Hi Ken,
I agree its time to close this thread. A few quick thoughts and then I'll go back to writing my fashion history lecture.

Firstly, my fairly standard sociological response to the problem of framing in economic research was actually in reply to a post by David Sless. I didn't intend this as an answer to Jurgen's question. I offered Jurgen what I thought might provide a useful analogy, in terms of an economic enquiry into the value of advertising. (And yes, I have learned my lesson - I will never again suggest something to the list that I haven't read!)

Secondly, I responded to your claim that I was making a harsh, inflammatory, criticism of economics, by trying to explain my position. I don't think I have managed this yet, since you're still casting me as a willful economic ignoramus. I'll have one last try.

In your previous post you said you thought I was using technical terms without understanding what they meant, and that we must work to understand words. Actually, I do know what those terms mean, but that is not the point.

Imagine that I didn't speak English. I would still understand and experience the effects of the hegemony of the English language. I would still recognize that it has a certain global power, that it causes issues such as discrimination and inequality among non-English speakers. Presumably, I would not attribute this power to any inherent quality of the English language itself.  If I wanted to find out how this power emerged, and how it works, I would need to study the history of British colonialism, and the spread of the internet. Naturally my study would be helped if I learned to read and write English. Nevertheless, it could still be done, with the help of translations. I would not expect that learning English would be the prerequisite to my research, even though I might pick up a fair bit along the way.

If economics is taken to be a system of representation, as is English (or any other language), then I am interested in studying how the power of certain economic representations are shaping global practices of design.

Of course, there is another big question about the efficacy of representational thinking as a foundation for researching cultural economic practices such as design, but that is another long story!

Now, back to writing my lecture. Thanks very much for the debate, Ken.

Amanda



On 1/08/11 9:39 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi, Amanda,

This is my final contribution to the thread on "measuring the impact
of design in product development." The thread opened when Jurgen Faust
asked about the specific contribution that design process makes to goods
or services. Despite the importance of the question, the thread has
probably gone as far as it can for now, at least for me.

Some replies raised methodological issues worth teasing out. Not all
replies were aimed at Jurgen's question, though. I addressed one of
the methodological problems that frame and develop a research question:
"Can we answer question [x] to solve problem [y] with this
approach?"

Even though you "... have no inclination to re-invent [your]self as
an economist [to] demonstrate how design contributes to value chains,"
you offered proposals on how to do it.

Offering proposals on how to solve research problems requires
understanding the methods and methodology of the field. This requires
methodological awareness and methodological sensitivity. Methodological
awareness in research involves the ability to understand research
methods, using them effectively to answer questions. This requires:
understanding the reasons for choosing a method, understanding
appropriate methods for examining kinds of questions, and an awareness
of theoretical presuppositions. Adapting methods from an article one has
not read by substituting words in the abstract doesn't work. The
problem is not whether the source article is good or bad in its original
context. The problem is that using methods from an article from another
field without understanding the issues involved is unworkable.

As I wrote the other day, no one serious believes that all economists
follow a single method or adhere to one set of conclusions. This is
clear to anyone who reads articles or books by economists. Even if one
did not take the time to read economics, however, economics is a
behavioral science. Mathematics is a technical tool for most working
economists. The fact that economics uses numbers does not mean that
economics is a branch of mathematics, and it is not axiomatic or logical
in the same way. It follows from an understanding of the behavioral and
social sciences that not all economists follow a single method or adhere
to one set of conclusions.

There remains a difference between economic representations and the
attempt to designers to deploy economic arguments.

If you're curious to see economic representations, you'll find them
in many fields. My favorite representation of the economy is the MONIAC,
the hydraulic analog computer invented by New Zealand economist Bill
Phillips. He built the first of these at the London School of Economics
in the late 1940s. You can see one of the Phillips machines in
Wellington at the Reserve Bank Museum in Wellington.

http://nzier.org.nz/about-nzier/moniac-machine

History is filled with intriguing economic representations. Economists
are responsible for some of them - if you'd like to get a sense of
the differences among the way economists conceive economics, I'd
suggest reading Mark Blaug's excellent books, Great Economists Before
Keynes and Great Economists Since Keynes.

It may be that there are useful representations of economics emerging
among the designers and design fields you are examining. To know this,
you'd have to pay some attention to economics. You don't have to
reinvent yourself as an economist, but you do need to learn enough to
understand the issues.

With this, I'm going to go silent for a while. Thanks for an
interesting debate.

Yours,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia