Fas Lebbie PHD

Assignment 1: Mapping Wicked Problems

Collaborators: Fas Lebbie | Tasha Russman | Serena Wang

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Older adults in Pittsburgh, PA, suffer heavily from the wicked problem of isolation, an issue characterized by its highly complex and pervasive nature. As older adults’ health declines, they simultaneously become increasingly isolated and lonely, contributing to further barriers to their overall wellbeing. For example, healthcare literature cites ample evidence linking loneliness to a higher risk of dementia and other severe health conditions. In Pittsburgh we see this, and other alarming trends in the midst of a $631-million budget shortfall that has left health and social care systems poorly equipped to provide the standards of care that the elders in our community need.

The isolation of older adults has been steadily growing within the context of the recent COVID-19 crisis. This, in turn, badly impacted Pittsburgh’s older residents who both died at a higher rate than expected and were more likely to become isolated because of care home visiting restrictions.

In mapping the wicked problem of isolation amongst older adults in Pittsburgh, we attempt to explore the complexities of this issue at depth, highlighting relationships between these factors and others, and shedding light on that which has caused and exacerbated them.

PART I: PROCESS

1. Establishing the Themes within the Wicked Problem

1.1 Start with STEEP

Our process for mapping the wicked problems of isolation in older adults in Pittsburgh was thorough, with each stage providing further depth to our analysis. We began at the surface level by researching the isolation of the elderly according to the STEEP framework: social, technological, economic, environmental, and political. This allowed us to identify key themes, which paved the way for us to dive deeper into the problems associated with the isolation of older adults in Pittsburgh.

1.2 Identify Key Themes

Our team met again to review the results of our primary research, where we consolidated data into key themes: ageism, capitalism, elder abuse, health decline, demographic change, identity, and COVID-19. Drawing out key themes gave context to the scope of the wicked problem; comparing them permitted the team to define the most salient themes (seen below, marked in black) that would serve as an initial framework to explore at greater depth. Emergent questions from the research included how do you die?, Are older people generational misfits?, What is loneliness?,  and others. **Ultimately, further adjudication and analysis surfaced three major themes that define the experience of isolation among the elderly in Pittsburgh: 1) End of Life Care, 2) Loss of Identity, and 3) Ageism.

Before diving deeper into these elements of the wicked problem and mapping it, the final step was to come up with highlights from our work so far. These highlights were established as essential nodes to focus on as our work developed. Examples included making the research more Pittsburgh specific, showing the diversity of dying and the consequences of dying alone or in the company of family. Furthermore, we established crucial threads that most of the research would center around. These included “accessibility,” “socioeconomic status,” “healthcare,” and “loneliness.”

1.3. Review

The final step in our first phase of research was to take a step back and reevaluate our findings within the context of our original research focus. Isolation of the elderly is an issue endemic to much of Western society and indeed, much of the world. Within this context, and especially as we were working from under the shadow of the continued COVID-19 pandemic, it was important to ensure that our research was accurately situated to portray an accurate picture of the local and present landscape. We went back to the research, discussed again, and marked items that might require further attention.

2. Build the Framework

Confident in our approach, we were ready to visualize our framework, and began exploring how we could best map our findings in a way that would clearly communicate our own ideas, and inspire others to dive in, potentially generating their own.

2.1 What factors are important to communicate?

We began by considering the criteria that our map would have to fulfill. The first was to ensure our map effectively showed how our factors were aligned within the STEEP framework. We created a key, assigning a color to each STEEP category so that readers could immediately determine whether an element was social (pink), technological (yellow), environmental (light blue), economic (dark blue), or political (red).

The other criteria was to create our map with four critical tools: Causal Loop, Conflictual Relationships, Interdependencies, and Affinities. The facets and importance of each are summarized below.

Outside of causal loops, we situated some of the other wicked problems that colleagues were working on, to show how they are interdependent with isolation of the elderly in Pittsburgh. We mapped this by placing the wicked problem inside a diamond, and then connecting blue jagged lines between the wicked problem and the particular nodes that were most relevant. We connected “Poor Air Quality” to the hazardous environment of Pittsburgh and the resultant desire of the elderly to move into rural areas which are more disability friendly and have cleaner air. For “Lack of Access to Healthy Food”, we connected “limited social security funds” which have impoverished many older Americans and meant they cannot afford nutritious food. Next, we connected the wider problem of “Lack of Access to Affordable Healthcare” to the inability of the elderly to stay healthy and mobile. Finally, we attached “Lack of access to Education” to the monolithic view of the elderly, and the assumption that they will not want to participate in lifelong learning. In doing so, we were able to show the relationship between isolation of the elderly to the multitude of other wicked problems in Pittsburgh.

With these tools at our disposal, we were able to begin placing our key ideas onto a large-scale map, with our key on the side to make the meaning of our mapping clear.

