to be overlooked or
> glossed over as we have experienced in the fairly low interest in
> development related uses of design.
>
> Gui Bonsiepe has a table in his book "Interface" where he makes a
> comparative positioning of technology innovation, science innovation and
> design innovation, all of which need imagination and all the qualities
> that suggest the presence of vision and experimentation. However the
> location where these are typically tested take place are the company
> workshop, the university laboratory and market place respectively and
> the significant aspect is that while tech innovation can be tested
> repeatedly by set procedures  and science innovation needs to be peer
> approved to find acceptance, in the case of design innovation its
> validity can only be tested by its acceptance in the market place since
> it is context dependent and cannot be standardised. For me this is a
> good representation of differences that can be grasped by most people
> who have little understanding of the design way.
>
> I would like to hear more views on this issue before exploring it
> further with the list since we are entering a space where it would be
> very difficult to make any definitive statement and I am sure that there
> are many aspects that I have not considered in my earlier messages.
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my Mac at home
> 26 July 2007 at 11.15 pm IST
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Faculty of Design
> Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
> Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
> National Institute of Design
> Paldi
> Ahmedabad 380 007 India
>
> Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090 (changed in January 2006)
> Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
> Fax: 91 79 26605242
>
> email: [log in to unmask]
> web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/
> web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
> blog: http://design-for-india.blogspot.com
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
> Thomas Rasmussen wrote:
>   
>> Dear Ranjan and others,
>>
>> there is a serious problem in insisting on the fundamental otherness of design.
>>
>> If we agree, that design is something other than art and science, then what have we gained  except for the right to define what design is.
>>
>> If we did gain that right (not very likely, if you consider 2000 years of violence in debates over who defines Christianity) then we would have to find another word for the massive amounts of innovation and problemsolving and formgiving that takes place outside of design.
>>
>> And then what?
>>
>> For the sake of argument, lets say that the activity of designing lies somewhere between activities in art and in science. The question then is how do we improve and teach this activity.
>>
>> We need words and concepts and modes of thinking and frames of reference.
>>
>> Even if the act of designing itself is silent and powered by inspiration (progress in the arts and the sciences are silent and powered by inspiration too it occurs, when someone is standing on the edge of the known and dares to leap forward. In the arts these leaps are left for others to read and perceive, in the sciences the scientist is obliged to verbalize her progress) we still need to formalize our knowledge in order to improve and teach the act of designing.
>>
>> Unless, of course, we are satisfied with the status quo and with the speed of progress in design research and in the design disciplines.
>>
>> In order to get the analytical tools we need (words and concepts and modes of thinking and frames of reference) we can either invent them ourselves. Or we can take all the help we can get from the disciplines that share some of our knowledge and some of our challenges.
>>
>> If we look at the backgrounds of employees at some of the most successful design companies in the world  we find designers, sure, but also anthropologists, people from the humanities and the social sciences, engineers, specialists in ergonomics and business school graduates.
>>
>> Their combined knowledge and methodologies empower the process of designing.
>>
>> If we are serious about building design research, we should study best practice. Instead of using our energy on arguments about why anthropology should not be considered a part of an emergent design research discipline, we should embrace the influx of talent and use our forces to adapt methodologies.
>>
>> New scientific disciplines do not arise from barren ground. They emerge out of an interdisciplinary pjle-mjle and gradually stabilize.
>>
>> In this process, insisting on a fundamental otherness is counterproductive.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> thomas
>>
>> : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
>> Thomas RASMUSSEN
>> Head of Research / Danmarks Designskole
>> Strandboulevarden 47 / 2100 Copenhagen
>> Phone +45 3527 7593 / Mobile +45 2523 1215
>> : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design pe vegne af Ranjan MP
>> Sendt: to 26-07-2007 08:22
>> Til: [log in to unmask]
>> Emne: Re: Mythologies of anthropology and design
>>
>> Dear Lily
>>
>> I stand corrected. I did leave out the humanities and language from my
>> categorisation of human knowledge under science and the arts. Klaus will
>> not forgive me for not including language in particular. ..(and math and
>> philosophy as well...)
>>
>> Yes, design uses all of these and still stands apart, which is why we
>> are having such discussions about the nature of design since we are
>> trying to explain it in terms of all the other disciplines perhaps.
>>
>> Yesterday I was speaking to a group of young communication design
>> students from video and animation at NID and I shared with them the
>> wonder of dealing with intangibles in design and communication. many
>> product designers that I know are puzzled at the methods and ways of the
>> communications designers and perhaps they do not factor in the
>> possibility that they are not dealing with material but with ideas using
>> language and image and some in time and motion and this may require a
>> whole new set of skills which may not be offered in the basic materials
>> or composition courses of the traditional foundation programmes in
>> design. I have watched sopme of our communications design students
>> mature in the field of television broadcast and advertising and learn to
>> use cultural cues and local metaphors to great effect in their work just
>> as our product designers learn engineering and marketing to realise
>> exciting products for the marketplace.
