We all agree, by now, that in design education, simply teaching methods and technical skill are not enough. Reading this line in ‘This is Service Design Thinking’ (Stickdorn & Schneider 2010) section by Renato Troncon, spun off a few thoughts. He says ‘It is crucial not to teach students only how to make gloves without ever telling them to practice by shaking hands with their neighbours, or carelessly removing their gloves with the indolence of a great theatre actress; or to study interior furnishing without ever visiting the cell of the historically seminal monk and reformer Savonarola…’ (p. 320) led me to think, then, ‘where do you draw the line’? Life experiences enriches a designer’s approach to design – undergraduate students are often not emotionally ready to engage with certain things – its just that simple. If extra-curricular activities are encouraged at school, why not at Uni/College?

A few other things also came up during the Service Design Network Melbourne Q+A discussion where Michelle stated that design education ‘doesn’t teach implementation’, but my thoughts were, ‘how can it be taught’? Some things are better understood outside of ‘formalised’ classrooms, or taking the apprenticeship model, by simply learning these contexts by jumping into actual work with others. By no means, I am not being defensive – most design undergraduate programs are woeful (and that’s another whole blog post that I can dedicate to) and much work is needed to improve their standards – so I come back to my opening question – where do you draw the line?

A few weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a facilitated workshop on ‘building a vision for Melbourne’ with Green’s MP Adam Bandt at The Hub Melbourne. There were a range of participants from education, like myself, and others from non-profit organisations, local government, greens members and various industry groups. This workshop was organised so that we, as a group, could contribute to this ‘vision’ for the city of Melborune and for Adam to potentially campaign and implement through his role and input in policies. We broke up into tables that each had a theme – sustainability, equality and compassion – and the groups were given roughly 45min to identify the problems and suggest ideas for implementation.

With the recent contentious Carbon Tax debate, this workshop potentially was a way to generate practical ideas and avenues to address sustainability and social inclusion – two key agendas of the government. The workshop seemed to be mainly greens/labor supporters – so no climate skeptics there – and with a one-sided discussion, it could easily promote an idealistic, skwewed perspective, which was a concern.

The workshop and group discussion sounds good in theory, but there were several issues that were problematic. I was on the ‘compassion’ table and with such a value-laden word, there was no time to agree on what ‘compassion’ meant which led to divergent interpretations about ‘caring’, ‘diversity’, respect’, ‘voice’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘empathy’. Broad generalisations were also made, for example, ‘people don’t care about eachother anymore’, or ‘people don’t have the time’, that also hindered a collective understanding of the issue. The conversation on our table was fraught with tension – those who had the largest voice usually got their point across – some talked over others – we quibbled over terminologies – and ironically, there was very little ‘compassion’ manifesting and being enacted on our table. I felt that the ideas that we proposed, was therefore ‘hollow’ in meaning.

Attending this workshop highlighted a critical neglect in our own discourse in design. It made me realise how ‘compassion’ or ‘empathy’ is a cornerstone for designers, yet little is discussed about its importance, possibly owing to the engineering, sciences or Modernist traditions that highlight roles and functions insead. Designers who have empathy for those they design for and with, are able to engage and create authentically trusting relationships, thereby leading to more meaningful interaction and outcomes. But how do we generate /educate empathy or compassion? Are these values we are born with, nurtured through our parents or taught through formal/informal education in culture/society? Some of these questions also surfaced in our table’s discussion and they seemed very philosophical and deep to be tackled in 10 min!

Why is Service Design attracting so much attention? I thought of several reasons:

1. It’s new – people love anything new and novel.

2. It’s an attempt to situate design firmly as an interdisciplinary practice – not limited by individual disciplinary practices that can only go so far in addressing the complexity inherent in any project scope. It marries the natural synergies that were there before.

3. It’s practical – the emphasis it gives to tools and methods provides a practical approach for designers (and others like service marketing, managers etc) to ‘enter’ into this complexity. It works really well because it provides a sense of simplicity without overwhelming people with the complexity of the ‘wicked problem’. Tools are necessarily stripped of its context to provide that look of simplicity.

4. It ’sells’ – because of the aforementioned points, service design makes tangible the intangible, thereby making it easier for clients to understand the value of. But its not as restrictive as the paradigm used in the traditional disciplines of graphic design or product design where they also prided and valued their tangibility. Service Design adds the extra value because of the value associated with the process, rather than the outcome. Process is far harder to articulate and make sense of – and Service Design has not only given the language to describe it, but had polished the tools to explain and explore it in a nicer, shinier way.

