Playing the Part of Expert and Ignoramus
Posted on December 12, 2013 | posted by:Globalization has designers consistently finding themselves participating within paradigms that they are not accustomed to. Globalization strengthens and extends relationships, both professionally and personally, across the world, thus increasing the chance that he/she will be working within cultures, languages, and subject matter literally foreign to them.
For instance, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked within the Community Health and Economic Development program. To start with, I knew nothing about any of those words at that time. Perhaps the strongest correlation with volunteering internationally and design processes is the ability to adapt to any situation presented. One quickly understands the importance and strength in making-it-up-as-you-go-along (as long as you don’t present yourself as an expert). Using that code-of-conduct, I found myself assigned to a vocational school, to teach solar energy installation and life skills, within the rural village of Liphiring (dee-Peer-ing). The school housed many workrooms, including a metalshop, woodshop, computer lab, kitchen, and general classrooms. Alas! Although I didn’t even know what the hell I was supposed to be doing there in the first place, I immediately identified where I could intervene and help. If all else fails, I could always just help within the shop.
But wait, how did this tiny rural village, located in the middle of nowhere Lesotho, even attain this shop equipment? What was it all powered on – I didn’t see any generators? After learning about the immense amount of solar panels housed above each workroom, I was informed that the shop equipment came from South Africa, Lesotho’s border country. Imagine it – my supervisor calling South African companies for equipment literally in the middle of a field of sheep. This is what I found so fascinating about globalization at the time – its ability to overlap supposed first and third world characteristics and opportunities. Do you know how many times I found a lamb in my kitchen confused by my vibrating Blackberry?!
Somehow in all this excitement, I forgot it might be a little confusing to some people that a young woman actually knows how to fix, weld, saw, drill, and build in some cultures (even in America). Not only did I found myself a stranger to the language, the “transportation” system (aka hitchhiking), lack of internet privileges, cultural nuances, culinary differences, and the utter silence of it all, I now found myself as an outsider in gender roles.
I quickly became known as “the white builder girl.” I obviously took this as a compliment. Not one boy at the vocational school (the students were all in their early twenties) ever heard of a woman who knew such technical skills. At first, I considered this in immense obstacle.
However, teaching boys a “male” skill provided me the leverage I needed as a volunteer to garner trust but also to gain their confidence that was transferable into other arenas – it helps to open discourse about safe sex practices, HIV/AIDS transmission, drug and alcohol abuse, and other “touchy” subjects that were also considered foreign.
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins spoke to holistic intervention in Natural Capitalism, “The next business frontier is rethinking everything we consume: what it does, where it comes from, where it goes, and how we can keep on getting its service from a net flow of very nearly nothing at all – but ideas.” I would extend this definition further to designers. How can we designers better understand what WE do, where WE come from, where WE can go, and how WE can keep transferring perspectives, ideas, and narratives – not things?
One of the most successful elements to my Peace Corps service was the transfer of skills considered proficient to those areas deemed contrary. For instance, my skills in welding transferred to ideas on gender roles, empowerment, and confidence. “If this white girl can weld, why can’t I also X ?” I would hear them say.
Because designers, in general, will never be considered 100 percent assimilated within any project; perhaps we can empower this “outsider” status to bring new perspectives within the relevant realms; transferring ideas, changing the paradigm that conversations lie in.
And as long as designers identify these “ignorance” spots as leverage points for intervention, we can provide analogous conversations that enable different perspectives. These different perspectives can allow for more open discourse on essential action.