DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT & QUESTIONS OF DIRECTION, PART II
Tony Fry
Part two of two
Sustainable Development
The rise of interest in sustainable development stems from the 1987 World Commission on Environment, Brundtland Report, Our Common Future.
Brundtland
defined sustainable development as "...those paths of social, economic
and political progress that meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs." In this context, sustainability was directly linked to economic
growth to be managed in such a way that natural resources were to be
used to ensure the "quality of life of future generations".
This
definition is constantly deployed as a key point of reference.
Notwithstanding this, it is just not satisfactory. It is based on a
number of very questionable assumptions and a degree of bad faith in
relation to environmental debates that pre-dated it.
First
of all, 'sustainable development's' anthropocentric bias towards future
generations means that the interconnected interdependency of all
biological life is not sufficiently registered. Moreover, to appeal to
the "quality of life of future generations" fails to recognise the
unevenness of the human condition as a key factor at the core of the
question of development. If the socio-economic inequity of current
generations is faced, then the issue of establishing a basic quality of
life for several billion people now has to be confronted, as does the
excess of 'quality' and 'quantity' of resources that a small percentage
of the world's population currently command. Both poverty and wealth
drive unsustainability - the former by depleting resources without the
ability to renew them; the latter by their disproportionate
over-consumption. The kind of inequity confronted here is structural.
It is inscribed into the banking system, the global labour market,
commodity exchange and frameworks of international political power.
Brundtland's idea of inter-generational equity needs to be subordinated
to inter-species plus trans and inter socio-cultural equity at a global
level.
Second, and just as
fundamental, is the need to challenge the assumption that the future
can be secured via economic growth. In large part, this viewpoint was
underpinned by an unstated proposition that the development of
capitalism had to be accommodated for any appeal to environmental
protection to be taken seriously.
Bruntland's assumptions
were partly shaped by the context of 1980s environmental thinking. The
recoil resulting from the Limits to Growth Club of Rome report authored
by Donnella Meadows et al in the late 1970s perhaps best registers this
mindset. With the failure to take seriously the message of restraint,
with capitalism ever rampant, with a conceptually limited understanding
of the interface between the human and the unsustainable, plus
leadership from an establishment position, the conservatism of
Bruntland's report was inevitable. Certainly, the wish to curb
unsustainability, reduce the squandering of 'natural capital' and
protect the environment was genuine, but the problem lay with the means
proposed to realise these desired ends, i.e., Ecologically Sustainable
Development (ESD). Effectively, this idea left the existing notion of
development intact and simply gave it an extra task. ESD neither put
the cause of the problem the disposition and actions of human beings -
on the spot, nor did it recognise the need for the objective of
development to be redefined. Put succinctly, the real path forward
should have been presented as the 'development of sustainment'.
The
proposition carried by the notion of 'sustainment' is not an idealistic
or naive call to overthrow capitalism (to be replaced by what?).
Rather, it is the naming of a project, a culture, an age within which
capitalism is to be led to a paradigmatic recognition of the vital need
to confront: (i) a shift in the how human beings are constituted and
positioned as social and environmental subjects who act in, and on, the
world and each other; and, (ii) the imperative to create an economy, a
social fabric, political institutions and modes of design able to
generate and deliver wealth, equity/redistributive justice and a civil
society based on moving from quantity to quality as the basis of
normative measure. This compressed paragraph stands for the work of
many extending over decades. While what it proposes may well be
regarded as impossible, one should remember that the impossible is as
much a matter of perspective as of fact. Moreover, a good deal of human
history demonstrates the realisation of the impossible. Likewise,
developing sustainment (the process which is the condition) needs
understanding as a matter necessity rather than choice.[6]
The idea of sustainment tells us it is time to leave Brundtland behind and rewrite the development task.
On considering design
One
cannot reach the essence of design (the designed and designing) via
deductive reason. Geo-culturally, it continually moves and morphs.
Moreover, such thinking cannot accommodate design's non-neutrality and
cultural non-universality. While motivated by the 'quest for knowledge'
of design, the reification of design by much design research activity
obstructs design's potential by its scientistic preoccupation with
practice. Such research fixes design as a restrictive practice within
the restrictive economy. The prefigurative capability of human beings,
and its articulation to the directionality/propensity of the things
that are brought into being via design, transcends the descriptive
capability of design discourse. For instance, this discourse posits
design exclusively with direct human agency, or indirectly as this
agency has become embodied in technology. What it does not recognise is
that 'we' are as much the designed as we are designers. In this
setting, and the setting of the mono-cultural trend of globalisation to
homogenise world cultures into the singularity of culturally pluralist
products, 'we' planetary beings of difference are either being
diminished by the commodified objects of our 'cultural enrichment', or
rendered into the culture of the invisible (the 'inoperative community'
of peoples of the global informal economy).