2.2 Pivot

After substantial and comprehensive research, we finished our initial placement of ideas onto the map, centering nodes around our three main themes. We were generally satisfied by the result, which clearly expressed each of the three key themes, their contribution to the wicked problem of isolation of older adults in Pittsburgh, and their connections with each other by displaying Causal Loops, Conflictual Relations, Interdependencies, and Affinities across and within the themes. However, we did not feel our map told the story of how the themes were connected, building upon each other to form the holistic experience of the elderly in Pittsburgh. We wanted to create a system whereby individuals could establish the narrative with a single glance.

We needed to take a step back from the research, access what we had found, and design a map that told the story of how elderly Pittsburgh residents become isolated. We discovered that isolation of older adults generally follows the same progression from someone’s loss of identity to them facing ageism and then having negative experiences of end-of-life care. Each of these factors were clearly connected back to isolation of older adults.

PART II: CONTENT

LONELINESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS: THREE MACRO THEMES

Having established our final means to tell the narrative, we were ready to map out the exact nature of the wicked problem. Beginning with our three macro themes, we then defined sub-themes within them and used nodes to provide additional detail.

Theme 1: Lost Identity

A WIDENING ENVIRONMENTAL MISMATCH

Underlying the constructs in our map is the reality that people change as we get older; whatever social adaptations may or may not accompany the aging process, the fact remains that our physical, mental, and emotional selves evolve over time. Indeed, much of the complexity we find around perceptions of the elderly stem from the nature of an individual’s identity, and the extent to which it matches the changing realities in/around them.

One of the hallmarks of the transition into “older adulthood” is that it represents decline from long-held perceived norms; until that point, most chronological evolution has represented growth and/or continuity. This transition is different because, in general, we meet it with resistance. A significant outgrowth of this trend is that our elders experience a profound loss of identity: those who embrace the transition find themselves leaving behind the life to which they’ve grown accustomed. Meanwhile, those who treat their identities as static find increasing dissonance between the narratives they tell themselves and feedback from their daily lives. Both cases lead to a loss of the person they once thought themself to be, which can be a lot to swallow. So, while this transition can cause isolation in-and-of-itself through the inevitable changes it causes, it can also promote feelings of depression, a symptom of which is further isolation.

Our research showed a plethora of immediate implications of such “realities” including a decrease in mobility, cognitive function, and mental well-being, each of which contributes significantly to the characteristics, abilities, and activities that together make up a person’s sense of self. In Pittsburgh, these issues are each exacerbated by the nature of the environment, which is largely not designed for anyone whose needs are outside of “the norm.” That is, while much of the elderly population may have once fit the mold around which the city was built, they no longer find themselves enjoying the same environmental fit.

Unfortunately, this mismatch isn’t just limited to the built environment; it also extends to the technology that could otherwise help bridge the gap. Hardware and software designed for the needs of the elderly is few and far between, and is often incompatible with current technology because the elderly represent such a low priority in the development process. Elders could overcome this if resourced with adequate human support, however, they rarely have access to the care they need.

Theme 2: Ageism

These areas where identity is lost through excessive levels of support lead to a lack of independence, and insufficient support, which leads to isolation, has been worsened by ageism in Pittsburgh. Ageism is a form of discrimination whereby people think differently about one age group. In “Ageism: A Foreword,” Robert N. Butler argues that there are three aspects to ageism against older people: “prejudicial attitudes towards the aged,” “discriminatory practices against the elderly,” and “institutional practices and policies which… perpetuate stereotypic beliefs about the elderly.”

We divided our discussion of ageism into the sub-themes “Elderly Discrimination”, “COVID-19 Amplification”, “Not Allowed to Live Life on their Own Terms”, “Dependence on Government Support”, and “Fleeing from Ageism.”

Our elderly discrimination sub-theme examined the common narrative that older people are weak, frail, and dependent. These attitudes are common and prevent more senior people in Pittsburgh from living as they wish. They may reduce their caregiver’s allowance for them to be independent and make it near impossible for them to gain employment should they wish to do so. In an investigation into ageism and labor markets, Justyna Stypinska observed that modernization has dramatically altered the workplace structure to be less suitable for older people and perpetuated Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that “young people are just smarter.” Therefore, discrimination is a point where the elderly are treated as a monolith which ignores the intersectionality and diversity of ability within the older population and prevents them from playing any valuable role in society.

Ageism is also the first point at which COVID-19 emerges as a crisis point, profoundly exacerbating ageism and how it isolates older people in society. The physical isolation of the elderly turned from a choice to an imperative when it was a necessary means to preserve their health. This was seen immediately in official advice for Pennsylvania when the Department of Aging advised older Pittsburgh citizens that they should “stay at home as much as possible.”

Next, we examined how the elderly are not permitted to live life on their own terms. We identified an array of nodes that prevent the elderly from doing so, such as the likelihood for older adults to be limited by technology, the rarity for inclusive paradigms to take the elderly into account, and the expectation that older adults will not participate in society.

