This chapter section reviewed relevant literature in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the notion of heritage, craft and globalisation and its interdependent relationships. It generated a theoretical underpinning as to how the present study should be oriented and constructed within its three distinctive, yet related disciplines. Initially, the chapter section found a lack of consensus around the concept of heritage, and by analysing the varied definitions and their context of use suggested a constructionist approach to heritage. By reviewing the critical debates on heritage and craft as an intangible cultural heritage, as well as how globalisation works at different levels within these domains, the study argues the need for a comparative study within an international context. This is to facilitate an understanding of the local-global, East-West distinctions and relationships of heritage within contemporary creative engagements. The chapter also reviewed recent evidence to identify a methodological gap in the literature, and proposes that knowledge might be added by using participatory approaches to heritage management in this present study. This approach enables the voices of different stakeholders to be heard, and suggests tools, methods and techniques for community engagements in the research of heritage practices.
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The available few examples suggest participatory approaches to heritage management within anthropology and museology contexts (Alivizatou 2012 and Denes 2012). Thus a gap in the literature exists considering interdisciplinary use of participatory methods for heritage studies and the applicability of those for craft practices within the domains of creative and heritage disciplines, including design.
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Participatory approaches to craft and design interventions
Section C)
2.13 Participatory approaches in design studies
In the past five to six decades, numerous approaches to design have been developed in order to engage with everyday practices meaningfully and emotionally (Sanders and Stappers 2008, Mattelmäki et al. 2014). The trajectory of thinking evolved from participatory design to user-centred designing and then on to co-creational design activities (Sanders and Stappers 2008). What started off as a means of increasing decision making to achieve workplace democracy was then coupled with technological mediations to include people, processes, environments, businesses and social institutions (Robertson and Simonson 2013). Those practices challenged the 20th century design theories and practices that were governed by industrial production at the time (Manzini 2016). Bannon and Ehn go as far as back to the Bauhuas and other modern design movements to imply the use of early particpatory designing based on collaboration and interdiscplinarity, even though these were at times being critcised for initiating “undemocratic professional elitism” favouring “well-crafted functionalist modern designs for mass consumption” (Bannon and Ehn 2013, p38-39). Bannon and Ehn (2013, p39), citing Thrift (2006) argued about the ambvialence in using such methods when participatory design has become “a latest fashion in a further modern, market-driven, commodification process” leaving us to question whether such methdologies are still displaying coloniality and modernity of design in their approaches (Tlostanova 2017, p59).
The following table reviews different particpatory approaches commonly found in literature:
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Table 2: Participatory approaches commonly found in literature
The approach Definition/description Focus
Participatory design “a process of investigating, understanding, reflecting upon, establishing, developing, and supporting mutual learning between multiple participants in collective ‘reflection-in-action’. The
participants typically undertake the two principal roles of users and designers where the designers strive to learn the realities of user’s situation while the users strive to articulate their desired aims and learn appropriate technological means to obtain them.” (Robertson and Simonson 2013, p2)
Emphasis is on participation. User as participant (Sanders and Stappers 2008)
User Centred Designing
“One (re-)interpretation of what User-Centred Design’s aim is…to explore combinations of ‘definition of use through design’ and ‘definition of use through use’ within the design process…and where the two typically are done by different groups of people representing different domains of expertise (typically people representing the design domain and the domain of intended use) (Redström 2008, p414)
User as subject (Sanders and Stappers 2008), Focus is given to ‘use’ rather than to ‘design’. (Bannon and Ehn 2013) People’s need and their interaction with specific objects are given focus, instead of giving attention to product form and appearance (Willis 2004)
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Co-creation “…refer to any act of collective creativity, i.e. creativity that is shared by two or more people. Co-creation is a very broad term with
applications ranging from the physical to the metaphysical and from the material to the spiritual, as can be seen by the output of search engines.” (Sanders and Stappers 2008, p6)
Co-realisation, co-construction and learning
through sharing with the idea of creativity at heart.
Empathic design (Leonard and Rayport 1997, Mattelmäki et al. 2014)
“Empathic design has its roots in design practice. It is interpretive but, in contrast to ethnographic research, focuses on everyday life
experiences, and on individual desires, moods, and emotions in human activities, turning such experiences and emotions into inspirations.” (Mattelmäki et al. 2014, p67)
An interpretive approach where empathic design methods seen as a way of improving designer’s abilities. It becomes a design attitude to develop sensitivity towards people while collaborating with them.
Emerging and dialogic design for social innovation (Manzini 2016)
“Emerging design is a way of interpreting design and designing that is not mainstream, but that is expanding and, for all intents and
purposes, will be the design of the twenty-first century…[where dialogic approach is] in which the various interlocutors, design experts included, interact as they bring their own ideas and define and accept their own responsibilities…actors are willing and able to listen to each other, to change their minds, and to converge toward a
common view; in this way, some practical outcomes can be
Breaks the power structures of expert mindsets. Focuses on social democratic goals and combines it with design.
