Wild West
Posted on December 15, 2016It is said, there are no fields that design hasn’t made an impact or touch at some point, from public policy to urban space but have all designers take in consideration end users (humans)? The rapid answer will be yes, of course, because we believe in doing good things for the better good. I aim to focus on the questions Bruce Nussbaum raised on his article from “Is humanitarian design the new imperialism?” and also “Is the new humanitarian design coming out of the U.S. and Europe being perceived through post-colonial eyes as colonialism?” On this article, I will note provide an answer for this, however, I will roughly provide a quick look at American colonization history to make an argument in favor to decolonize design and may suggest a better practice when designing.
During the expansion of the colonization of America, historians defined the term “frontier“ referring to a contrasting region at the edge of a European-American line of settlement. Meaning that anything further of the “line” was best known as the Wild West. The question is why where the west of America was considered “wild”? There is a fact, native people were still fighting and resisting against the imposition of a new order, an invasion meant to take land and impose new ways of living, politics, and law. The use of violence was a key component to enforce native people to sell land and eventually subordinate to the new sobering.
“As defined by Hine and Faragher, “frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states.”” 1
When speaking of the market history there are two milestones worth mention; one is the Dollar as the world dominant currency exchange, thus the replacement of gold by the finance market to backup the money worth. Today it seems that block chains are the future and may be the answer (who knows?) for a new way we think about the market and in that matter the politics involved. Bob Greifeld, CEO of NASDAQ said: “ I’m a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial service industry.” 2 and all of this sounds very renewing and promising but aren’t all this technology build under the shadow of capitalism? Is so then its like we are living the future meant from an old plan (paraphrasing Jenny Holzer).
Just like in times of the Gold Rush in San Francisco there is a new rush called Bitcoin and as funny as it sounds there already exist bitcoin miners. And my criticism to all this relies upon that, the world surface is uneven and the blockchain only provides for some people, because there is still people without the internet, access to computers, cell phones and even more basic biological needs, there is people without water. It is almost impossible not to mention the problems that native people struggle today in Dakota fighting for a basic right of land and water. When I started this article asking when designing do the other or we think in the human?
The victory in North Dakota against the state was indeed a relief but also is the result of a post-traumatic colonial practice of centuries. Building power from the base to the top results less complicated when we can find “unity a generic common interest – biological need, for instance”. “Class unity from instance was used to generate networks of solidarity, strength in numbers, confidence, and awareness of common interest.” 3
Design too is a process without end.
On my own experience to keep our self’s unbiased indeed a hard process is, however, we most accomplish it before practicing design. “In discussing the long-standing problem of the relationship between form and content, the German philosopher Hegel once wrote, ‘Thus the truth of art must not be pure correctness, to which the so-called imitation of nature is limited, but the exterior must be constant with an interior, which is consonant with itself and precisely as result is able to reveal itself as itself on the outside’.” 4
Many times the idea it truly becomes pragmatic when we design a process or a public policy that looks simple or less complicated, often by doing less is achieving greater results in the practice. This I believe its only accomplished by tackling at the local problem or the more basic problem. Research methods are the key element, many times being a conversation (not interviews) one of the most successful.
I will be mistaking if we only believe that ‘less is more’ or ‘less but better’ because we have to ask our self’s, why do we need more for? Or what better means? And according to whom? If we most accomplish function to measure results we will accomplish our objectives, but un-doughtily mistaking again.
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_frontier / Hine, Robert V.; John Mack Faragher (2000). The American West: A New Interpretive History. Yale University Press. p. 10.
- Tapscott, Alex; Tapscott, Don (2016). Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing the Money, the Business, and the World. 65.
- Smicek, Nick; Williams, Alex (2015). Inventing the Future. P. 155, 158
- Ueki-Polet, Keiko; Klemp, Klaus (2015) Less and More, The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams. 21