>>
>> With warm regards
>>
>> M P Ranjan
>> from my office at NID
>> 26 July 2007 at 11.50 am IST
>>
>> Prof M P Ranjan
>> Faculty of Design
>> Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
>> Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
>> National Institute of Design
>> Paldi
>> Ahmedabad 380 007 India
>>
>> Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090
>> Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
>> Fax: 91 79 26605242
>>
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>> web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
>> web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
>> blog: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com
>>
>> Lily Diaz wrote:
>>     
>>> Dear MP Ranjan and others,
>>>
>>> Thank you for your wonderful posts. As usual they are a source of
>>> inspiration and reflection for me.
>>>
>>> I am not sure that we need to invent a New Design Discipline, since
>>> the discipline already exists and what is going on in forums such as
>>> this one is the negotiation, discussion, fluxus of what is in the
>>> boundaries. (I am particularly proud of the plurality of voices within
>>> this community.) What is perhaps needed is a bolder posture, a more in
>>> your face attitude in the presence of our peers from the "more
>>> established" disciplines.
>>>
>>> Just a quick note. We keep referring to anthropology as a science,
>>> however, many anthropologists would not regard themselves as
>>> practicing a science but rather a humanistic discipline. In the United
>>> States, the discipline is usually taught in the Faculty of Humanities
>>> and not as part of the Sciences (or social sciences for that matter).
>>>
>>> Warm regards,
>>>
>>> Lily
>>>
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------
>>> uu    u        u            u
>>> Dr. Lily Diaz-Kommonen
>>> Professor, Systems of Representation
>>> Media Lab
>>> University of Art and Design Helsinki
>>> 135C H
>>> meentie SF 00560
>>> Helsinki, Finland
>>> + 358 9 75630 338
>>> + 358 9 75630 555 (FAX)
>>>
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 26.7.2007, at 8.09, Ranjan MP wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Dear Dori
>>>>
>>>> Thank you for this wonderful and informative post with your
>>>> reflections and thoughts on the field of anthropology. Most
>>>> stimuilating, thank you.
>>>>
>>>> I have been arguing that design is a class apart from both science
>>>> and art, although it uses both these in full measure at its best, and
>>>> at many times falls between these two stools in our interpretation
>>>> and description of the field. Today it is being appropriated by
>>>> business and management under the strategy banner that the business
>>>> magazines are harping about. Soon economists will be substituting the
>>>> word planning with design and the word will take on new hues as we go
>>>> forward and find that Apple is succeeding in the marketplace, they
>>>> have returned stunning financial numbers this quarter, by the way.
>>>>
>>>> While Anthropology is an exciting and vibrant field with many facets,
>>>> I still see it as a science that helps explain human relationships
>>>> and the human condition in many contexts. You say that anthropology
>>>> helps in early stage design directions and I am in full agreement
>>>> with that notion and I do believe that design must use more of
>>>> anthropology tools, techniques and knowledge base in this and other
>>>> stages of decision making and exploration as part of the design
>>>> process. However design is about the creation of the future P its
>>>> artefacts, procedures, events and infrastructure and policies P with
>>>> the use of imagination and insights about the human condition and I
>>>> do not think that design is actually concerned about creating the
>>>> frameworks for our undrstanding of the human condition as a science
>>>> would do, although I must hasten to add that most design activities
>>>> do throw up many such frameworks of understanding as well as new
>>>> knowledge, but that is not its primary objective.
>>>>
>>>> Here anthropology seems to be that science that can provide us with
>>>> such knowledge frameworks and explain to us the context and the
>>>> relationships that operate as well as provide the design teams (not
>>>> just designers) the means to make the decisions that must be an act
>>>> of faith if it is to do with the future, which as Wolfgang Jonas says
>>>> is essentially unknowable, and I agree with his position. Design is
>>>> speculative and opportunistic but it can be validated only in the
>>>> field or the marketplace and never in a laboratory since it is not
>>>> just a concept but a situated object or event or activity that has
>>>> infinite connections and therefore complex and unknowable.
>>>>
>>>> If I treat anthropology as a science then it is not design, since
>>>> design is not science nor is it art, although it is confused with
>>>> both. So we will need to invent a NEW DESIGN DISCIPLINE and give it a
>>>> name and start some new programmes to teacgh it and that discipline
>>>> would use anthroploogy as its core knowledge resource and it will
>>>> then no longer be anthropology (as a science) but become a field of
>>>> design. tee hee. Wonderful. Lets discuss.
