Dear Dori (warning – a long reply)

Design and Anthropology: Strange Bedfellows?

You have raised some very interesting issues about design and 
anthropology, but I must both agree and disagree with you on some of the 
aspects of your discourse. Firstly both anthropology and design can be 
seen at many levels of thought and action. Margret Mead and Gregory 
Bateson represent the higher reaches of anthropology action and in 
Design we could place Charles Eames and Christopher Alexander at an 
equivalent level of both thought and action. These names are only 
intended as place holders for my statements and not a complete list in 
any case, there are a great number of others that I would include on 
both sides, if I can take sides.

I am from the design side, having been trained as a designer in the 
CRAFT tradition and over the years I have grown to respect and admire 
the various contributions to the numerous fields of design research and 
in understanding people, particularly from anthropology, that I have 
perhaps transgressed into the discipline, both by adopting the field 
techniques as well as using concepts and approaches established by good 
research that originated in anthropology and ethnography.

However my argument is that there is a marked difference in the 
intentions of both fields, correct me if I am wrong. Anthropology, as a 
science is about understanding people and culture and in the process 
revealing facets of the past and the present by the conceptual 
construction of frameworks that can support this understanding. Design 
on the other hand is about understanding people and contexts with the 
express intention of shaping the future, both use tools and techniques 
from a number of fields and anthropology has a much longer tradition of 
scholarship in the recording of these tools and processes while design 
has been more about action and less about reflection and capture of 
knowledge which seems to be a recent area of interest and a relatively 
new field of scholarship, design research.

I have personally trespassed into the domain of anthropology, with the 
intention of using my studies for future design applocation, when I 
traveled my team in the villages of Northeast India from 1979 and in 
this we used many insights that were drawn from the fields of 
ethnography and anthropology. Our work on bamboo crafts was not just 
intended to document the people and their artifacts, which we did, 
collected over 400 unique baskets and analysed them for our book, but 
the real and stated intention was to understand how this knowledge could 
be used to bring development and change to the local communities and to 
bring prosperity with cultural continuity and many other such intangible 
objectives. These experiences have given me the conviction that we need 
to use these tools and concepts from a number of disciplines but we were 
not able to get any of the specialists to work directly with us, 
unfortunately, perhaps it was our failure to adapt to the rigor of the 
specialists since the nature of the design quest may have been different 
or for some other as yet unexplained reason.

Design is about synthesis and in this it is now evident that it would 
require that use of many disciplines and knowledge pools and it also 
must use many sensibilities, some drawn from the erafts and others for 
intellectual traditions, and the knowledge base at the strategic level 
of action is an all inclusive frame in which every field of knowledge 
would be included, all providing opportunities in as many as 230 sectors 
of our economy. I have more extensive arguements for this approach in 
papers written over the years which are available on my website for 
download if anyone is interested. However I have recently set up a blog 
to discuss some these very same issues in the Indian context, 
particularly since design is so poorly understood here and we need to be 
able to convince both governments and industry to use this discipline at 
the high level of policy at which it is truly effective and not just at 
the level of craft or at the aesthetic level, although it is also an 
effective action at these levels for mature industries to differentiate 
their brands and products alike. I have a visual model of the 230 
sectors and another for the Design Opportunities on my blog at this link 
below so do take a look at these to see my point of view more clearly 
than I can posibly explain even in the longish post that I have made 
here. A picture is worth a thou......
<http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>

230 Sectors model:
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/230-sectors-of-economy-for-design.html>

Fields of Design Opportunity model:
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/fields-of-design-and-opportunities.html>

I look forward to your thoughtful comments and some thoughts on 
anthrodesign as other members of this forum see the emerging discipline 
called "AnthroDesign" that is in the cusp of both Design and 
anthropology as it is taking shape in the days ahead. We may need to 
carry this discussion to the AnthroDesign list as well, but that can be 
done at another time.

