Design Kulturen

The values of being in design: Towards a feminist design ontology

“…This is reflected in the increasingly sidelined and under-valued nature of creative subjects in many contemporary school systems (Robinson 2011). Whilst Sennet (2008) points out that craft, in the sense of form-giving, can be pursued in very wide variety of pursuits; many others see our predominant situatedness as consumers or users, as curtailing our most basic desire for being producers in our own lives (Milev 2013, Ingold 2012, Kjearsgard and Otto 2012 Re-iterating Papanek's (1971) critique, Milev (2013) proposes that the very way in which contemporary western design ontology is constructed means that many are excluded from engaging in the process of basic form-giving and meaning making activities. Importantly, she further highlights that many forms of engagement with production are considered meaningless in disciplinary terms, because the resulting artifacts are considered materially or aesthetically worthless (Milev 2013).…”

“…Whilst Sennet (2008) points out that craft, in the sense of form-giving, can be pursued in very wide variety of pursuits; many others see our predominant situatedness as consumers or users, as curtailing our most basic desire for being producers in our own lives (Milev 2013, Ingold 2012, Kjearsgard and Otto 2012 Re-iterating Papanek's (1971) critique, Milev (2013) proposes that the very way in which contemporary western design ontology is constructed means that many are excluded from engaging in the process of basic form-giving and meaning making activities. Importantly, she further highlights that many forms of engagement with production are considered meaningless in disciplinary terms, because the resulting artifacts are considered materially or aesthetically worthless (Milev 2013). These exclusions and de-valuations are not, as such, confined by sex or gender, but are particularly pertinent to it, because female cultural production and lived experience has been traditionally under-documented because women's often process rather than artifact focused making-practices are difficult to materialise into established cultural artifacts and are traditionally less valued (Parker and Pollock 1981).…”