The Problem With a Single Story
Posted on December 13, 2012 | posted by:
“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” -Adichie Chimamanda’s The Danger of a Single Story TED talk in 2009.
Young Americans aspire to create a transformation in under-served, underrepresented and disadvantaged communities worldwide. Issues such as poverty, nutrition, health, water, sanitation, economic empowerment, financial aid and gender equity have Americans drawn to develop effective solutions.
People tend to have a fixed view point when looking in from the outside. Chimamanda points out how the power of language, and of stories, influences what a person expects to find in the world and shapes the daily manner in which a person interacts with our complex existence. There is a significant and all too modern problem with human thought and preconceptions of unfamiliar circumstances. In the 21st century and with advances in technology, American society still does not understand other’s culture, but maybe technology is a contributing factor to our ignorance.
Using Africa as the classic example, consider how comfortable we are with using the term Africa as if it were a country. Africa, with its nearly one billion inhabitants, 57 countries and over 3000 languages cannot be talked about meaningfully as a single nation. Africa is made up of rich, poor, urban, rural, white and black. It’s unfortunate our perception is made of a single story of corruption, starvation, struggle and survival.
Stories that are told and spread across nations are often mistakenly presented as testament or truth. These single stories are often the only representation of certain areas of the world. Like I mentioned in my first essay, a nuanced perspective acknowledges that history itself is never fixed, it is in continuous flux. In design it is never enough to simply cite the past or simply cite the written word. Designers must be actively and reflexively engaged in order to craft new meanings and synthesize exiting knowledge. Technology is accelerating the process of story transfer and displaying these stories in different mediums.
There is a Western fixation with helping the seemingly less fortunate. A new imperialism has begun and Generation Y are engrained with values of designing for the less fortunate globally. Bruce Nussbaum stated in his Fast Company blog post, Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism? “Are designers the new anthropologists or missionaries, come to poke into village life, ‘understand’ it and make it better–their ‘modern’ way?” We as designers need the ability to understand culture, systems, values and resources of the place we are designing for. The problem is that designers are entering worlds without empathy and trying to build systems. Design is a transformational ability, but the lack of understanding causes a lack of sustainability and impractical designs.
Empathy is the key to real creativity. We should not close our ‘realm of possibilities,’ as Clive Dilnot would say, of going global with our designs. Rather we should work harder to understand the world we are designing for. Lisa Grocott stated that we have a ‘responsibility for being world-makers,’ to prototype the future and to change the world. Lisa’s class has taught me methods such as story-telling, cultural probes, story-boarding, narrative’s, improvising, performative, responsive, dynamic, building empathy, flexibility, creativity, fun, playful triggers and evaluation. Through these strategies and methods we can learn by doing and engage the community with the design.
Assumptions affect design not only on a global level, but on a local level as well. However in my projects I have found the most effective way to design for an unfamiliar culture is to have the community design the project. To build a sustainable system requires the community and activities that are based on local resources. Users do not look at the situation as a design problem, they see the problem differently, as a user of the solution.
Designers need to learn to be, not better, but more conscious. The development of productive activities, services or objects based on local resources will help sustain the design. Recombining resources that already exist can create new meaning. We must go beyond standard ways of thinking and comfort levels.
There is a place for Americans and their resources in developing countries. It is a designer’s responsibility to be aware of the culture in which they are working. In countries like Africa, India or China, there are African, Indian and Chinese ways of doing things and those ways have to be considered. Be empathetic. Consumption and material is not a value in all cultures. The key to design is to be immersed in the culture of your project. Identify the interests, cultural patterns, socio-technical systems, production, consumption and history.