Dear Teena (and Ken and others),
Having read some of these posts for awhile now, as a anthropologist who
has the good fortune to work with and learn from industrial designers,
I must say first how much I've enjoyed these excellent threads of
discussion.
I must second Ken's objection to the idea that all writing is
necessarily a fiction [of a kind]; I agree that it always subject to
bias and that it is not 'truth' in the perfect sense. As Ken noted
earlier (and I am paraphrasing heavily here) the risk is falling into
the trap of all voices being equal and the loss of the responsibility
to those we report on.
The reason I want to say something is to recount what a disaster this
extreme line of post-modern thinking was in anthropology - it created
such a malaise within the discipline that many students who went
through the programs of study (such as myself) in the early 1990s found
themselves wondering if they could actually hope to do anything.
Naturally, this is not true - you can in fact say things about others
and often it does hit close to the mark, particularly if you work with
them (aka collaborative ethnography).
While I am quite sure this is not what Teena intends, I would like to
put out the same caution - as designers increasingly draw people into
the research that they do (via participatory design research etc) the
same kinds of worries will pop up. Anthropology had to swing one way
on the pendulum of extreme postmodernism and is coming back to a
steadier understanding (in my opinion).
Of course, one of the reasons, again to my eyes, for design perhaps not
following the same path is because of its grouding in the product/end
result. I have found that that focus tends to keep things more on the
even keel of observation/analysis. As theoretical debates emerge,
however, the need to grapple with post-structuralist and post-modern
issues becomes important - which is why this discussion has been such a
great thing to see.
Thank you,
Paul Thibaudeau
Adjunct Research Professor,
Department of Sociology/Anthropology and School of Industrial Design,
Carleton University
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