While older adults are kept out of the workplace and from becoming a functioning part of the economy, they are forced into dependency on government support. However, social security funding has been cut heavily throughout the USA, keeping them close to poverty.

This combination of factors can provoke older Pittsburgh citizens to leave the city searching for more rural areas of Pennsylvania, believing that these will grant them more comfortable and mild environments where they can live without discrimination. However, moves like these may make them more isolated from their families, less able to seek support, and can disconnect them from the city they have lived in for most of their lives.

Theme 3: End of Life

The final aspect of an older Pittsburgh citizen’s life is their experience of end of life care, which our mapping of the wicked problem showed that they usually enter into with little of their original identity left and having experienced intolerable ageism. We began this section with a sub-theme on the realities of end of life, considering the older person’s experience and their family from diagnosis to death. Once this was complete, we began to map this final aspect of the wicked problem by dividing it into the sub-themes “Intergenerational Conflict”, “Family of the Dying”, and “Failures to Celebrate the End of Life Period.”

For our family of the Dying sub-theme, we considered the high impact of accompanying a family member into death on people’s mental health. Most notably, we engaged with a study by Siew Tzuh Tang that found depressive symptoms are substantially higher amongst people that provide end of life care to a family member. We then gathered insights on the resources available in Pittsburgh to reduce this impact, such as the Jewish Community Center’s “Aging Mastery Program” which guides attendees through their caregiving journey.

Another significant sub-theme looked into the points of conflict at the end of life period, particularly between the older individual dying and their younger family. We discovered that growing atheism in the USA and Pittsburgh amongst young populations is leading to a reluctance to give meaning to death. While 65% of Pittsburgh residents are religious, Pew research has found that Americans are 9% less likely to be religious than their parents. Simultaneously, older Pittsburgh residents are likely to attempt to reconnect with religion.

The final sub-theme built on from this difference, by honing in on the more pressing failure to celebrate the end of life period. We discovered that the end of life period takes years, not days, and is a significant stage within people’s lives. It could be harnessed to help them celebrate the richness of their life and share meaningful moments with their families. However, we identified nodes that prevent older adults from being able to enjoy their end of life period.  A striking barrier emerged from the medical community, with a study by Jennifer Woo that found doctors tend to consider death a failure, making it impossible for patients to accept it is approaching. Secondly, end of life patients see much higher cases of mental illness than the rest of the Pittsburgh population, and they are most likely to struggle to access the proper help. Studies have revealed that 60% of older adults do not attempt to find support when they need it because of the stigma surrounding mental health problems within that demographic. Finally, poor standards of care often mean that older adults cannot even be comfortable, let alone take part in activities that will tackle their growing isolation.

Therefore, the end of life period is a valuable final opportunity for older adults to extract joy from life. But because of the above mentioned realities and sub-themes, this opportunity has twisted into a driver of isolation of the elderly up to the point of death.

CONCLUSION

Mapping the wicked problem of isolation in older adults in Pittsburgh was a productive activity that generated valuable insights into how the wicked problem develops as the aging individual draws closer to death, showing which themes within the wicked problem are consistent throughout the person’s experience.

Most notably, COVID-19 proved to be a significant crisis point that had brought many of the prominent themes that were previously invisible onto the front pages. Isolation, for example, was one of the most heavily exacerbated. We also discovered that, across all stages, older Pittsburgh residents are coming into conflict with their families. This is particularly tragic as the time aging people can spend with their families is rapidly running out.

Although these themes were consistent, they were experienced more intensely at specific points. For example, conflict with family does not reach a crisis point until ageism is experienced, forcing the older individual away from their families and into rural areas. Similarly, the emotional toll of aging on the aging person’s family is most severe the closer the person is to death.

Our map also showed the deep and complex connection between the isolation of the elderly and other wicked problems in Pittsburgh. Most notably, we saw how poor disabled access and care systems at a point of collapse further isolate the elderly by giving them few opportunities to exist alongside the wider community.

While further mapping the wicked problem would undoubtedly raise more insights, the themes mentioned above will act as crucial nodes to design interventions for when remedying the wicked problem of isolation in older adults in Pittsburgh.

Assignment 2: Mapping Stakeholder Relations

Collaborators: Fas Lebbie | Tasha Russman | Serena Wang

Mapping Stakeholder Relations

Understanding isolation of the elderly through the relationships that exist between the hopes and fears among the elderly, the nuclear family, and the government/policy makers.

Introduction

Isolation of the Elderly – Why it Matters

Older adults in Pittsburgh, PA, suffer heavily from the wicked problem of isolation, an issue characterized by its highly complex and pervasive nature. As older adults’ health declines, they simultaneously become increasingly isolated and lonely, contributing to further barriers to their overall wellbeing. For example, healthcare literature cites ample evidence linking loneliness to a higher risk of dementia and other severe health conditions. In Pittsburgh we see this, and other alarming trends in the midst of a $631-million budget shortfall that has left health and social care systems poorly equipped to provide the standards of care that the elders in our community need.