Unquestionably,
the ethnocentric bulldozer creeps on, flattening difference in its
path. Yet pockets of difference remain and force us to ask 'whose
design'?[7] To be unaware of the significance of this question is not
to know what design is and does.
Dominantly, design has
acted in the service of the culture and economy of modernity and its
metropolitan and global extension. It has been deeply implicated in the
development and universalisation of modernisation and unsustainability,
modernisation having been viewed as a means of national advancement and
improved standards of living. The reality, however, has so often been
the development of a new, internationally integrated middle class 'in
the periphery' and a widening gap between these wealth owners and the
nation's poor plus the importation of problems and practices that
continually extended the depth of material unsustainability.
What
design/designing/the designed actually needs to do is to lay down a
foundation of futuring. This is not to be a mono-form or an
instrumental exercise. It has to be circumstantially responsive and be
as much to do with the mind, dreams, feelings and dispositions of
people in the world they inhabit (as they are constituted from
structures, products, systems and biophysical ecologies).
The
economic growth rate of newly industrialised nations and their consumer
classes, means that the ecological impact of the global population is
growing rapidly. This is a far more significant factor than raw
numbers. In fact with current developmental trends, the global
population could fall (which it will not do) while impacts could go on
rising (which they will do). Obviously suggesting the standard of
living of half the world's population should remain low in order to
preserve the high standard of the advantaged is neither ethical nor
political. Another way has to be found - as will be seen in a moment.
Against this backdrop three kinds of relationships between design and
development can be contemplated.
Relationship 1:
this is a continuation of the status quo (enfolding 'sustainable
development' as it strives to 'sustain the unsustainable'). Clearly,
this is going to continue to be the option the majority of designers
working on the design and development nexus will opt for. In spite of
good intentions with an often substantial dose of humanitarianism, the
consequence of this choice is, in the end, the development of
unsustainability via the creation of things, systems and practices that
defuture. Obviously, this option spans an enormous gradation of levels
of involvement and scales of impact from 'high end' governmental and
corporate projects to modest NGO supported village design activity, and
even aid projects, which while often having immediate practical
benefits, not least in improving public health, are still nonetheless
'system inductive' and often impositional.
Relationship 2:
this can be seen as supporting currently available development against
the dominant direction of development. It includes the selective
recovery of the futuring potential of traditional knowledge, skills and
practices and their valorisation. The developmental objective is the
revitalisation of rural and village level industry and culture as a
culture and economy of sustainment. While the ambition can only be
modest, there is also important conservational dimension associated
with it. With the prospect of increasing dysfunction as climate change
and rapid urbanisation converge to make conditions unbearable in many
cities, some kind of large retreat to the rural can be expected.
Design/development action here is not a matter of bringing imported
design knowledge and skill to the project, but rather mobilising the
cultural capital that institutional design qualifications carry to give
recognition to local capability both within the context of community
self-image and regimes of authority.
Relationship 3:
this ambitiously could offer an opening into an 'other development' the
development of the moment of a culture of sustainment. This culture,
and its epoch, created to counter the developmental trajectory of
humanity turning against itself by destroying so much of what it, and
much else, depends upon through what it creates (mostly by design). In
design terms the gigantic challenge goes well beyond the agenda of
sustainable design. Foundationally, it requires establishing a basis of
'being-in-the-world' able to take responsibility for our being
anthropocentric. Pragmatically, it means starting to find ways to move
from an economy based on the growth of quantity to one centring on
expanding the domain of quality in almost every aspect of human
endeavour. The metaphors of such change: small, light, slow,
long-lived, beautiful. The range of its actions: art, literature,
music, education, architecture, products, services, lifestyles,
industries. In contrast to accepting the validity of the aspirations of
those nations currently captured by the dream of being developed, this
option goes to development beyond the currently developed. It has the
ability to give agency to much within the cultural and economic history
of a nation that can be used to build a very different developmental
base. Looking for such starting points is what prevents the exercise
being utopian. Certainly, the gigantic difficulty of the ambition is
not to be underestimated, but neither is the gigantic opportunity, not
least for design(ers). For the courageous, this move adds up to vastly
expanded sphere of creative potential, action and reward.
Of
course, making a division between these three relationships is a
heuristic construct - de facto, they bleed into each other.
A closing observation
Reference
has been made to the under-recognised relation between creation and
destruction. This observation now needs to be directly brought to the
relation between design and development.
Development, when
it actually occurs, creates the material and cultural infrastructure of
modern life, but it also destroys much of futuring value in the
undeveloped: tradition, knowledge, memory, craft, taste, slow-time. In
this respect, development first reframes the human condition and then
redirects it. For all the history of its Marxist critique and for all
the countless courses in development studies, development is dominantly
regarded as 'the good or the desired' (depending on whether it is the
experienced or hoped for). And, not withstanding the ambiguity with
which development is viewed by some intellectuals, its underside mostly
resides in cultural spaces of silence. Abject poverty so often is that
silence coming from a lack knowledge abject poverty is a
multi-dimensional lack. Understanding, for example, the degree to which
planetary cultures are under stress; recognising the imperative to
cease human-created atmospheric damage, learning how to adapt to a
dramatically changing climate; dealing with the technologies human
ingenuity has let loose; making sense of the despatialisation of war
that the omnipresent spectre of terrorism has now produced; and,
grasping the politics of these factors - this all presumes a position
of privilege. At its most basic, it means freedom from the immediate
quest of daily survival and a degree of education. Equity, like
poverty, is never merely an economic condition.
