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Mail I wrote answering what comes into my mind about design, ethics and environment
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designethicsenvironment.md

Ingold does write about design (or, rather: Culture, man-made-things) and ecology (e.g. in [1][2]). Langdon Winner’s essays in [3] might also be interesting And Actor-Network-Theory might be helpful – the classic work of Callon [4] shows a "network" of animals, environment, people, technology… It is a bit hard to read, particularly if you are not familiar with ANT yet, and [5] is a much nicer read.

But these are all rather general. On design research and criticizms of it, I know some stuff on the question of design ethnography [7], claims of true stuff ("the real user needs") [9], users as part of a computer system [11] and design thinking’s intertwinement into neoliberal ideas [12,8] – if that is something that is interesting to you. And talking about neoliberalism [12] is a great source for anything tech/design thinking/engineering related; [13] is by the mentioned Langdon Winner and also pretty great. In the context of work and care for technology (in contrast to churining out "disruptions"), there are Latour, again [14] (and a clear reference to Frankenstein) as well as the Maintainers movement [15]. Not so academic, but a great to read overview is [16]. (And, if you are into surveillance and security, read [17]. Its one of the best papers I know)

Ok… that became a reference dump.

In case you want something relatively easy to read: they have a * in front. I would not worry about not reading them, the abstracts will tell if they could be useful for your interests and maybe they are not that helpful.

Best, Jan

  • [1] Ingold, Tim. 2011. “Culture, Nature, Environment.” In The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, 13–26.
  • [2] Ingold, Tim. 2011. “Tool, Minds and Machines.” In The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, 61–76. London: Routledge.
  • [3]* Winner, Langdon. 1988. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ( "Do artifacts have politics" is the classic)
  • [4] Callon, Michel. 1984. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” The Sociological Review 32 (1_suppl): 196–233.
  • [5]* Callon, Michel. 1990. “Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility.” The Sociological Review 38 (1_suppl): 132–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1990.tb03351.x.
  • [6] Bennett, Cynthia L., and Daniela K. Rosner. 2019. “The Promise of Empathy: Design, Disability, and Knowing the ‘Other.’” In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 298:1–298:13. CHI ’19. New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300528.
  • [7]* Anderson, R. J. 1994. “Representations and Requirements: The Value of Ethnography in System Design.” Human-Computer Interaction 9 (2): 151–182. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327051hci0902_1.
  • [8] Irani, Lilly. 2018. “‘Design Thinking’: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4 (May): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v4i1.29638.
  • [9] Nafus, Dawn, and Ken Anderson. 2009. “The Real Problem: Rhetorics of Knowing in Corporate Ethnographic Research.” Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings 2006 (1): 244–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-8918.2006.tb00051.x.
  • [10] Seitz, Tim. 2017. Design Thinking und der neue Geist des Kapitalismus: Soziologische Betrachtungen einer Innovationskultur. 1st ed. Bielefeld: transcript.
  • [11] Agre, Philip E. 1995. “Conceptions of the User in Computer Systems Design.” In CAMBRIDGE SERIES ON HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION, 67–106. CAMBRIDGE SERIES ON HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION.
  • [12]* Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. 1996. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6 (1): 44–72.
  • [13]* Langdon Winner. 2017. “The Cult of Innovation: Its Colorful Myths and Rituals.” Blog. Langon Winner – on Politics, Technology and the Arts. June 12, 2017. https://www.langdonwinner.com/other-writings/2017/6/12/the-cult-of-innovation-its-colorful-myths-and-rituals.
  • [14]* Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Love Your Monsters.” Breakthrough Journal 2 (11): 21–28.
  • [15]* Russel, Andrew, and Lee Vinsel. n.d. “Hail the Maintainers.” Aeon. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more.
  • [16]* Bowles, Cennydd. 2018. Future Ethics.
  • [17] Agre, Philip E. 1994. “Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy.” The Information Society 10 (2): 101–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.1994.9960162.
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