The isolation of older adults has been steadily growing within the context of the recent COVID-19 crisis. This, in turn, badly impacted Pittsburgh’s older residents who both died at a higher rate than expected and were more likely to become isolated because of care home visiting restrictions.

In mapping the wicked problem of isolation amongst older adults in Pittsburgh, we attempt to explore the complexities of this issue at depth, highlighting relationships between these factors and others, and shedding light on that which has caused and exacerbated them.

We identified three stakeholder groups to map out their relations to each other to understand the wicked problem further: The Elderly, The Nuclear Family, and The Government. A stakeholder is a human or non-human subject (individual or group) that is connected to the wicked problem, from being affected by it to exasperating it. We found that there were no “evil” actors, but rather a web of complex relations that were sometimes in conflict and sometimes in agreement.

Process

Initial Exploration: Stakeholders at Multiple Scales

We began to brainstorm our stakeholders by considering which were relevant at various levels of scale. Each group member-generated stakeholders in isolation, and then we discussed our findings as a team. At the smallest, we had household stakeholders of the older adults. These included visiting doctors and the patient’s family. The next step was a neighborhood level that focused on local healthcare providers and older adults’ experience with them. Care home workers were one such example at this level. We then stepped up once again to the city of Pittsburgh, where we thought about administration and local government. The penultimate level was region and country, for which we situated older people’s rights pressure groups such as the AARP and the US Federal Government. Finally, we tackled the global level by selecting the “UN Open-Ended Working Group on Aging, and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. We added additional detail by brainstorming the hopes and fears for each group and beginning to map where they come into conflict.

Following this process, we initially attempted to categorize our stakeholders into the three themes within isolation of older adults that we uncovered while mapping the wicked problem. They were end of life care, ageism, and lost identity. However, we ran into issues during this process. When we started with end of life care, we found the category becoming clouded, and as we moved onto the other two themes, we realized that there was overlap between all three themes. For example, healthcare workers could be situated in all of the themes. These difficulties forced us to rethink our stakeholder mapping process.

Grouping Stakeholders by General Categories

We realized we had come up with too many scales of stakeholders. Going into depth on mapping stakeholder relations would require us to reduce the number of stakeholders and scale up for consideration.

Firstly, the international government encompasses the activist groups, organizations, and governing bodies that have influence on a global scale. Under the family (nuclear), friends, and healthcare workers buckets we positioned individuals with direct access to and connections with the older adult.  Next, the government and infrastructure creators buckets referred to those who create the environment that older adults must exist within. Similarly, under the services for the elderly bucket we positioned the organizations that aim to help older adults navigate the built environment. Alternatively, the troublemakers bucket referred to the stakeholders who make it harder for elderly people to become active in their communities. Finally, non-human stakeholders featured the natural and built environments that older adults in Pittsburgh must navigate.

Scaling Down

And then for the final 3 stakeholders, we picked them based on who is in the most tension with one another due to the complexities of their hopes/desires and fears and concerns.

We decided to go with the nuclear family because their relationship is very different compared to extended family, friends, and community groups. When considering who holds the most complex relation, we decided nuclear families did because they have one of the closest relationships and dependencies to the related elderly. The nuclear family both wants to love and care for the elderly family members, but at the same time have their own space to live freely. Grandparents were once part of the nuclear family with their children, but having a new relationship with their children where they are no longer part of the nuclear family creates a liminal identity where grandparents aren’t sure where they exist in the family dynamics anymore.

The elderly themselves are a stakeholder and the most important because all the relationships that exist in this wicked problem center around this group. Sadly, the elderly are also the group with the least amount of power. As elders naturally age, they lose cognitive and physical abilities which hinder their autonomy and power.

We took an optimistic stance on government/policy makers, giving them the benefit of doubt that they do in fact want the elderly to be safe, happy, and fulfilled in life. The main concerns the government has surround the feasibility to exact change

Content

Analysis of Relations

A review of relations between The Elderly, The Nuclear Family, and The Government in Pittsburgh surfaced conflicting relationships at different levels of depth. On the surface, all three groups signal interest in the well-being of the region’s elderly. However, a deeper look at the incentives structures below the surface tell a different story, better described as interest in the basic survival of the elderly, as opposed to creating systems designed to help them thrive.

Government <> Elderly

It should be noted that, at their core, all three groups are ultimately made up of everyday people most of whom come from some kind of family, whatever form that may take. As a society and as individuals, for the most part we love our parents and grandparents, we wish the best for our neighbors, and we appreciate the loyalty and continuity that they bring to our lives, our communities, and our constituencies. At both a personal and governmental level they serve as the matriarchs and patriarchs that hold values steadfast even as the world continues to change.

