Dear all,



Looking at the progression of this debate, I think I need to elaborate on
my confusion (a confusion that sometimes turns into borderline frustration).



Boundary crossings are healthy. I cross boundaries in my academic life all
the time. I have a background in industrial design yet I got my PhD from a
very mainstream, traditional, quant/computation heavy sociology department.
My advisor, on the other hand, is a theoretician and an STS/environmental
sociology scholar, and I try to publish in three distinct areas with
profoundly different epistemic cultures and disciplinary standards- and I
must I admit that I fail miserably most of the time. My own boundary
crossings, I think, give me a slightly different (not necessarily better)
vantage point to look at design and designers.



I think what confuses, and sometimes frustrates me is not the boundary
expansion or crossing, but the way in which the act of crossing is carried
out. I read and review a lot of well-meaning stuff from well-meaning
designers, proposing grandiose projects to instill social change. But more
often than not, these proposals are, for lack of a better word, extremely
naïve. I do not think that reducing complex social problems into design
problems is a productive way to move forward, chiefly because social
problems are, well, social problems. They are not design problems.



Let me give you a couple examples to illustrate the point. I had to review
a proposal in which designers were aiming to design and manufacture
portable basketball courts to reduce crime rate among the youth in a very
improvised neighborhood. There was no clue in that proposal that showed a
understanding of the structural causes behind crime and poverty in
inner-cities or in that particular neighborhood. There is burgeoning and
empirically strong criminology/sociology literature on these issues to
which that proposal did not even mildly touch.



I keep reading/reviewing articles that want to use design, in one way or
another as a social movement. Social movements literature is one of most
active sub-fields of political sociology, and this area is very far from
being a purely theoretical enterprise. In other words, the connections
between theory and empirical verification is extremely strong in this
sub-field, perhaps much more stronger than many other sub-fields of
political sociology. Yet, I have not seen a single (I hope I am wrong)
design-for-social-change article that reflects a thorough understanding of
this literature.



I am NOT SAYING (so please do not crucify me), that design cannot be a tool
for social change. On the contrary, design can and should play very
important roles in this area. And there are a lot of good examples as well.
But again, reducing complex social issues to design issues (or problems) is
not a healthy way to go forward, at least for me. This is not the right way
to push the boundary.



Social scientist are (in)famous for their inaction. They spend so much time
trying to understand things that when they finally make their mind to act
that “thing” is no longer there. Designers, on the other hand, typically
act (and act a lot), but without a pause to understand (OK, I grossly
exaggerated this time, but I hope you get my point). I do think we need to
find a healthy middle ground between inaction and too much action. But that
middle ground, I think, will keep being the locus of my ongoing confusion.



Warm wishes,



ali


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