5. Sounds more ‘human’ – Service Design emphasises users, customers, stakeholders a great deal in their rhetoric. True, marketing have talked about them, branding have talked about them, and in many instances, all disciplines of design more or less have talked about them. Though Service Design has really re-oriented itself around people much more – and not for touchy-feely reasons but firmly connected the value of putting people central to the design process as a smart, economic importance to clients. It now makes much more sense to them.

I can probably think of more, but it might be splitting hairs and become a bit repetitive anyway.

So, for those who are already familiar with discourses, case studies, research in Interaction Design, Experience Design, HCI, CSCW, Design ethnography, User-centred Design, Human-centred Design, Participatory Design, Co-design… Service Design is NOT new. Many researchers and practitioners simply roll their eyes at it because what it lacks is depth. Depth is yet to come in Service Design, but the depth that Service Design will reach will not be as great as the depth that has already been reached in all the other fields (whose been doing it since the 60s – both the thinking, the doing, and the debating). This depth is the messy human-dimensions and systemic stuff and probably much more – the stuff that clients can’t pay for (because research is expensive and open-ended) and its often up to the design researchers / academics to study it and articulate it. So what is needed in Service Design is the acknowledgment of (or even integration of) the parallel discourses that are taking place that can inform, accelerate, overcome barriers, make sense of, emphasise, provoke, the new findings and learnings that come out from Service Design. Smart ones are already doing this anyway. The silly ones aggrandises and over-states the value of Service Design (and in the same breath, themselves)…!

What I worry, sometimes, is whether Service Design might end up as a ‘fad’, because it lacks this depth. Or, will there be enough commercial incentive and track-record to survive?

I’m in the midst of writing a paper called ‘A way of being in design practice: zen and the art of being a human-centred practitioner’. The gist of it is firstly, critiquing dogmatic and prescriptive approaches of being a socially-concerned, ethical designer, to bring in another orientation to practice based on reflection, that transforms oneself through self-awareness and one’s relationship to others and the world. In bringing in my Eastern, cultural perspective (Shinto and Zen), I started to notice how uncomfortable I had felt in even writing ‘Eastern’. This immediately sets up an opposition to ‘Western’. East is not the opposite of West, and just as Edward Said argues, it is just a paradigm set up to understand ‘The Other’. This then led me to think how this has been the uncomfortableness that I have been dealing with all my life, something that I thought I shall write a book about one day, and publish it in Japan. I am a product of a hybrid of many cultures (Japanese, British and Australian) and I cannot think things in a  dualistic way, especially about culture, very easily. It just doesn’t make sense to me who have grown up embodying all aspects of three. But the Japanese have a particular sense of identity – ‘the we Japanese…’ that culturally pronounces differences. The Japanese are really sensitive to it – and the ‘we the Japanese…’ is a phrase that you hear often as a way to reassure themselves of that cultural identity. True, I am also guilty of it – a card that I often pull out (in Australia, its particularly comical because cultural identity is so stereotyped) when asked about what I do or what I think, attributing it ‘to my kulcha’. The most recent was when Adrian asked me ‘why I was so good at origami’, and I said ‘its my kulcha’. In a way, it is my culture. I don’t recall being formally taught how to do origami, just as one doesn’t recall how to throw a football around (in Australia), and I can’t attribute to why I am so good at it, or why I like it. It conforms to such a typical cultural stereotype that it does sound quite bizarre (especially because I am also not really Japanese Japanese…).

Laurene thought how that ‘we the Japanese…’ is the resilience that had pulled them through the recent Hokuriku disaster. Even though this ‘we’ is a far more human quality, it is very much a Japanese thing, irrespective of which part of Japan one is from. One literally ‘feels’ the pain, because one shares the same ethnic genealogy. Its much more than sympathy or empathy. It is bizzare – and really took me by surprise when I found myself bawling my eyes out when I first heard the news. I really felt the pain in my body. So maybe I am more Japanese Japanese than I thought I was. Perhaps this hybridity of cultures doesn’t really make things all equally generic ie, I have 33.3% British, and equal amounts of Japanese and Australian or a mashed-up version of all three. Maybe it accentuates these differences more. Maybe I have developed a stronger expression of each of these cultures…?