This root that causes friction between vocalized desires and institutional behavior can be attributed to chronological realities of the human lifespan as compared to governmental and systematic bureaucracies. Older adults have just a few decades between when they begin to transition to a more “elderly” way of life and when they pass on. Meanwhile, governmental change is slow, with years passing between legislation getting proposed, passed, and implemented. It’s very possible that a piece of legislation could be proposed with the elderly in mind without getting passed or implemented within the remaining lifespan of those individuals.

Turning to one of the most common forms of governmental support for the elderly, we see that social support systems like Medicaid and Medicare suffer the same issue at a much greater scale. While today’s elders paid taxes throughout their lives to contribute to those who came before them, they are now dependent on today’s taxpayers for their own support. This system has introduced a crisis in which top-heavy age demographics leave a disproportionately large group of seniors dependent on the funds of a much smaller group of taxpayers. This is just one example of a system that may appear to support our seniors without actually doing so to a suitable degree. Other areas where we see government directly fall short include protections against ageism in the workplace, guaranteeing affordable housing and healthcare, providing accessible basic infrastructure such as transportation and technology, and providing opportunities for social support in the community. These issues were all measurably magnified the past two years in light of COVID-19. Finally, while outside the scope of this write-up, it is worth mentioning that one of the deepest fractures between incentives of the government and the elderly occurs when someone dies. Together, estate taxes and property acquisitions make up one of the largest sources of wealth distribution in the country, creating diverse perverse incentives between the health of the government and that of an individual.

Government <> Family <> Elderly

The elderly and their families also offer an initially sunny picture: they love each other, want the best for each other, and are willing to work together to do the best they can. But, here too we see more complexity among the complex dynamics that flow below the surface. We must first look to the same “chronological reality” mentioned above – that is, by nature, the elderly 1) are significantly further along in life than their younger counterparts and 2) generally have fewer years of “productive growth” and opportunity to influence the economy and society than do their younger counterparts.

Our analysis showed little evidence of the government prioritizing support to the elderly, instead focusing on areas associated with more opportunity for “a better future.” The Biden Administration’s latest infrastructure plan, for example, prioritizes young children over older adults. Again we see something that, in theory, everyone can get behind. The problem is that by not providing support directly to the elderly, the government just pushes the problem downstream, where it draws from other budgets and creates negative consequences for other stakeholders.

In one case we have an elder who lives with the support of her children because she can’t make ends meet. When government assistance is allocated to early childhood education instead of healthcare for the elderly, her family ends up footing the bill for her medications. On the one hand, they are grateful to have saved money on the young one’s education. On the other hand, they don’t ultimately benefit from this saving because they’ve now spent it on their mother instead. Even more counterintuitive is the case of the elder who doesn’t have family to turn to for help. In this case, taxpayers ultimately foot the bill because he still gets sick and ends up in the hospital, where someone needs to pay the bill. Worse yet, the bill is likely to be higher if he’s put off the visit for lack of funds.

Returning to the idea that ultimately the elderly and their children generally share compatible goals around loving and supporting one another (characterized as an “affinity” relationship), we can now see where downstream consequences from insubstantial government support can start to complicate things. In short, the family is now put in the position of acting as a conduit of funding for the elders. Indeed, this is more than just semantics – already at risk of being stripped of community, self-worth, and independence, the elder is now put in the position of “burdening” their family by adding costs to their budget. Through the lens of this analysis it may be easy to point to the upstream decisions responsible for this financial breakdown. However, by forcing the money to go through the family, the system inadvertently filters it through the already complex familial relationships. This is just one example of such a phenomenon, but a quick look at failures in infrastructure, accessible transportation, etc surface the same pattern.

Conclusion

In short, our stakeholder analysis shows varying levels of complexity of relationships. Initially it’s easy to walk away with the satisfaction that everyone wants the elderly to be happy and healthy. However, a second look reveals that for funding to ultimately cover the basic needs of our older Pittsburgh residents, it is often forced to filter through family first, opening up second- and third-order consequences in private life that is often already fraught with complexities and dynamics. When push comes to shove, an individual will often get the basics they need to survive. But the more barriers and complexities we introduce along the way create worse outcomes for everyone.

