Christine Miller is Clinical Associate Professor of Innovation in the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. Her research interests incorporate how sociality and culture influence the design and diffusion of new products, processes, and technologies. She studies technology-mediated communication and knowledge work flows within multiple discipline groups, teams, and networks and the emergence of collaborative innovation networks (COINs).

This volume documents the emergence of design anthropology, the convergence of two disciplines that has informed an emerging transdisciplinary field. Rather than a subfield of either anthropology or design, design anthropology is a unique practice and theoretical approach that explores new modes of knowledge production and enables new forms of participatory engagement. Design anthropologists create the conditions for zones of experimentation and improvisation, bringing those who are being served and/or affected directly into a design process in which existing conditions, places, and things are collectively mapped, visualized, and reimagined to consider possible alternative futures.

Introduction

Chaos, Purity and Danger

What this book is about

Who this book is for

Structure of the book

Chapter One: Making the Strange Familiar, and the Familiar Strange

Introduction

The anthropological roots of design anthropology

Tracing the threads

Anthropology and business

Anthropology: Its Achievements and Future

The way we were: The legacy of 1960s through the 1980s

Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary

Dialogue 1: Writing Culture

Dialogue 2: In the wake of Writing Culture: new projects

We will not regret the past nor wish to close the door on it

Dialogue 3: An anthropology of the Contemporary

Dialogue 4: Bridging the traditional, the modern, and the contemporary

Dialogue 5: Introducing the design studio

Dialogue 6: Adaptive strategies

Dialogue 7: Deparochializing anthropology

Anthropological relocations and the limits of design

Design: Anthropology's future or problematic object?

Chapter Two: Roots in Design

Introduction

Significance for anthropology

The Sciences of the Artificial: Rationality and the science of design

Herbert Simon in context

What implications for anthropology?

Understanding artifacts and systems: the dichotomy of inner and outer environments

the Emergence of Professional Design

politics of the artificial: Design at the end of the millennium

Unraveling the politics: a critique of the artificial

Challenges to scientific "truth": blurring the boundaries of natural and artificial

contemporary Critiques of design

The social turn: Design for the Other 90%

Is humanitarian design the new imperialism?

Branzi's Dilemma: Design Consciousness in Contemporary Culture

21st Century design: An integrative discipline

The design education manifesto

Designing with, not designing for: the influence of participatory design

Ethnography in the field of design

the design education manifesto

Designing with, not designing for: the influence of Participatory design

Ethnography in the field of design

Chapter three: OPERATIONALIZING DESIGN ANTHROPOLOGY: How we know it when we see it

Introduction

Disciplinary evolution: adaptive strategies

Disruptive change demands pluridisciplinary collaboration

Design anthropology: "Ethnographies of the Possible"

Events and situated practice

The significance of events and situations in anthropological practice

Frameworks

an Emerging set of principles

toward future-making: Vignettes of cultural production and change

Vignette 1: Design Anthropological Futures Conference

Design Anthropological Futures: Ethnographies of the Possible

Analysis and outcomes

Vignette 2: BarnRaise

Pre-event: registration and team assignments

Setting the stage: opening reception

The design workshop: a "future-in-the-making" event

Analysis and outcomes

Chapter four: MAPPING DESIGN ANTHROPOLOGY

Introduction

Design anthropology: discipline, subject area, or research strategy?

Basic web search: Google Ngram

Google Scholar and ProQuest

Social Network analysis of Design anthropology Events and Contributors

Data Description

Social Network Analysis

Google Site search

Discussion of findings

Design Anthropology's COINs and CoPs

Tracking the diffusion of innovation

Homophily and heterophily

Attributes of innovation

Conclusion

Chapter five: epilogue

Final thoughts

A field in its own right

Not to be confused with design ethnography

Technological challenges