Special Issue: Embracing Plurality in Designing Social Innovation Practices

Keywords:

• design
• social innovation
• asia-pacific
• plurality
• politics

Introduction

This Special Issue (SI) for Design and Culture is an outcome of many conversations over several years, catalyzed by a series of international symposia on Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific (DESIAP), which the editors (Yoko Akama and Joyce Yee) co-facilitated in Singapore in 2015, Bangkok in 2016, and Malaysia in 2017. The symposia series initially began with our mutual curiosity about what kinds of “design” and “social innovation” projects are undertaken in the Asia-Pacific region and by whom, and a desire to create a platform for capacity-building and knowledge-sharing among those tackling systemic and complex challenges with their local communities. The symposia and workshops were funded by our respective universities’ (RMIT and Northumbria) internal grants and Arts and Humanities Research Council UK network funding, together with generous local support by hosting organizations.¹ These events gathered together academics and practitioners initiating change in Australia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The DESIAP event in Bangkok in 2016 also brought together leading design and social change researchers from Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, whose work is guided by reflexive, feminist, and participatory practices.

The UK authors included here, Ann Light and Rachel Clarke, were central in formulating this SI through dialog with their work and areas of expertise. DESIAP participants share diversity in heritage, upbringing, and intercultural experiences that informed their current practices. From these discussions, we have learned that heterogeneous design practices have always been active under other names, continually constituted by various blends of cultures, relationships, materials, histories, philosophies, and world views to become relevant to certain localities and situations. The theme of this SI, embracing plurality, is one way to continue exploring our concern, initially presented at a design conference in Hong Kong² (Akama and Yee 2016, 2), that the international design research community must be careful when design from industrial and modernist roots in Europe becomes dominant in the field of Design for Social Innovation (e.g. Brown and Wyatt 2010; Manzini 2015; Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan 2010). We also argue that this field is “in need of effort and commitment to sharpen thinking to embrace difference and accommodate heterogeneity as its central condition” (Akama and Yee 2016, 2). Our politics develop in response to the observation by economists and political journalists that the Asia-Pacific region is emerging as a global leader, projected to outpace economies in Europe and the US. So, as design – a field, theory, and practice that is already Euro–US centric (Escobar 2017, 2018) – has shown itself to accompany and accelerate this economic growth, we have become concerned with how it might inadvertently replace local, cultural, and heterogeneous practices in this region with dominant paradigms of design, ultimately replicating and entrenching colonial patterns (Akama and Yee 2016).

The focus on Asia-Pacific is both personal and political for us, the co-founders of DESIAP. Yoko Akama was born in Japan, educated in the UK, and works in Australia. Joyce Yee is of Chinese descent, grew up in post-independence Malaysia, and lives in the UK. While the Asia-Pacific region is indeed a geographical category, this place is much more to us than a location. Our xin or kokoro (心) – “mind-heart-body-soul” elements, considered inseparable in Chinese and Japanese – is always and simultaneously in two locations (Japan and Australia for Yoko and Malaysia and the UK for Joyce), and this intercultural condition is embodied. Just as we are multi-located, shuttling between various countries in this region, we also recognize that ideas, generally, have been exchanged globally for centuries through trade, conflict, migration, and, more violently, through colonialism and globalization. The personal and political blur in this instance; our Japanese and Chinese ancestries involve us in such movements, and world histories and family stories have taught us to learn from the wise and painful experiences of our elders.

Such teachings mean that inter-personal relationships became significant to our partnerships. Instead of constructing relations between discrete individuals that emphasize rational, external, and procedural ways of forming research agreements, our collaborations with DESIAP participants were initiated and forged by sharing meals and stories together. In other words, we felt our ways of being and becoming-with, based on familiarity of companionship as a community of knowers, rather than through discussions alone to define and align outcomes. This means we aimed to avoid predefining what “design” and “social innovation” are (hence the scare quotes), to create a common basis for our gathering and enable recognition and room for emerging practices and understandings.

This vigilance for predefining “design” and “social innovation” is an ethical and political act in our context. So, while we owe credit to prominent, aforementioned scholars for carving out Design for Social Innovation as a recognized field of study and practice (hence its capitalization), we are also compelled to call out consequences when design that originated from industrial growth is taken as a norm to be spread globally as Design for Social Innovation. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,³ often associated with social innovation, are concerning when unchecked in design, because they can help to further entrench colonization. Many scholars have already questioned who actually benefits from funding (Kenny 2013; Khieng and Dahles 2014) and the assumed transferability of standards and models from the Global North to the South (Rist 2007). We, as a community of design researchers, must point to the need, as the Design for Social Innovation field matures, to challenge singular narratives or centralizing interests. This means we have an obligation to be mindful of our own participation in dominance and displacement. This unintended displacement can happen when the power and penetration of a body of work from one region in the world, when consistently and regularly referenced, reinforces authority and universality through a perpetual circular frame that smothers heterogeneity.