Bibliography

• “Age Discrimination: 25 Crucial Statistics.” SeniorLiving.org, Seniorliving.org, 17 Feb. 2022, https://www.seniorliving.org/research/age-discrimination-statistics-facts/.
• Brooks, David. “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” The Atlantic, The Atlantic, Mar. 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ .
• “Impact of Age Discrimination – AARP.” The Economic Impact of Age Discrimination, The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020, https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/econ/2020/impact-of-age-discrimination.doi.10.26419-2Fint.00042.003.pdf.
• Markwood, Sandy. “What Policymakers Must Know about an Aging America – N4A.” Edited by Amy E Gotwals and Autumn Campbell, National Association of Area Agencies on Aging Policy Brief, e National Association of Area Agencies, Jan. 2017, https://www.usaging.org/Files/n4a_PolicyBrief_WhatPolicymakersMustKnow_Jan2017_final.pdf.
• News, Bloomberg. “After Decades of Focus on Elderly, Washington Turns to Families – BNN Bloomberg.” BNN, Bloomberg, 5 Nov. 2021, https://ampvideo.bnnbloomberg.ca/after-decades-of-focus-on-elderly-washington-turns-to-families-1.1677415.

Assignment 3: Mapping the Evolution of Isolation among Pittsburgh’s Elderly

Collaborators: Fas Lebbie | Tasha Russman | Serena Wang

Mapping the Evolution of Isolation among Pittsburgh’s Elderly

Understanding isolation of the elderly through a multi-level perspective across time

Introduction

In previous posts we explored the wicked problem that is isolation among Pittsburgh’s elderly through a LANDSCAPE MAP and STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS. However, underlying both of these analyses of the present landscape, it’s important to pause to reflect on how we got to where we are today. We focused on historical events that gave rise to the trends (and their evolution through time) that eventually led to our situation at present. To do this, we employed the multi-level perspective framework, through which we mapped events between several socio technical levels: the landscape (i.e. macro-level), the regime (i.e. meso-level) and the niche (i.e. micro-level). In doing so, we situate contributing factors within the greater context of what society looked like, both then and now.

To fully appreciate the factors that led us to our current state, we must first briefly review how transitions and societal change come to pass. To understand this, we draw from Geels’s work in 2005, which highlights societal transitions as changes that occur a) at multiple levels and b) across varying patterns of rhythm and time. Historically, techno-sociologists have long alluded to the many layers of complexity in patterns of change, as well as the idea that the change itself occurs not in artifacts or events themselves, but in the relationships and spaces in between them. Through this lens, we can imagine a timeline as we would a sheet of music; while theoretically it is possible to have many single notes exist in isolation, it is the connections between the notes that combine to create a musical piece itself. Geels takes this one step further, adding what we would compare to the staccato and legato rhythms that characterize those notes and their relationships with one another.

As mentioned above, the MLP framework differentiates three main levels of interplay between factors and relationships. First, we have the Landscape Level, where we see the largest, slowest-moving events, generally characterized by their inertia or accrual over time. At the meso level, we see the Regime, best defined as the “status quo”. Finally, the micro, or Niche level is home to the grassroots. Together, according to Geel, the interplay between these three levels each with their own rhythm and timing, form the evolution of the complex systems we see in present day. This level of nuance fits our historical perspective perfectly; it allows us to chart the most salient elements that rise to the surface over time, and to do so without confounding timing or size for value or influence on present day context.

Process

1. Initial Exploration: What and When

The first question for us to address was how far back in time would be relevant for the team to research. Our map would take the form of a timeline of sorts, so it was important to strike a balance between space constraints and ensuring that we included the most relevant parts of history, however far back they fell.

1.1 What Themes Should We Focus on?

1.2 How Should We Represent Relevant Epochs in History?

The next stage was to take the themes we had identified, and trace them back in history to their most significant antecedents. Ironically, this process was more organic than it was linear. First, we found that charting our first set of data left us with significant chronological outliers; for example, we see the first evidence of senior care among human remains from 500,000 BCE. Certainly elder care is a very important thread in many aspects of isolation of the elderly; but, without any other relevant or related events to point directly to that event or others over the next few epochs, we ultimately decided to drop this node, and other similar ones from our timeline.

After settling on a timeline that would present a suitable canvas to represent the evolution of the problem, we moved onto the next step: how to represent that timeline: should we chart specific years? Decades? What intervals should we use to space out the narrative? How else might we represent time periods in a way that communicates the “when” in such a way that it scaffolds our narrative?

Several iterations later, we landed on organizing our timeline through chronological time periods. This decision was an important one because it represented a move from a more quantitative communication style to a more qualitative one, or a prioritization of holistic/organic > linear. That is, to best situate the evolution of our problem, we wanted to communicate the overall societal and cultural context at that time, as opposed to a more exact measure of “when” or “how long” certain points of a transition might take. Ultimately, the earliest starting point that made sense to kick off our narrative was the Renaissance, which represents a time when, around the world, our elders were held in high esteem for their wisdom and accumulated life experience. Below is a list of all time periods we included:

• Renaissance
• European Colonialism
• Scientific Revolution
• Enlightenment
• Industrial Revolution
• Capitalistic Age
• Technological Revolution
• Digital Revolution

We tested several iterations of this model and ultimately included a high-level timeline outside the main map as a reference point for viewers.