To be continued…

As we inch closer to launching the ‘probes’ for the Probious project, I’ve been having really interesting conversations with a few designers. This morning, it was great to get a phone call from Kevin Finn, who I e-mailed out the blue asking for recommendation for designers in regional areas of Australia.

There was a lot we talked about that resonated with conversations that emerged out of past workshops with other designers, but there are a few that stood out from the rest. One area that provided rich discussion was on ‘community’ – its oft nebulous, mis-used term – and that this project was a way to define and describe what the connections might be among people who call themselves ‘graphic designers’. Who are we, what makes us get out of bed in the morning, and what is our relationship to design? These ‘human’ elements can begin to show the make up of our design ‘community’ that is not defined by a job description/qualification. Kevin shared some personal experiences and recollections when he was practicing out of Kununurra, in remote north Western Australia. He  said that he didn’t purposefully seek out other designers, but instead, allowed those connections to form naturally with those he had shared interests with. We then laughed at my dislike of being deliberately introduced to other Japanese people in a large party, just because we are Japanese and therefore we must have so much shared interest, or we know common people back home (!)

In our fetish for design artefacts, these often become the criterias in which a designer is evaluated by – “s/he’s a good designer because s/he does engaging and unique work”. This peer-evaluation works on a certain level (such as awards and setting certain ‘benchmarks’ of work) but is not conducive in building cohesion or connection – the bonds that define a community to give its characteristics and unique experiences. In discussing hypothetical scenarios of designers who are in remote/regional areas of Australia, they might deliberately disconnect with the borader design ‘community’ for that reason – for fear of being judged based on their work – because so much of the design ‘community’ is driven and celebrated by those with established their practices in urban areas who have a wide range of ‘interesting’ clients to work with. Designers who are in regional/remote areas may not have access to that diversity, the multi-faceted cultural stimultion and opportunities for exposure of their work, but they are designers nonetheless with personal motivations, their own definition and trajectory into the field of design. The picture of the ‘community’ we are building is to look inside the individual and the contexts they are surrounded by. We need to avoid the reductive, and instead, build a picture of pluerality and diversity.

Kevin warned not to make the designers in such regional/remote places feel as if they were chosen for this study because they are a strange ‘anomaly’ of the design ‘community’. The ‘bearded lady’ to be gawped at at a circus. I can see how easily this project can be misconstrued that way from their perspective, especially if there is a deliberate disconnect from their part and healthy mistrust for ‘all that jazz’ in the city. I’m glad to be reminded of it so we can proceed with more care and caution than before.

Kevin wisely commented that this project can become bigger than initially conceived, generating more questions rather than answers. I sense this enormity as well, and this reassures me that its a piece of research worth doing. However, the question I struggle with now, which came out of our conversation, is whether this is about graphic design at all. Neither it is to make the hidden aspects of it more visible to the public for it to be valued more. These may have been the intial intention of the research project, but I think it has shifted through the process of doing the reserach and having such insightful and critical discussions with practitioners like Kevin. Perhaps this project is similar in objective to the bushfire community preparedness research – an action research that is bridging disconnected individuals though a common purpose or interest – and through this connection, generating knowledge and learning experiences for all.

Just came back from a pretty intense but enjoyable PD conference in Sydney. I was really struck by the strong sense of ‘community’ and how people were very supportive of one another. In the closing speech, Toni Robinson (conference chair, UTS) remarked how nervous she was that no one would come to a PDC that is so far away, and that she really apprecaited people from Europe and America in flying this far. Having the opportunity to meet people like Lucy Suchman and Pelle Ehn was fantastic.

What I was also struck by was how open the PD community were in willing to listen to, and to discuss the problematic challenges of PD. This openness was refreshing and totally changed my view from past impression of their exclusive, defensive and rather ‘traditional’ views and approaches. There had been several ‘take home’ thoughts that would be good to mull over and think through more over the next year or so:

Participation is the new black: Technology is facilitating easier, fun and user-led ways for participation. But what is this really enabling? The public are becoming weary of tokenistic ways of participating in projects/decision-making, and that they expect it to be done well. This places more pressure on PD practitioners to ensure that those who are participating are clear in what they are ‘gaining’ or ‘benefiting’ from, and who are they representing/advocating…

Acceptance of complexity: Finally! What we’ve begun seeing is the acknolwedgement of PD (or, just design actually) being messy business. Literal, mechanical framing of design is problematic. Design is inherently complex, serendipitious, uncertain – if attempts were made to rigidly lock it down into a ‘method/ology’ (for it to be sanctioned as PD, for example), you can ‘kill’ what should be adaptive, organic, agile ways of engaging with a complex world. Those in PD are now on the same wavelength – yay! Penny made a really good point on how ‘emergence is hard to sell’ – so when design is based on the unknown and allowing the emergent to take place – how can other stakeholders understand the value of your involvement?

