Sensuous futures: re-thinking the concept of trust in design anthropology

ABSTRACT

This article sets an agenda for and outlines a sensuous futures scholarship. Its aim is to suggest a starting point for this practice and to invite scholars and researchers to engage in its advancement. By way of example, I examine how the anticipatory concept of trust can be re-worked theoretically and ethnographically through a sensuous approach to scholarship articulated through design anthropology and futures anthropology. I thus argue for a sensuous scholarship that participates in both academic debate and in designing for ethical futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Sensuous scholarship
• sensory ethnography
• design anthropology
• futures anthropology
• trust

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Pink

Sarah Pink is Professor and Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Australia. She is known for her methodological work in Design Anthropology, and her innovations in ethnographic practice. Her recent books include Doing Visual Ethnography (4th edition 2021) and the collaborative co-authored works, Imagining Personal Data (2019), Atmospheres and the Experiential World (2018) and Uncertainty and Possibility (2018).