1.3 What are the Narrative’s most Salient Themes?

With the tentative boundaries our timeline established, we populated our map with several prominent events, and set about building the web around them, asking ourselves, “what caused this event?” And, “what else did this play a major role in causing, in turn?”

As with our first research phase, this one, too, was anything but linear. The three of us jumped all over our timeline populating it with contributors to themes we had pulled in our previous analyses: xenophobia, the new workforce, stereotypes of the elderly, and atheism. At this initial stage, our goal was to simply get ideas on the board; our contributions ran the gamut, falling at all levels of abstraction. We threw on sea changes such as The Beginning of the Steel Age and The Dot Com Bubble, and specifics such as a Coverup of a Covid Outbreak in a Nursing Home. There were arrows flying everywhere, looking like a soft of controlled chaos, and displaying the underlying complexities of some of these issues.

We asked questions such as, “can a Niche event both cause, and be caused by, a regime-level relationship?” We grappled as a team to understand the difference between coincidences and cause-and-effect, or roots of a mutual transition as opposed to distinct phenomena. Though time-consuming and at times, frustrating, this process was invaluable because through it, we were forced to confront assumptions we had made about how consequential certain themes might be. More specifically, despite ample pulling and prodding, this process clarified that Xenophobia was not nearly as influential as we had initially hypothesized. In our final steps of this stage, as some themes solidified others did not, clarifying where we could consolidate or trim our fat to better accentuate the main contributors to the narrative: Atheism, the New Workforce, and Stereotypes of the Elderly.

Theme 1: Atheism

Our timeline begins around 1300 AD, in the age of the Renaissance. This era, characterized by individuals beginning to question the church, is relevant to the isolation of the elderly in Pittsburgh because of the implications it has on religiosity more generally and by extension, the meaning we attribute to life and death.

We see this line of thought evolve from the Niche level (i.e. individual scientists getting executed for their work) to the Regime (i.e. status quo) closer to the 1900s. We see this trend mirror a growing gap between the nuclear family (and local community) and their elders; what was once considered an accumulation of wisdom and wealth (at least of love and life experience) slowly shows less and less value over time, as evidenced by the elderly in communities being regarded as peripheral as opposed to core, or burdensome as opposed to sacred. We see this through institutions and literature that group the elderly with the sick and frail, removing them from the fabric of society and thus planting the seeds of isolation for generations to come.

Theme 2: New Workforce

The New Workforce is a term we use to distinguish from The Old Workforce, as opposed to any one specific moment in time. It speaks to a tension that has been present through the ages as technologies are introduced to society (and are therefore considered new), which in turn threatens to turn “current” (at any given time) status quos into relics that will soon be considered old as society continues to evolve. Thus, when mapped onto our MLP Framework, the overall theme sits at the Regime level, while inherently relying on continuous inputs from the Niche.

Our narrative around this phenomenon in Pittsburgh begins in the time of the Scientific Revolution, which is where we see the roots of manufacturing. This is relevant because, while able-bodied-ness was always strongly valued, this was the era in which collective systems began to use this as a basis to discriminate in a much more formalized way. Here in Pittsburgh, this ties closely with the evolution of the glass and steel industries, in essence setting precedent for the entire country (then dependent on both of these industries to fuel the country’s rapid industrialization) to value an individual based on the extent to which they were/n’t able to contribute to their local economies.

First, in our current digital age, we see the continuation of the earlier theme of able-bodiedness take on a new title, accessibility. While it may on the surface appear softer, lack of access to valuable software content, UI, and skills, is just as insidious as the inability to work via the manual labor of Pittsburgh’s roots. As long as we consider the “norm” to be a young, able-bodied person, we are inherently setting up a society in which every single person will, if they are so lucky as to live long enough, be considered “disabled”. Indeed, the norm for both software and hardware developers is to cater to this able-bodied population, leaving anyone with differing physical or cognitive abilities, or even life experience, to find their own way. In the context of the New Workforce, this is nothing short of structural discrimination against any elderly individual who experiences such common symptoms of old age including arthritis, tremors, decreased vision, decreased hearing, etc.

Second, the presence of the digital age brings with it a renewed belief that “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” That is to say, the individuals and systems that influence, and are influenced by, the technology described above assume that the elderly are incompatible with most technology. We see this in a lack of technological training for the elderly, as well as systemic ageism across the workplace (including the talent acquisition that serves as gatekeeper to enter the workforce in the first place). In a context like Pittsburgh’s, in which manual labor is quite literally being replaced by high-tech jobs, one need not look far to see our elders systemically excluded from opportunities in industry, society, and organized community.

Theme 3: Stereotypes of the Elderly

As we see above, the technological and digital revolutions provide a significant uptick in stereotypes among the elderly. Building on the stereotypes that the elderly won’t be able to use technology, we also see evidence of stereotypes that they are considered laggards, preferring to stick to outdated technology long after it’s obsolete. However, we should also note that recent needs precipitated by the COVID pandemic social restrictions proves ample evidence to make society question the soundness of this claim. But, the reality is that despite the availability of such evidence, we see society continue to stick to this unfortunate narrative.