Tensions between user-initiated change and over-facilitation: There was interesting spectrum of papers that talked of projects where they were happy to let things unfold, to projects that had technology that over-facilitated the user-engagement. Interestingly, there were very few papers on the subject of mobilising users (of the Manzini kind) through peer-to-peer facilitation. Majority were ones where participation was actively sought and arranged. In the Service Design panel session, there was a good discussion on ownership, activism and empowerment – how do you catalyse / scaffold synergies for this to happen for true change to take place?

One thing that had really struck me was that we need to take these conversations out into other fields, rather than it remaining only in this PD / design field. Many of the issues driving this is concerns and passion for humanity, active citizenship, respect, social justice and empowerment – all that matters to every sector of our lives. Mariesa (from Inspire) and I had a good chat about this.

Ina Wagners closing key note was particularly interesting in this regard. She questioned what the politics and ‘utopian moments’ that PD is now moving towards. She introduced concepts of creating a ‘civil society’ where ‘residual categories’ (those who are usually marginalised – the very young, the very old, female, poor, disabled, low status groups) and to give voice to them through participation. In that sense, designers are also political and are moral agents, though she pointed out the logistical challenges of being involved in a project long-term – unless your position is institutionalised (eg. in a hospital or a particular organisation). Hence ‘fleeting’ dipping in-and-out of orgs/projects can’t achieve the change that are desired. I was also interested in how she talked about the ‘utopian moment’ – a horizon that is beyond reach, but within view – the creation of a vision/goal can be achieved by imagining an alternative future and distancing oneself from the constraints of the pragmatic and consensual.

Conference – day 3

This morning was a summative presentation by the moderators and writers of each session (have a look at these videos as a summary). I was looking forward to this part of the conference as equally as yesterday, as it was an opportunity to hear the kinds of issues, themes and areas for further research/action that emerged in the other clusters. Many of these were interesting, though, nothing new. It was frustrating that there were no opportunities for questions or comments afterwards.

I was sat close to the ‘naughty crowd’ – the gaggle of co-authors in the design research cluster – Lisa, Tim, Shaun, Anne and Stuart – and as soon as Judith and Deb presented the outcome from our cluster, there were hurried whisperings that quickly rippled through out little posse. Anne looked puzzled and said ‘were we in that group?’ It seemed that the ‘agenda’ – Sharon, Meredith and maybe Debs/Judith – overshadowed what the co-authors discussed. The presentation was framed by the ‘dilemma’ that Sharon had provoked (as opposed to what the co-authors had put forward – and there were many that were identified in their propositions as well as the discussions). These dilemmas are in the video.

Even the ones identified as ‘hotspots’ or ‘entry-points’ seemed puzzling and resonated more with what Sharon/Merideth was arguing for, rather than what I thought was generated from the co-authored group. For example, one of the points under ‘entry points’ (which is short-hand for places for leverage or initial action in addressing the dilemmas), it says “read other literature to get familiar with their vocab” seems like a very anorexic version of what I thought was discussed. I might be making a wild guesstimate here but this point could be related to the point that I made where, on the topic of working on interdiciplinary research projects, in order to collaborate effectively, be valued and share design as another method of inquiry, I said that I had to read and learn their ‘language and terminologies’ to frame design. Design alone (ie showing visual diagrams of my work/methods) was not enough to do this.

They’ve also made a big point of the role of AIGA (see the two first hotspots) – and from memory, that was a minor point that was made in the entire discussion. Actually, I remember that it was a comment that Debbie Millman (president of AIGA) made from the audience about asking whether we’d like to ask her to suggest AIGA to advocate for establishing a research journal…

Anyway – we’ve begun talking about co-authoring our own article/journal that may counterbalance / compliment (Anne says ‘as a form of dissent’!) what Deb might publish. I don’t want to come across as being angry here – I’m almost detached from being too emotionally invested in what’s happened, but I think it seems like a complete contradiction to the purpose and ideas of this conference… I am actually more worried whether this is showing the ‘true’ colours of our field – designers are well known for being in fear of removing control; inability to truly collaborate democratically etc… Despite my grumbling + whinging (I’d like to call it, critique!), I had great discussions with many many intelligent people and I think I can go home with a greater understanding of where the discourse is in design research (in the US) – and a renewed passion for the the work that is yet to be done.

