Design and Social Innovation at the Margins: Finding and Making Cultures of Plurality

Abstract

Design has become a global activity dominated by one set of cultural interests to produce a consistency of practice. This essay uses an experience of design for social innovation in northern Finland, inspired by land and place, to speculate upon the dimensions across which plurality in designing could be embraced in an increasingly globalized world. Informed by discussions while helping to run the Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific events of 2016, it uses Kasulis’ analysis of cultural orientation and his insight that a key difference underpinning cultures is how people may orientate towards intimacy and integrity. It then explores what a form of intimate design might look like. In doing so, it uses Ingold’s study of North-ness to challenge totalizing narratives of progress and explore what a marginal view can offer to address site-specific needs and dispense with design orthodoxies.

Keywords:

• land
• place
• margins
• social innovation
• plurality
• design
• intimacy
• culture
• silence

Acknowledgments

With thanks to fellow traveler David Carlin and to Soile Veijola, our generous host. Also to Yoko Akama, who introduced the three of us and, before that, introduced Kasulis, then provided insightful reviewing for this write-up; the AHRC for funding the Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific network; and TEKES for supporting SLOWLAB 2, part of the HAML project: Hitaan ajattelun matkustavat laboratoriot/Travelling Laboratories of Slow Thinking.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Yoko and I also nod towards this in contrasting care-based interdependencies and rights-based obligations in Light and Akama (forthcoming).

2 This intimacy model is not to be confused with how Suchman (2002, 96) discusses detached intimacy in her critique of design from nowhere: “the discourse of design from nowhere obscures responsibility for the relations of technology production and use, detached intimacy effectively yields up responsibility to the relations of employment.”

3 Funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council to support two researchers with one foot in the Asia-Pacific region but enough connection to Europe to secure this funding; another example of hybridity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann Light

Ann Light is Professor of Design and Creative Technology at the University of Sussex, UK, and Professor of Interaction Design, Social Change, and Sustainability at Malmö University, Sweden. Her work addresses themes of social and ecological justice; the co-making of futures and the politics of design. She has specialized in participatory practice and the social impact of technology, bringing a background in arts, humanities, AI, and human–computer interaction to bear on innovation in social process, culture, and wellbeing. She is currently investigating how creative practices can promote transformations to sustainability. [email protected]