James
Leach (University of Aberdeen)
Design Anthropology: Attachment
and Detachment as Creative Engagement
Having a position outside the immediate interests or assumptions of those one works with has always been central to producing anthropology, yet it is not uncommon for collaborators (and others) to request utile interventions from anthropological understanding. In parallel, contemporary developments in social theory demand particular attention to the shaping of common interests with the people through whom anthropological knowledge is constituted. Focusing on importing a conception of what Design might mean for anthropological engagements (that is, a space facilitating creative practice with others), this paper pursues the idea that we might look to a Design Anthropology to offer an imaginative, comparative, and reflexive approach to engaging in the processes by which things, meanings, and persons are constituted. While ethnographic method outside academic anthropology may have come to mean little more than listening to focus groups, or observing users, anthropological thinking offers to recast assumptions and processes through conceptual juxtaposition and ethnographic alternatives. Such anthropological tools (resources for thinking) potentially reposition activities, remove them temporarily from the realm of convention, and allow practitioners to re-invent their motivations and approaches in the light of different frames, through the application of specific conceptual instruments. The approach depends on a conscious balancing of attachment to others people concerns, and modes of detachment from them.