I just feel like we’ve just busted the puss partly out of the pimple (or maybe it was a big huge festering blister) in the conference’s stream on design research. The topic was so immense, it was hard to begin where to tackle it from – and in the end, it felt like we only skimmed the surface of it without being able to drill down more deeply into the nitty-grity parts, to then translate/pose that into ‘how can it be taught in under/postgraduate education’. As Michael says, perhaps it was too ambitious an undertaking to do this all in 3 hours – though I am looking forward to how Judith/Debra may synthesise this into the co-authored publication at the end.

A few key things that I thought was interesting:

- it became quite frustrating that the discussion on design research began with ‘formats, modalities or methodologies’. Eg. Literature Reviews. Research Methods (that are often borrowing from other fields like social sciences). Even though they are important, I felt that they were the less interesting thing about design research, or the frameworks in which design research can or could be discussed within.

- Anne Bush made a really interesting point earlier in the session about the importance of asking the right questions. Though we all agreed, I was also thinking how the approach that designers might take might also be just to ‘jump in’ the problem space and do whatever to make sense of it. Its that kind of play/exploration/proposition/curiosity that are precursors to formulating the actual words for the questions to materialise. This might then generate or bring the questions up to the surface.

- Sharon articulated the frustration of design research/knowledge not being contributed back into the field of design again – partly that there were little rigorous opportunities to do so, and also that design was being published in other fields (like HCI, Business, Social Sciences etc). There’s a catch 22 here which we didn’t really get to resolve in our session.

- interdisciplinarity was a big topic of discussion. Tim Marshall made a great comment about how design can offer so much to other fields (and therefore valued highly) as design can cut through other fields/areas without being too tied to their own baggage or historical ways of doing things. Design was more agile, footloose and dynamic in that sense. It can offer different perspectives or alternative ways of doing/seeing/thinking things, and that is one of its strengths. This nature of being intuitively interdisciplinary then brought up the conversation of the value of being able to articulate design to other fields of knowledge and practice, sometimes using the frameworks of others. Though, Tim later came back to this issue with a ‘white elephant’ question of ‘what is so unique about design research that no other fields do?’ That seemed to me the million dollar question, and goes back to a post that I wrote a few weeks ago. So, I offered my thoughts here – that perhaps we shouldn’t be seeking this ‘holy grail’ but accept that design has a lot of synergies (and emultions/resonance) with other fields of inquiry.

Design research makes, provokes, proposes and envisions – and so does other research in creative practices.

Design research uses critique as a process of questioning and inquiry – this can be seen as a more design-based practice, but I would also assume that this takes place in other fields as well.

Design research uses the languages, artefacts and processes of design, eg, visualisations, prototyping, craft etc. though this is also seen in the arts, cartography, sciences, health, and many other fields.

Design research is iterative, dialogic and reflective – and so is any research process.

So, the point I raised is, rather than trying to carve out one little piece that is completely unique to design seems to be missing the point. That in itself seems to reduce the richness of design research. In fact, design research is varied, diverse, multi-modal and is ‘comfortable’ or even ‘eager’ to traverse across different fields. This is the strength in my research ‘toolbox’. And perhaps it is us – the community – who are failing to acknowledge it.

I’m at this conference and I’m half excited and half disappointed – today provided lots to think about but also ‘de-mythicised’ a few people who I had regarded quite highly.

I was excited about:

Service Design being a large focus of this conference – the conversation seems to be far more broader than graphic design per se. In Meredith Davis presentation, which I really enjoyed as a very thought-provoking, well-framed discussion, she talked about the broader cultural, environmental and technological contexts were design need to be in relation to (though I remain unconvinced by the example projects she presented – there was very little time to drill down deeper into them, which was a shame).