One thing
can be concluded with some certainty. Although the complexity of the
issues is daunting, and one can easily get lost within it, this
complexity is unavoidable if ones wishes to act responsibly/ethically.
To refuse this complexity is to drive blind, and so be a danger to
oneself and others. It is chilling to realise just how many designers
believe they are making a contribution to human development while what
they serve undermines the world of both human and non-human dependence.
Author's note
Notwithstanding the impression of
distance from 'the real world' that any overview article gives, the
comments made are not merely the product of research. They are equally
informed experientially, including by critical self reflection on work
undertaken for the ITDG and UNESCO during the early 1970s.
REFERENCES
Amin, Samir (1976) Unequal Development (trans Brien Pearce) Hassocks: Harvester
Baghwati, Jagdish (2005) In Defence of Globalisation Oxford: Oxford University Press
Bataille, Georges The Accursed Share New York: Zone Books
Bernstein, Henry (ed) (1973) Underdevelopment & Development Harmondsworth: Penguin
Castels, Manuel (1996) The Rise of Network Society Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell
Clastres, Pierre (1994) Archaeology of Violence (trans Jeanine Herman) New York: Semiotext(e)
Cockcroft, Jamnes, Andr Gunder Frank & Dale Johnson (1972) Dependence & Underdevelopment New York: Anchor Books
Congjie, Liang (1996) The Great Thoughts of China New York: Wiley
Davis, Mike Planet of Slums New Left Review 26, March/April 2004
Dickson, David (1974) Alternative Technology London: Fontana
Friedman, Thomas (2004) The World is Flat New York: Farrar Strass Giroux
Fry, Tony Design Betwixt Design's Other Design Philosophy Papers No 6, 2003/2004
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri ( 2000) Empire Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press
Hopkins, Terence, Immanuel Wallerstein et al The Age of Transition (1996) London: Zed Books
Leiss, William (1978) The Limits to Satisfaction London: Marion Boyers
Loschiavo dos Santos, Maria Cecilia Design, Waste and Homelessness Design Philosophy Papers No 3, 2005
Mabogunjie, Akin (1980) The Development ProcessLondon: Hutchinson
Papanek, Victor (1972) Design for the Real World London: Thames & Hudson
Sahlins, Marshall (2005) Culture in Practice New York: Zone Books
FOOTNOTES
[1]
The rise development studies as an academic discipline embracing
economic, cultural, environmental, demographic, political and social
change mirrored the pluralistic character of development practice and
the moderation of its politics. Its concerns have effectively been
repositioned by the demise of the authority of Marxist theory, the
degeneration of many nation states in Africa into complete dysfunction,
the arrival of conflict over environmental resources and the
globalisation of contemporary modes of terrorism.
[2]
It should be remembered that one cannot conflate Marx's analysis and
theory with the manner of its appropriation in the creation of
communist states. This is not to suggest there are no problems with his
thinking, it is to say that the political systems these states created
were not necessarily an accurate representation of the strengths or
weaknesses of Marx's theories.
[3] Georges Bataille The Accursed Share Vol 1 (trans Robert Hurley) New York, 1988.
[4]
Amaryta Sen succinctly outlines his view on globalisation and
communication in the Asia Society on-line journal, Asia Source October
26, 2005: www.asiasource.org.news/special_report/sen.cfm
[5]
Both of these forces have received considerable attention for many
decades, not least by the pioneering work of Immanuel Wallerstein,
which was established by his three volume seminal work The Modern World-System 1974.
[6]
Quality posed in this setting is not reduced to a matter of values,
appearance or aesthetic taste. Rather it begs to be defined by
rethinking and spelling out measurable elements like: durability,
performance, craft construction (manual or industrial), economy of
materials, user fulfilment plus levels of attachment to things. Every
one of these elements can be taken as a design challenge open to all
design disciplines.
[7] 'Design Betwixt Design's Other' Design Philosophy Papers No 6, 2003/2004
About this article
This article is the second part of a paper that was originally published by Design Philosophy Papers in Issue 4, 2005.
About the author
Tony Fry is the main contributing editor of Design Philosophy Papers.
He is a designer and design theorist, co-founder of the EcoDesign
Foundation, formerly Associate Director National Key Centre of Design
Quality, University of Sydney. He has had five major books published
and has held academic positions at universities in the UK, USA, Asia
and Australia.