It may be useful to think of "design" as a "mobilizing metaphor" -
here I borrow from Shore and Wright's book, Anthropology of Policy and
their discussion of language in governance and power. "Mobilizing
metaphors become the centre of a cluster of keywords whose meaning
extend and shift while previous associations with other words are
dropped. Their mobilizing effect lies in their capacity to connect
with, and appropriate, the positive meanings and legitimacy derived
from other key symbols..." (p.20)
So the idea of design draws from a history of changing meanings (many
of which come from outside the professions that lay official claim to
the idea), and they'll continue to change, even though certain
clusters of meaning will gain dominance and acceptance (at least
momentarily!). Design currently is associated with positive elements
of commerce (those that generally invoke a positive valence on
"progress"), like "innovation", "creativity", "services", "improving
the human condition" , "development", "planning", "production",
"engineering", "insight", "thoughtful", "synthesis", "realization",
"wicked problems" (which presumably in their best case produce wicked
solutions, or more wicked problems, or at least "learning"),
"adaptive", "functional", "inter_multi_trans_meta_and so on", and this
list is already annoyingly long for an email, but painfully short of
being an adequate list.
I think Bourdieu's "field of practice" and Foucault's "discourses" are
very appropriate here. It is the "politics of discursive
practices" (Grillo), and who has the power to define, that becomes
most important. The notion of the "democratization of design" also
becomes interesting here. Does the definition accepted by the masses
bear upon the "real" definition of design? Ultimately, perhaps, the
power of the idea of design rests in it's ability to escape
definition. Rather, it's mission is to coalesce elements of many
different positive notions or ideas, or discourses, into a technology
of organization and change. Shore and Wright speak of "discourses as
configurations of ideas which provide the threads from which
ideologies are woven". So then what are the ideologies being woven by
or through the idea of design?
Juris Milestone
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