We interrogate what “design” and “social innovation” mean and our attunement to the heightened sensitivities of situated, relational, and dynamic cultural conditions. We impose a reflexive vigilance when considering why, when, and where interventions might or might not be appropriate, and an ethical questioning of what or who is privileged or excluded. Such critiques are also evident in the articles in this SI by Light, as well as Clarke and Burkett. The contribution by Akama, Hagen, and Whaanga-Schollum also explores these concerns, using a framing of “co-design” based upon Māori, Aboriginal, and Japanese world views, which interprets what “social innovation” becomes when constituted by a particular blend of place, people, culture, histories, philosophies, and ways of being.

Upon establishing DESIAP in 2015, we discovered that we were not alone in our politics or trajectories. In fact, our work coincided and resonated with many other scholars, practitioners, and activists working in the fields of design. Many who share these convictions are featured in Design and Culture’s recent SI that focused on efforts to decolonize design (Schultz et al. 2018), in Autonomía (Botero et al. 2018), and the Ngā Aho Māori design network that has been spearheading Māori-led self-determining design initiatives.⁴ Together, this work powerfully re-orients design studies and moves the focus away from coloniality, modernity, globalizing, and centralizing trends, and instead promotes a plurality of practices and discourses so that we may shift attention to the ontological, situated, relational, geopolitical, temporal, and spiritual dimensions of design. We join forces and build on the inspiring work of such peers to bring “designs with other names” (Calderón and Gutiérrez 2017, 1) into focus to embrace pluralities.

Themes in Design and Social Innovation

The Asia-Pacific region continues to live with the legacies of colonialism, and the many practitioners and researchers who participated in DESIAP events demonstrated approaches that are critical, resilient, and innovative within this historical context. The wisdom and richness of these presentations point to insights beyond what can be shared in this SI alone. During the DESIAP Bangkok 2016 workshop, we identified significant and emerging threads in the presentations and discussions.⁵ These themes provided useful footholds from which we were able to broaden and deepen our understanding of what “design” and “social innovation” could be when considered from a more critical and nuanced stance. The participants were invited to form academic–practitioner teams to develop articles by taking each theme as a starting point and elaborating through case studies and personal reflections, often drawing on (and sometimes challenging) theoretical concepts to help make sense of the experiences encountered. This SI is an outcome of responses to this invitation. Each of the themes below are elaborated further by the authors of surface issues, dimensions, conditions, and questions when embracing pluralities of designing social innovation practices.

Cultural Sensitivity

Our conversations and reflections through DESIAP have highlighted the political need for cultural sensitivity as an ontological and methodological necessity for Design for Social Innovation, and an exploration of theory that helps us understand and discuss the field in more robust ways. Learning from published literature on this subject, it is clear that assumptions of a “generic” user or “neutral” designer is just as problematic as seeing groups of people identified by a taxonomized cultural background based purely on racial, geographical, or nationalized categories (Bardzell 2010). These insights have similarly shaped discourses in postcolonial human–computer interaction that

speak at once to the highly local and contingent practices that we see at work in different specific sites of technology design and use, while at the same time recognizing the ways that those localisms are conditioned and embedded within global and historical flows of material, people, capital, knowledge and technology. (Irani et al. 2010, 1317)

When designers step into conditions and circumstances with the aim to initiate social change, they can disrupt existing practices, reconfigure local power dynamics, and shift social relations. This means designers and designing are implicated in transforming cultural practices, often unknowingly and unquestioningly. How might those who intervene – the various stakeholders, including those who perpetuate existing practices as well as those from the “local community” – develop awareness and the capacity to work with the cultural logics already in process? Two papers included in this issue speak compellingly to this question. First, Ann Light troubles the totalizing notion of the “West” by building on Tim Ingold’s notion of “North-ness” (Ingold 2010). This is a powerful contribution precisely because the author interrogates her positionality through North-ness without centering the geopolitical North. Light’s highly reflexive narrative shares her encounters in Arctic Finland to invoke a plurality based in physical and discursive marginality, in which geographical factors complement other forms of cultural theory and challenge orthodoxies of design practice. Her gentle critique of design’s homogeneity through her experience of being-with-place calls for a “blend of particularity and multiplicity in need of careful encounters” (29) as a way to design capacities of sensitization, rather than to solve a problem.