>>>>
>>>> With warm regards
>>>>
>>>> M P Ranjan
>>>> from my office at NID
>>>> 26 July 2007 at 10.35 am IST
>>>>
>>>> Prof M P Ranjan
>>>> Faculty of Design
>>>> Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
>>>> Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
>>>> National Institute of Design
>>>> Paldi
>>>> Ahmedabad 380 007 India
>>>>
>>>> Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090
>>>> Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
>>>> Fax: 91 79 26605242
>>>>
>>>> email: [log in to unmask]
>>>> web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
>>>> web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
>>>> blog: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com
>>>>
>>>> Tunstall, Elizabeth wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> The wonderful thing about anthropology is that its approaches cover the
>>>>> entire range of epistemologies depending on the sub-specialty
>>>>> (physical or
>>>>> biological, linguistics, archaeological, and socio-cultural), the
>>>>> age and
>>>>> education of the practitioner, and the anthropology question there are
>>>>> seeking to answer.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mythologies of the "field" of anthropology
>>>>>
>>>>> There are four sub-fields of anthropology, not just socio-cultural
>>>>> anthro.
>>>>>
>>>>> Because physical/biological anthropologists often interface with
>>>>> biologists, epidemiologists, geneticists, forensic doctors, etc,
>>>>> they tend
>>>>> to fall on the positivist side or at least have a fluency in the
>>>>> positive
>>>>> languages as part of the culture.
>>>>>
>>>>> Linguistics can run the gamut from the positivism of computation
>>>>> linguistics (which informs a lot of the computation work in natural
>>>>> language modeling) to the highly interpretive work done in everyday
>>>>> conversation analysis (Deborah Tannen's, You Just Don't Understand:
>>>>> Women
>>>>> and Men in Conversation, William Morrow, 1990; is the popular
>>>>> version of
>>>>> this kind of work).
>>>>>
>>>>> Archaeology in the past was more positivist, but the interpretive
>>>>> school,
>>>>> led by figures such as Ian Hodder, now at Stanford, represent in
>>>>> many ways
>>>>> the contemporary practice of archaeology. In terms of community
>>>>> participation, the repatriation laws, in the 1990s, of native artifacts
>>>>> have made archaeology now one of the most inclusive and least
>>>>> colonial of
>>>>> the anthropological fields, when it was the most colonial. For example,
>>>>> when I was an archaeology TA at Stanford (in 1995), we had Native
>>>>> Americans on staff at all digs and if any significant materials were
>>>>> found
>>>>> (human remains especially) the dig was stopped and went to the tribal
>>>>> council for resolution.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cultural anthropology runs the gamut, but it is now quite dominated by
>>>>> women and people who were former colonized subjects, who fall into the
>>>>> post-structuralist/post-modernist/feminist/postcolonial camps. To Danny
>>>>> and Norm's comment about the critiques of Samoan anthropologists.
>>>>> There is
>>>>> every type of anthropologist under the sun and moon. The practice
>>>>> evolves
>>>>> with every new generation while still maintaining an understanding
>>>>> of the
>>>>> old. Right now, I am finding the work of visual anthropologist, Sarah
>>>>> Pink, most useful to my art and design students.
>>>>>
>>>>> The contemporary practice of anthropology by those who are engaged with
>>>>> design are not of the positivist sorts at all. My own intellectual
>>>>> genealogies are from the Boasian (4-fields, actively engaged in current
>>>>> issues, historically sensitive, attempt to understand interrelated
>>>>> systems, albeit partial understanding, highly documented processes) and
>>>>> Geerzian (interpretive, attention to form and content or
>>>>> representation,
>>>>> sense of positionality of researcher, focus on significance of the
>>>>> mundane
>>>>> as well as the sublime) traditions. Right now, I am most influenced by
>>>>> Paul Rabinow's reframing of Foucault for anthropological
>>>>> "problematization" as opposed to the study of groups of tribes. All
>>>>> graduate students at Stanford since the 1980s are steeped in French
>>>>> post-structuralist, international feminist/womanist, Marxist, and
>>>>> Post-Colonial (Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and Valentin
>>>>> Mudimbe) thinking.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mythologies of field work
>>>>>
>>>>> This is often used to distinguish between anthropology and design
>>>>> research, without contextualizing the practice of long term field work.
>>>>> First, anthropologist only have one long term fieldwork period. This is
>>>>> when you are a graduate student doing your major fieldwork.
>>>>> Normally, you
>>>>> needed to stay a year or more because you spent the first six months
>>>>> learning to speak the language. Tee hee. Really, its the
>>>>> anthropological
>>>>> equivalent to spending a summer in Europe as an undergrad. It
>>>>> happens once
>>>>> before you get at real job and it never happens again, but you always
>>>>> refer to it as the "golden days" of your youth.