Talking with Ric Grefé, the Director of AIGA, it seemed like they were far more supporting and proactive in working with education, thereby establishing a stronger partnership with academia and industry. This is great to see. Ric was also of the opinion that ‘adjectives’ needs to be dropped in design – ie. graphic, industrial, communication etc – and focus more on design thinking and problem solving for design to have agency in more complex contexts. Though this isn’t a ‘new’ thing, its great to see this being advocated by the Director of AIGA (and, unfortunately, reflects poorly on what AGDA is doing – they’re so behind..!). Ric also told me how the role of AIGA isn’t to be one that gives approval and impart expertise, but their role is to ’start the conversation’ on this new way of promoting and talking about design, which was really refreshing to hear.

Rick Robinson’s talk was highly entertaining (and thanks to him, I know how to pronounce the author who wrote ‘flow’!). I took away quite a lot from his presentation, especially on being able to be ‘in-between’ disciplines is to know the ’structures’ that make-up your discipline, and then be able to push and play with it. This then ables you to see how it ‘fits’ with another discpline. He brought up a great example of musicians – the idea of improv and jamming – and the idea of being ‘adept’, which were all really good ideas to think about.

I was disappointed by the key-note provocateurs:

Shelley Evenson’s talk on Service Design – I think I heard this before – maybe on TED – I am a ‘tougher’ audience than most to talk to about Service Design, but she had said a few too many things that made me think ‘oh-ooh…’ and that was disappointing. For example, she talked about the dog that tweets, as if that was a good example of power of social media technology. She talked about some skewed idealised version of ‘people co-designing’ their experiences in Starbucks. Oh dear. She talked about designers being responsible to design the various touchpoints for the service delivery, which made me think of the total ‘big-brother’ idea of design control (brrr…!), and the un-design of any serendipitious encounters, which is inherent in any dynamic, living, organic systems. Neither her, or anyone in service design is talking about this obvious contradiction. She was clearly doing a ‘hard sell’ of service design to the audience and there was very little critical perspective that she brought to it. She also talked about the ‘bridge-model’ diagram that she did and published in Interactions journal – and I still have some grave questions about that too, in the way it ’sanitizes’ the design process and opens up misinterpretation that design isn’t iterative or involve a ‘double-looping’ learning process (Schon) in the thinking, making and critiqing.

Sharon Poggenpohl on design research – I know she meant to be provocative, yet, I just felt that I was lectured at – and I’m probably one of those in the minority (98 people with PhDs – wow, what a statistic) who have already ‘converted’. Tim made an interesting point later at dinner about ‘provocation’ might mean to take a conservative stance on research. So much of her talk was that ‘designers should read more, should research and publish more’, the ‘graduate programs in the states are a re-hash of what wasn’t understood in undergrad (harsh!) – so stop doing it’ – and what else, using ‘google isn’t research’. On it went. Clearly, her definition of design research was the way I have described it – the ‘Big R’ research and not about the ‘little r’ – emphasising the research that can be evidenced, made explicit, publishable (in writing) and what I would imagine designers running a million miles away from. Lisa mentioned how she thought it alienates people even further, rather than encouraging and supporting them into design research, and I couldn’t agree more.

Resilience will be a significant conceptual framework in tackling immense problems facing our society and environment of our time. The statistics of death tolls, injury, damages and loss caused by natural and man-made disasters is unfathomable. Yet, resilience is not a new thing – I would imagine that our ancestors were extraordinarily resilient – but perhaps in the modern society, and in developed countries, we have begun to take things for granted. Just as our immune systems are beginning to break down (greater numbers of those with allergies), we may have begun being less resilient as well..?

In being resilient, terms such as diversity, modality, distributed systems and networks, and indigenous-based practices was highlighted as being key notions and practices for design, as well as the planning for infrastructure (which also include non-physical things like culture, energy, connection among community members etc). Though often, disasters that were ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’  were distinguished. Aren’t humans part of the natural dynamic system too? Humans are also capable of giving and receiving ‘disturbances and disruptions’, being in a constant state of ‘flux’ whilst trying to establish a momentary stability. Is the separation between humans and nature – a very cartesian view of the world – weakening our ability to be resilient?

The notion of ‘Community’ also seems to be a bit of a buzz word these days, used in conjuction with disasters and resilience. On one hand, it is perceived as an ideological, mythical concept – a sense of belonging. On the other, community is often used for pushing political agendas by the government, authorities, businesses and worryingly, the aid agencies as well. I think there is tension between the desire for individuality and being part of the collective at play.