In contrast but equally candid is the paper by Joon Sang Baek, Soyoung Kim, and Taiei Harimoto, in which they share what they have learned as participants in cross-cultural design teams in Myanmar and South Korea. Their collaboration involved the design of a precision farming tool but also revealed misaligned social agendas: the Myanmar team intended to alleviate poverty while the South Korean team aimed for sustainable farming models. Foregrounding this difference in socioeconomic and technological contexts highlighted the divergence in values, approaches, and expected outcomes, leading them to understand the deeper and multi-layered dimensions of culture often hidden from view. We also learn about the shortcomings of user-centered design when brought to social innovation, as it can prioritize behavioral and structural levels of culture. The authors propose the iceberg model as a useful metaphor to indicate the hidden body of culture and assumptions, a “large mass […] existing underneath the surface visibility” (42), as a way to build designers’ awareness of its presence.

Relationships

Relationships are the prerequisite and outcome of social innovations. Yet, despite their obvious importance, a nuanced understanding is still emerging in Design for Social Innovation. Early studies have focused on interpersonal relationships as a new service model (Cipolla and Manzini 2009), as a way to create value through resources and exchanges (Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan 2010), or as a way to highlight different sociotechnical interventions required to enable social interactions (Baek and Cho 2012). Discussions during DESIAP Bangkok also revealed how social interactions are highly contingent and dynamic, which makes it difficult to understand how they form, develop, and degenerate. Because relationalities cannot be controlled or manufactured, they are frequently excluded from the scope of design, and not well-recognized as contributions to social innovation (see Yee et al. 2017). Building upon such discussions, a participant in DESIAP Bangkok and doctoral researcher, Cyril Tjajha, examined the influence of social hierarchy in Thailand that was integral to project outcomes (Tjahja and Yee 2018). From his work, we see how hierarchy, rather than being identified as problematic or needing to be flattened, is regarded as a type of relationship that requires people to attend subtly and fluidly to situational social conditions.

In this SI, relationships are a rich vein that runs throughout. Yoko Akama, Penny Hagen, and Desna Whaanga-Schollum draw on their experiences of working with Indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand to highlight the importance of respectful, reciprocal, and relational approaches to co-designing social innovation. Given the universal way in which design is often taught and practiced, they recognize that a heightened vigilance is needed to address educational and epistemological bias before embarking on co-design projects grounded in nurturing respectful and reciprocal relationships. This process helped reveal the multi-layered sites of power, knowledge, practices, cultural values, and precarious asymmetries that exist in co-design collaborations. Their personal accounts illustrate the importance of continual reflexivity in evaluating their world views and professional training in design.

Risk, Precariousness, and Uncertainty

Most change-making initiatives are accompanied by uncertain, turbulent, and precarious contexts, yet the social innovation language of risk that proliferates suggests practices of sharing risk, reducing risks, and managing risk while aiming for reasonable reliable risk (Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan 2010). This indicates a mindset, framed by histories of modernity and social order, that privileges rational and objective views of phenomena that can be controlled (Lupton 1999). The article by Rachel Clarke and Ingrid Burkett explores how multiple intersecting risks associated with social change might be anticipated and negotiated when tackling place-based disadvantage and youth unemployment in Melbourne, Australia. They draw on Judith Butler’s (2009) ethical and philosophical perspectives on precarity to move away from terminology associated with managing risks. This has enabled them to understand “what is considered worth saving or protecting” (91) by services delivered by government and the third sector and how this surfaces other forms of exclusion and aspects of potential loss. Using a case study from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), they persuasively argue for the need to explore multiple and intersecting issues to approach situated sociopolitical and economic challenges as an ethical challenge to Design for Social Innovation. In doing so, they highlight the importance of negotiating risk in relation to precarity within Design for Social Innovation; a task requiring greater attention to difference and agency through identifying who is able to take and share risks and what these risks can involve.

Impact

Just as design studies are questioning the dominance of a market-focused paradigm, social innovation practices are similarly critiquing the industrial and technological origins of innovation. Yet, epistemological and methodological challenges to understanding social impact are hamstrung by the way economic outcomes are still prioritized over social ones, reflected in the dominant use of accounting practices in current measurement and evaluation approaches (Antadze and Westley 2012). Additionally, evaluating impact becomes ethically problematic when design is used to deliver predetermined social impacts which may not necessarily benefit all stakeholders. Extending our aim to challenge singular narratives and centralizing interests, it is important to acknowledge and give legitimacy to different kinds of impact beyond what has been predefined by funders.