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collaboratively obtained.” (Manzini 2016, p 52-56) Transition design
(Irwin et al. 2015)
“1) Uses living systems theory as an approach to
understanding/addressing wicked problems; (2) Designs solutions that protect and restore both social and natural ecosystems; (3) Sees
everyday life/lifestyles as the most fundamental context for design; (4) Advocates place-based, globally networked solutions; (5) Designs solutions for varying horizons of time and multiple levels of scale; (6) Links existing solutions so that they become steps in a larger
transition vision; (7) Amplifies emergent, grassroots solutions; (8) Bases solutions on maximising satisfiers for the widest range of needs; (9) Sees the designer’s own mindset/posture as an essential component of the design process; (10) Calls for the reintegration and re contextualization of diverse transdisciplinary knowledge.” (Irwin et al. 2015, p 3-4)
Acknowledges integrating social and natural
systems for sustainable futures, dynamic in terms of time scale, develop need basis designs based on identifying potentials and seeking collaborative opportunities.
Focuses on ontological aspect of design and relations of design politics.
Socially responsive design (Thorpe and Gamman 2011)
“Explore [the] different role for designers in pursuit of the
achievement of societal goals than their account posits; one that does not locate the designer solely as a facilitator but rather as a co-actor within a co-design process–sometimes leading as an expert and sometimes not. We consider this pluralism and adaptability of the
Acknowledges multiple actors and varied design agendas in delivering design for social change and sustainability. Suggests mindful applications of design strategies for designers.
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designer’s role to be crucial and one of responsivity rather than responsibility, which is why we call this practice socially responsive design.” (Thorpe and Gamman 2011)
Design anthropology. Gunn 2012, Gunn, 2013, Clarke, 2011a)
A field that combines anthropology and design studies where
“Practitioners of Design Anthropology follow dynamic situations and social relations and are concerned with how people receive, create, and transform their environments through their everyday activities. This view challenges the idea that design and innovation only refer to generation of new things as being central to processes of social and cultural change... [which becomes ] distinct ways of knowing and doing” (Gunn 2013, p xiii)
Transdisciplinary field, promotes holistic view, Focuses on processes and possibilities, accounts to temporality, associates between design and
everyday life. Open for new approaches and methodological developments with consequences for knowledge production and is suitable for social, cultural and environmental concerns.
What is apparent in these approaches is the changing landscape of design moving away from individual design practice to making sense of the future with its co-creators (Sanders and Stappers 2014). This transformation changed ‘modern design’ principles (Dean 2016), allowing design to become an open ended discipline (Sparke 2016) where interaction, meaning and social understanding of the design process become a growing concern (Escobar 2012b). In other words, according to Escobar (2017b, p203), design studies attempt to move from the “functional and semiotic emphasis” towards the “experience and meaning” of design, and creating a holistic view in which human, cultural, social, ecological and material values are acknowledged (Gunn 2013, Irwin 2015, Bjögvinsson 2012, Reubens 2016). Notwithstanding the plethora of participatory methods available to design studies, the transformation of moving from designing ‘objects’ to designing ‘social-material assemblies’5
is still a major challenge to the design community (Bjögvinsson et al. 2012).
As Palmås and Von Busch suggest, collaboration and co-creation activities are challenging, where asymmetries of power become a common feature, especially when designers “run the errands of power, where the participatory design process gets used to create coercion and sugar-coat autocratic processes with a shimmer of ‘collaboration’” (Palmås and von Busch 2015, p 237). Hence it turns co-design into a rather ‘antagonistic process’ according to DiSalvo (2012), which not only inhibits democratic participation, but also gives rise to tensions and power intricacies to multiple stakeholder engagements.
Moreover von Busch et al.(2014) highlight the lack of participatory methods within practice based craft and design research, focusing on pragmatic examples. This is in addition to such methods being extensively used in design studies and to the proliferation of design scholarships published within the area of participatory design in the last 50 years or so (Sparke 2016). Further to this, Lee (2008) highlights one of the challenges in participatory design practices as the lack of art and craft based elements when such practices are currently being driven by engineering and service oriented needs of scientific design research. This is not surprising when Penny Sparke (2016) reminds us of the emergence of design methods in the 1960s as an attempt to systematise design via scientific methods. Arguably, according to Lee (2008) and Broome (2005), it questions the stability of maintaining the quality of life, with
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Socio-material assemblies are referred to a collective of “human and non-human Things” following Latour’s expression as expressed by Bjögvinsson et al (2012, p102).
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concerns about the sustainability therein using those methods. Scholars (Sanders and Stappers 2008, Kjærsgaard and Boer 2015, Blomberg and Karasti 2013) therefore anticipate a more sustainable mode of engagement which is more than participatory and more than user-centred designing. It is on the basis of this understanding that, this study turns its attention to ‘Design Anthropology’ as a plausible approach to understand the human, cultural, social, ecological and material values together with the innovation in the design process through collaborations, interventions and co-creation activities that lead to practice-based research and design engagements (Gunn 2013, Clarke 2011a).