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
17 July 2007 at 9.35 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
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:
> Sorry for cross-postings.
>
> I'm hoping to stir up a little controversy.
>
> Marc of SFU posted a comment on my blog that I would be interested in
> Bruce Nussbaums posting on how Designers should be CEOs.
> http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/06/ceos_must_be_de.html
>
> There was one part of Bruces posting that caught my attention, or more
> likely caused my heart to stop because it exposed the ambivalence I have
> about design, particularly design thinking and what I would see as its
> potential act of colonization of anthropology and other disciplines.
>
> So the section of Bruces post that interested me is this:
>
> The empathetic tools of design can bring business people, educators, urban
> planners, hospital managers, transportation developerseveryone-- into
> these communities to understand their values and rules, their needs and
> wants.
>
> Thats Design As Margaret Mead, Design As Anthropology. Design is so
> popular today mostly because business sees design as connecting it to the
> consumer populace in a deep, fundamental and honest way. An honest way. If
> you are in the myth-making business, you dont need design. You need a
> great ad agency. But if you are in the authenticity and integrity business
> then you have to think design. If you are in the co-creation business
> todayand youd better be in this age of social networkingthen you have
> to think of design. Indeed, your brand is increasingly shaped and defined
> by network communities, not your ad agency. Brand manager? Forget about
> it. Brand curator maybe.
>
> Then there is Design as Peter Drucker or Design as Management Methodology.
> Design is popular today also because Design Thinkingthe methodology of
> design taken out of the small industrial design context and applied to
> business and social processis spreading fast.
>
> ****
>
> In Marty Neumeiers the Brand Gap, he has an exercise in which if you can
> replace the name of a different company into the logomark or tagline, it
> fails as a mark or tagline:
>
> The empathetic tools of anthropology can bring business people, educators,
> urban planners, hospital managers, transportation developerseveryone--
> into these communities to understand their values and rules, their needs
> and wants.
>
> Tools of empathy fail as the differentiating the brand of professional
> design from that of professional anthropology. Owning to poor
> communication of Anthropologys part, many do not know that tools for
> empathy is the anthropological brand. But in fact, the development,
> refinement, and recreation of tools of empathy has been the reason for
> existence and modus operandi of anthropology for nearly 150 years. So I
> wonder if/why/how professional design is/seeks to colonize/ be
> colonizing--not hybridizing or synthesizing-- professional anthropology?
>
> Colonization?
>
> CAVEAT: Now, understand that I am a completely hybridized
> designer/anthropologist. Ive spent now just as long in my professional
> design habitus as I did in my anthropological training. So the questions I
> pose are not about designer bashing, which would be schizophrenia at this
> point. But the metaphor of colonization opens up possibilities for teasing
> out how future scenarios of professional design and anthropologys
> engagements can play out.
>
> An oversimplified story of Design and Colonization
>
> Once upon a very real time and place, there was a group of people called
> Design. Design lived on an functionally substantive and aesthetically
> beautiful island called Isle de Craft. Design lived happily for a long
> period of time making beautiful and functional artifacts. One day, two
> explorer groups called Digital and Globalization washed upon the shores of
> Isle de Craft. Design was exposed to a whole universe of things it never
> dreamed of. More efficient ways of doing things and more competition for
> its crafts. There was intermarriage of the groups and these Digital Design
> and Global Design and Digital Global Design offspring (Design 2.0?) felt
> uncomfortable with the old ways of Design and felt the Isle de Craft was
> too small for the work they wanted to do. There was a lot of resentment
> among the old Design people and sometimes Design 2.0 were prosecuted. In
> addition, the population boom made the Isle de Craft overcrowded.
>
> So these Design 2.0 and some of the old Design people sought new lands to
> explore who they are and what they could do. The desire of course was to
> find unoccupied lands, so they could build their societies anew, but there
> werent any. Thus, some of the groups landed in the land of Anthropology.
> The chief of Anthropology sent her children Ethnography and