At DESIAP Kuala Lumpur 2017 (Akama et al. 2019), we explored different evaluative practices and the importance of extending and challenging the concept of “impact.” How can we appropriate the discourse of evaluation in the service of social impact? How do we ensure evaluation serves all stakeholders? How do we find better ways to track, evidence, and communicate social impact? These questions are addressed in the contribution by Joyce Yee, Bas Raijmakers, and Fumiko Ichikawa. In their article, they explore the impact of transformative learning in contributing to social change in social innovation initiatives as a way to reorient the field’s current focus and omissions. Using examples and reflections of projects located in Japan, the UK, and Europe, their paper builds on transformative learning theory (Johnson-Bailey 2012; Ntseane 2011, 2012), an established adult learning theory, to analyze and propose evolving theories of learning, transformation, and social impact.

Embracing Pluralities

While these papers have a specific theme as a starting point, they often touch on and mutually intersect with other themes that we may not have made explicit, illustrating how plurality is broad and interwoven in “design” and “social innovation.” This “bleeding” of salient themes and issues may frustrate readers who are conditioned to seek singular definitions of Design for Social Innovation, but, as Light remarks, “staying marginal and/by resisting fixity not only recognizes the need for plurality, it creates a culture where plurality is self-generating […] to allow [endlessly] different potential to emerge” (31). This SI signals the rich and broad work ahead in embracing plurality of ethics, values, practices, consciousness, and world views. This echoes Escobar’s (2018, 152) description of transitions and emergence in social change “that takes place on the basis of a multiplicity of local actions that […] appears to an observer to be a new structure or integrated whole […] without the need for any central planning or intelligence guiding the process.” We would hope that the papers in this SI serve as starting points for other researchers and practitioners to expand and bring forth deeper and more critical understandings of plurality in designing social innovation practices.

Lastly, this collection would not have been possible without the invaluable contributions from the following people throughout the process. We would firstly like to thank all the hosts, supporters, sponsors, and participants of the DESIAP events who have helped nurture rewarding relationships, through which we were able to mutually shape and sharpen our thinking around the themes. We are also grateful for Elizabeth Guffey and Maggie Taft, for the long service they provided as Design and Culture’s outgoing editors and for providing us guidance in the initial stages of this SI, and the incoming editors Jilly Traganou, Barbara Adams, Mahmoud Keshavarz, and Rachel Smith in working with us during the later stages to bring this SI to fruition. And, finally, the reviewers we name alphabetically below were invaluable in providing critical and constructive feedback to help develop the papers. They contributed to the growing list of critical voices in an expanding and rich field of design and social innovation practices.

Our heartfelt thanks to the Special Issue reviewers listed below in alphabetical order:

• Mersha Aftab (Northumbria University)

• Shana Agid (Parsons School of Design)

• Mariana Amatullo (Parsons School of Design)

• Lilly Irani (University of California)

• Andrew Morrison (Oslo School of Architecture and Design)

• Lesley Ann Noel (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford)

• Tristan Schultz (Griffith University)

• Dagny Stuedahl (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

• Cameron Tonkinwise (University of Technology Sydney)

• Laurene Vaughan (RMIT University)

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yoko Akama

Yoko Akama is an Associate Professor in the School of Design at RMIT University. Her design practice is informed by Japanese philosophy of between-ness and mindfulness, to consider how and what futures can be created together. She has won several awards for her research with communities to strengthen their adaptive capacity for disaster resilience in Australia. Her current work contributes to the efforts of Indigenous Nations to enact self-determination and governance. Together with Joyce Yee, she co-founded and co-leads the Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific (DESIAP) network. [email protected]

Joyce Yee

Joyce Yee is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University Design School, UK. Joyce’s research focuses on the role, value, and impact of design in organizational contexts. Specifically, she is interested in the ways design is used to support, enable, and drive change through the creation of culturally specific innovative practices in organizations. She is the co-founder of the Design for Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific network (DESIAP) with Yoko Akama. She was also instrumental in setting up the biennial conference series Research through Design (RTD) with Jayne Wallace, as an experimental platform for disseminating practice-based design research. [email protected]

Notes

1 Local hosts include: Opportunity Lab at Singapore University of Technology and Design, National Design Centre, DesignSingapore Council for DESIAP 2015; Thailand Creative and Design Center for DESIAP 2016; Rekanegara, Majlis Rekabentuk Malaysia (Malaysia Design Council) for DESIAP 2017.

2 Cumulus Hong Kong: Open Design for E-very-thing, held in 2016.

3 Learn more about the UN's Sustainable Development Goals at https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

4 Learn more about Ngā Aho at http://www.ngaaho.maori.nz

5 For more information on the participants of DESIAP Bangkok 2016 and their presentations, visit http://desiap.org/desiap-research-network-symposium-workshop-2016/. Videos of the presentation can be accessed at https://vimeo.com/channels/desiap2016