OBJECTS FOR PEACEFUL DISORDERING:
INDIGENOUS DESIGNS AND PRACTICES OF PROTEST

What do a piece of plumbing pipe, some wire netting, some adhesive tape, two loops of nylon webbing and a carabiner have in common?  Nothing, until they are assembled into a design.  In turn, the object these components comprise comes into being only with the presence of human beings.

These are the components of a device known as a ‘lock-on’; some sundry objects that you would find in a builders’ merchant and some people’s bodies – peace activists pursuing non-violent direct action.  Lock-ons are used by such people to join themselves together by the arms to enhance the power of their passive resistance.  This paper uses the lock-on as an example of an ‘indigenous’ design – one that has appeared without designers, evolving as part of a ‘practice’ – in this case the practice of peace protest.

The sense of practice meant here is that found in the sociological study of culture.  The paper outlines this sense of the word, tracing its outlines as found in the work of Bourdieu (1972) and others, summed up recently by Reckwitz (2002).  Drawing as it does from a range of sources, including the social study of technology, ‘practice theory’ has a good deal to offer a conception of design that seeks to influence the world positively beyond the point of sale.  Practice theory acknowledges that objects are socially important.  Together with cultural knowledge and embodied skill objects form ‘compounds’ that evolve through time (Shove 2006).

The transforming power of designing may be enhanced if it is acknowledged to be most powerful when it takes place within practices, rather than being solely the preserve of professionals constrained by the aims of the corporations which employ them.  Politically engaged design, to the extent that it exists, is often directed at issues of sustainability and work with NGOs.  A ‘practice orientated’ approach to design that can engage with the full relationship between things and the agents they imply, their bodies, their minds, the knowledge they have, the emotions they feel, the discourse discourses they engage with, has a chance of producing designs that work against crimes such as weapons of mass destruction.  The paper analyses the evolution and current use of the 'lock-on' in UK non violent direct action as an example of an indigenous design that is part of a practice seeks to do exactly this.

Bibliography:
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press

Reckwitz, A. (2002) ‘Towards a theory of Social Practices: a development in culturalist theorizing’ European Journal of Social Theory, 5, 2: 243-263

Shove, E (2006) A Manifesto for Practice Oriented Product Design, Designing and Consuming workshop, Durham University