dear francois,
i beg to disagree with you on your assessment of bruno latour's reassembling the social.
he describes the world as networks of agents. this reads good, but if you go into it, he fails to distinguish between human agency and physical forces, reducing everything to the latter. to me designers are agents who develop something that with the help of others can change the artificial world in which we live. as agents, designers have to argue for their proposals and are held accountable for the consequences of what they set in motion. they are not mechanisms responding to forces that surrounds them. explanations of design in these terms are demeaning.
his example of a policeman being replaces by a speed bump in the road is telling. true, a city may well consider the savings of salaries for policemen by building speed bump in the road. they may well be functionally equivalent but relate quite differently to a driver. a speed bump can't give tickets and cannot be argued with in case of an ambulance having to speed to a hospital.
the one who reassembles the social is not a designer, rather it is he who takes a god's eye view of the social world. while taking for grated the ability to explain how humans and physical artifacts connect with each other, he does not grant those he describes the ability to act on their understanding or ability to explain what they are doing. He does not see or is unwilling to acknowledge that he assumes to possess human abilities he explicitly considers meaningless when describing networks of what he calls agents. -- an extremely exceptionalist position.
much before i ever heard of actor network theory, in the 1980s, i started develop the conception of stakeholder networks. to me stakeholders are able to articulate the interest they have in something, for example in a design, are knowledgeable about their relationship with it, and command resources they can spent in support or opposition to it. networks are not described by an outside observer like latour, but they form as stakeholders see the benefits of networking. they organize themselves. i was suggesting that designers are stakeholders in their own projects and may well consider themselves as participants in stakeholders networks, promoting their ideas (of fail miserably). i consider stakeholder networks as metaphorically assembling, or contributing to the realization of a design. stakeholders are aware of their role in the networks they participate in. latour's agents are not. they do not have the capacity of organizing themselves (have no self), they are assembled in bruno latour's explanations.
in my opinion, designers have to display some humbleness, learn to listen to very different voices, and be prepared to make compromises or negotiate with clients. the picture that latour paints does not include any of these human/social abilities
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Francois Nsenga
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 4:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Design Facilitation for participatory work
Dear Jennifer
On "design facilitation in participatory research", as I did, you'll learn a lot following Bruno Latour in his return to the etymological concept of the term "thing" in nordic languages. His "Reassembling the Social"
inspired me the metaphor of a designer (ought to be) acting like a Judge presiding over an Assembly ("ding") of all (both humans and material and immaterial non-humans) concerned, 'facilitating' all these to 'research'
and resolve issues of their common concern, whatever this may be at a specific time.
This view tells us clearly who the "designer" ought to be as an 'institutionalized' professional, and what therefore would it be required of her/him in society ("ding").
Hope this is helpful in your search, best wishes!
Francois
Kigali, Rwanda
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