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.