> Anthropometrics to meet the new visitors. The Design 2.0 were weary and
> ill from their travels. Ethnography and Anthropometrics brought them
> healing foods and balm, then introduced them to the rest of the
> Anthropology people. Some said kill them for they bring disease. Others
> said we should take care of them and mate with them; we have something to
> learn from them. The latter group won, but the former group constantly
> eyed the visitors with suspicion.
>
> Design 2.0 got better and began to build their homes and society in the
> land of Anthropology. Some Anthropology people liked the look and feel of
> the new homes and moved in with Design 2.0, sought to learn their ways,
> and see how they could create new things together to invigorate the old
> Anthropology society. Some Design 2.0 people liked the methods and society
> of Anthropology and moved into those villages to learn their ways and see
> how they could create new things together to invigorate Design 2.0. Others
> established trade routes between the Isle of Craft and the land of
> Anthropology, traveling back and forth, sharing ways and understandings.
> For a while, everything seemed prosperous.
>
> Then, there was a global famine that affected the Isle of Craft and the
> Land of Anthropology. Being an island, the Isle of Craft was hit harder.
> Many fled the island and came to the Land of Anthropology. They were also
> weary and ill, but these Design 3.0 people were different. They learned
> how things were done in their new lands, but then went around rebranding
> everything design.
>
> Anthropological research methodologies or even the hybrid ones developed
> by both anthropologist and designers were branded Design Research and
> the origins erased. They kept addressing poor Ethnography as Contextual
> Inquiry, much to her anger and chagrin. The understanding of
> organizational structures and services to support them were rebranded 
> Organizational Design and Service Design. As the famine increased in
> the lands, Design 3.0 declared that they were the only people qualified to
> perform these new things and created new gated cities on the most
> productive lands where only Design 3.0 people could live and work.
>
> This process also began to happen in the Land of Business Administration
> and the Land of Politics.
>
> What happens next, choose your own adventure...
>
> ***********
>
> As a person deeply committed to the hybrid theories, methodologies, and
> practices of Design Anthropology, there is a lot of danger I feel in
> design seeking to claim territory that is already inhabited by others. I
> deeply understand the desire to expand the practices of design from craft
> production, but perhaps the way to think about that process is not in the
> form of Design 3.0, which claims all advances as design and where Design
> as Anthropology surplants and erases the memory of Anthropology or other
> disciplines.  I try to approach it as Anthrodesign, Designanthro, or
> Design+Anthropology. Design should not feel so insecure about its craft
> origins. People need crafts and its a valuable part of construction of
> humanness. It is an important part of making the world tangible and thus
> interactive to people. Anthropologist, beyond archaeologists who do
> perform craft production, should improve the craft of their communication
> and experiential artifacts. New times may require the acquisition of new
> skills, but those skills have a history and intentionality to them, which
> needs to be recognized.
>
> Bruce Nussbaum in the same post talks about how design is hated partly
> because it is misunderstood, but also because of its own hubris. That
> hubris leads professional designers to make statements like, Designers
> have an intuitive understand of what it means to be human. But not being
> aware of how its actions can be read as colonization, Design 3.0 risks the
> insurrection of the natives whose lands and practices they are seeking to
> take as their own. And unlike European contact with the Americas, Design
> 3.0 will find the natives of Anthropology and Business land have more
> respect from the deities of Business, Government, and Society. The land
> grab  for ideas and methods might backfire and the deities punish Design
> 3.0 for its hubris.
>
> There is no Design as Margeret Mead, but there is an Anthrodesign by which
> the skills of professional design and anthropology are developed in
> persons and groups to a complementary balance. Margaret Mead is actually
> very much an anthrodesigner. Her work paid attention to form as it did to
> content. She and Gregory Bateson were some of the early pioneers of using
> visual methods of photography and video to do Anthropology engaged with
> designing new future possibilities for society.
>
> Perhaps that is what the two disciplines should be aiming for.
>
> Dori
>
>