>>>>>
>>>>> After graduate school, you will spend maximum of 4-8 weeks in your
>>>>> field
>>>>> site(s) at a given time and that is if you work in an academic context.
>>>>> Hopefully, you still know the language. For some halfie or "native"
>>>>> anthropologists (as many are now), you may live in your field site
>>>>> most of
>>>>> the time, so the point is moot.
>>>>>
>>>>> I spent 21 months in Ethiopia doing my fieldwork, but it was because
>>>>> I had
>>>>> to travel to over 5 different regions, in which I spent only 3 months
>>>>> maximum in each.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mythologies of relevance to design
>>>>>
>>>>> The point of my post is that if design is moving into problem
>>>>> formation,
>>>>> then anthropology provides lots of knowledge and experiences about
>>>>> how to
>>>>> go about that ethically. Anthropology has that knowledge because it has
>>>>> screwed up in the past and now its just about started to get it right:
>>>>> this is called now Anthropology 2.0. <smile> The contemporary role
>>>>> is the
>>>>> anthropologist is different in that we are used as a mediator between
>>>>> global forces and local meanings. Design is wanting to move into
>>>>> that role
>>>>> as well. My point is that we can help ease the transition, so they
>>>>> don't
>>>>> screw up as much as we did, but don't go about labeling things as
>>>>> design
>>>>> when it is really anthropology. tee hee.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is not a human phenomena under the sun in which there is not an
>>>>> anthropologist somewhere trying to studying it or has studied it in the
>>>>> past. My favorite past time is providing students with over 10
>>>>> articles,
>>>>> spanning 50 years, about some topic they are wanting to explore (ex.
>>>>> the
>>>>> visualization of subjective time). It's not about methods of data
>>>>> collection, but rather tools for analytical reasoning and
>>>>> exploration that
>>>>> anthropology can provide to design. Anthropology is not the only field,
>>>>> but it is the one that covers human experience to the same breadth and
>>>>> depth of the field of design. There are sub-sub-fields of anthro like
>>>>> psychological anthro, medical anthro, anthro of education, political
>>>>> anthro, social anthro, cultural anthro (those are distinct depended on
>>>>> which side of the pond you live on), visual anthro, anthro of work,
>>>>> anthro
>>>>> of consciousness, humanist anthro, applied anthro, design anthro, and
>>>>> probably an anthropology of anthropology. Anthropology is the super
>>>>> hybridizing field because its subject is the entire range of human
>>>>> experience across time and space.
>>>>>
>>>>> And that variation in anthropological approaches works. When I
>>>>> taught my
>>>>> class, Design Anthropology, different types of designers gravitated
>>>>> towards different anthropological approaches. The electronic
>>>>> visualization
>>>>> students like structural-functionalism and its ideas of rules and
>>>>> functioning parts that work together, because it matched their own
>>>>> programming mentalities. The graphic designers and artists gravitated
>>>>> towards the interpretive and post-structuralist approaches because it
>>>>> matched their own ideas about the variability of meaning and the
>>>>> fluidity
>>>>> of the sign/signifier relationships.
>>>>>
>>>>> One student working on Chinese iconography for the Olympics explored
>>>>> archaeological history and interpretation. Another working on consumer
>>>>> culture engaged in anthropological theories of consumerism like Arjun
>>>>> Appadurai, Mary Douglas, and Daniel Miller.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't understand why anyone would not want to avail themselves of
>>>>> such
>>>>> rich knowledge before going out and making under-informed statements
>>>>> about
>>>>> the way the world works, which is what problem formation is about.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mythologies about design and colonialism
>>>>>
>>>>> There are lots of studies of the role of design in the colonial
>>>>> project.
>>>>> Two of my favorites are Lifebouy Men and Lux Women by social historian
>>>>> Timothy Burke (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996) about
>>>>> commodity culture in Zimbabwe in the post-WWII period and Imperial
>>>>> Leather
>>>>> by English lit and feminist scholar Anne McClintock, which looks at it
>>>>> from a feminist perspective(New York: Routledge, 1995). We all have
>>>>> colonial skeletons in our closet. Tee hee.
>>>>>
>>>>> But this has been a very exciting conversation that has helped me to
>>>>> sharpen my thinking on the topic. So thanks all for sharing.
>>>>>
>>>>> Email Scanned for Virus & Dengerous Content.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>> Email Scanned for Virus & Dengerous Content.
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> Email Scanned for Virus & Dengerous Content.
>>     
>
> Email Scanned for Virus & Dengerous Content.
>
>
>