Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics & New Practice
For any designer interested in redirective design practice and design ethics, Tony Fry's 2009 book Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics & New Practice is an absolute must read. I think I can safely assume that it's the most comprehensive piece of writing on critical design practice that exists at this point. Especially as an introduction into new design practice and why it's so necessary. Although I'm only halfway through reading it, the understanding I have gained from it is impossible to equate quantitatively. I couldn't even begin to summarise what the text covers – everything from ontology, sustain-ment, culture, ecology and colonisation is mentioned, and this is only halfway through.Â
Because my current interests align so much with culture and colonisation, a section I have just read seems extremely pertinent to me and this current line of thinking. Instead of doing it an injustice by summarising it, I'm just going to straight up quote the section here.
Totality against Difference
While we should not romanticise precolonial cultures as existing harmoniously in some kind of Garden of Eden, we do need to acknowledge the brutal consequences of European colonialism. The violence of overt genocide enacted by military force and settlers, both intentionally and accidentally by introduced disease, is almost beyond the Western imagination. Colonialism ended the life of countless millions of people; it also did relentless damage to the sustaining ability of cultures across generations. As victim or transgressor, humanity at large has never really recovered from this moment. The lingering pain of colonial violence continues to shape geo-politics, as is evident in the fragmentation of populations and the artificial construction of nation states that still divide families, tribes and cultures. Likewise, extracting natural resources, clearing land and hunting native animals, in some cases to extinction, did a vast amount of irreparable cultural as well as environmental damage.
Genocide and ecocide have unambiguously been part and parcel of colonialism. Ethnocide, on the other hand has been more diffuse, pervasive and less acknowledged. Ethnocide can be defined as the destruction of a people's culture, as opposed to genocide, which destroys their bodies.
Ethnocide occurs when a more powerful culture imposes its norms and practices on a less powerful one. In the West's colonial expansion, everything encountered that did not conform to Western norms – social structures, cultures and ways of inhabiting the environment – was designated 'uncivilised'.
However, 'primitive' and 'savage' others were not always viewed as simply worthless or a hindrance to progress, and thus disposable, but as redeemable – they became subjects to be civilised, which added up to the destruction of the legitimacy of the system of belief and social order by rupturing their cultural practices. Ethnocide has been inherent in globalisation. The Eurocentric ambition to create a global culture underpinnned by capitalism (be it enacted by trade, aid, inequitable conventions, war or cultural strategies) has a history spanning more than 500 years. Rather than just being a consciously pursued objective, this ambition became embedded in 'capital logic'. The dominant thesis carried by this 'logic' being that humanity advances simply by increasing productive and consumptive capacity; entry into the market system; improvement of standards of living and the development of the modern state to uphold these economic conditions. But against the backdrop of the necessity of difference, internationalising economic, political and cultural conformity via globalisation actually negates the possibility of sustain-ability. (Fry, 2009 pp. 92 - 93).
I think this point is so important to me because it seems to be one I find particularly difficult to articulate when discussing critical design practice to everyday people. Trying to express why this understanding is relevant to meaningful critical practice is extremely difficult at best, because it is characteristic of post-modernity to fragment everything and think of subjects as distinctly seperate from one another. This is something that I have realised is untrue, with a gravity that I can't articulate well. All I know now, is that attempting to describe to people why I do 'research' in a design degree is extremely difficult, because for me now, research and design practice are not seperate things. They are inextricably part of each other, just as all other things exist with, and only with, relation to all other things. To seperate design practice from an understanding of the world only serves to create a dystopia of fragmented, meaningless and unsustainable design.
Reflecting on why culture, cultural appropriation and colonisation is relevant to me is hard. It's hard because understanding the reality of both your identity and your "home" is a hard thing to do, especially upon the realisation of the dark reality of your cultural histories. Ethnocide is largely part of my identity, because my family are a product of a colonised India. The fragmentation and loss of identity for me, and many in my family, is largely attributed to this colonisation. For that I can have no regret, but I have begun to feel a painful loss and pining for something I have never had. That said, I owe it to the ether to consider this in my practice and also in my life. A sound understanding of the history of the place that I practice (Australia) and the harsh realities of that history (genocide, ethnocide and ecocide) are important to my (and all other designers) contemporary practice. How to do that is not something I know just yet – these are only early days, and attempting to begin redirective practice is difficult where there is little experience in it. I just think it extremely important to acknowledge its importance in my practice, especially in the hopes that it encourages others to do similarly, and it helps others understand why I have set myself what appears to be an impossible task.