In addition to attitudinal stereotypes, Pittsburgh’s elderly must also weather bodily stereotypes. Again, as mentioned earlier, we see this trend begin back in the 1400s in London, when the elderly were first housed with the weak, frail, and mentally ill. We see this attitude continue through the context of able-bodiedness in the workforce, and finally we see it come to a head in the wake of COVID-19, when we literally cordoned off physical and chronological spaces to keep our elderly separate from the rest of society, lest they “succumb” to the illness. In such circumstances, it is easy to forget that our elderly aren’t a monolith, and that just as we all have stories of friends or family who have suffered from covid, many of us also have stories of the countless grandparents who hardly felt sick at all.

Note: After receiving feedback on our map, we added a few modifications to further clarify several of the connections between relevant nodes. Specifically, several nodes were not visually connected to others, nor did they have explanatory text explaining those connecting lines. All qualitative content remains the same.

Assignment 4: Designing for Transitions

Collaborators: Fas Lebbie | Tasha Russman | Serena Wang

Introduction

For Assignment 4, Team Resilience was asked to consider the problem space that we had previously investigated around Isolation of the Elderly in Pittsburgh and begin to design a long-term vision of a future where this problem had been mitigated and rectified. We did this through two steps: (1) developing the future and (2) backcasting & assessing the present.

In working through this assignment, we carried over the main threads that we had unearthed while mapping the evolution of the wicked problem: (1) a job market that discriminates against older Americans’ skills, (2) a technological revolution that has left them behind rather than supporting them, and (3) environments that are minimally accessible for members of society outside the cultural norm.

Step 1: Develop the Future

Process

Our objective for developing the future was to do so with the ideal in mind, and without regard to the current state of affairs, or what may be considered more/less realistic. We developed a vision of a Future in which the Elderly is an Integrated Cornerstone in Everyday Life in Pittsburgh. This vision was driven by the idea that an equitable future would be one based on connection and belongingness, and that to keep the model sustainable, it must be fully integrated into the systems of the rest of society. It should be noted that our vision was highly informed by several themes we had recently discussed in class: Cosmopolitan localism, Commoning & Mutual aid, and Manfred Max-Neef’s Theory of Needs.

We worked from a futuring framework based on Kosoff’s idea of the facets of everyday life that are divided by levels of scale: the household, neighborhood, city, region, and planet.

The team started by distributing one or two sections to each member to kick off some initial ideation; this allowed us to start several separate threads at once, independently of each other. This was important because we needed a mechanism to solve for both breadth and depth (i.e. relationships across levels) – this was the basis of achieving our desired breadth.

With several initial ideas mapped across levels, we then came back together to review each as a team. Through review and adjudication, we honed our ideas and edited our map. We had two main takeaways from the process; first, it was surprisingly difficult to break free of our but is it realistic mindset. Even with the explicit goal of ideating around an almost unreasonably ideal future, all three team members defaulted to probable AND ideal futures, as opposed to just ideal ones. Throughout the process, we regularly had to reset our frame away from the probable, logical, and sensible and in lieu of the desired, sustainable, and equitable. We similarly defaulted toward narratives and away from scenarios. This reflection is testament to the value of this process: if a team of designers with the explicit goal of changing their dominant mindset has such difficulty doing so, even for a short time, it’s no wonder that evolving a group’s or society’s mindset is such a tall order.

Finally, having completed a satisfactory map, we developed a narrative around what that future could look like, and how the many smaller pieces from the sticky notes could fit together to complete the puzzle that was our vision of a Future in which the Elderly is an Integrated Cornerstone in Everyday Life in Pittsburgh. We invite you to explore the map elements and narrative further below.

Map Content

As mentioned above, we considered what our long-term milestones would look like in further detail according to Gideon Kossoff’s five levels of scale within the domains of everyday life. Below we introduce the content developed in greater detail.

The Narrative to Accompany the Map

THE VISION OF A FUTURE IN WHICH THE ELDERLY ARE AN INTEGRATED CORNERSTONE IN EVERYDAY LIFE IN PITTSBURGH

There is strength in numbers, as evidenced by the comprehensive services and integration by, and for, Pittsburgh’s elderly in 2080. With nearly half the population aged 65+, we see that families, neighborhoods, and communities have adapted to serve the needs of a more holistic, integrated lifestyle that favors our elders. Driven primarily by demographics, capitalism has adapted itself to fit the needs of the day, compounding momentum behind elders’ values, needs, and strengths alike.

At a market level, we see the demographic change incentivize companies and governments to put elders’ first, to be able to capitalize on their power as both consumers and producers. As consumers, The elderly hold enormous spending power; having always been an outsized demographic group, they are now living longer, and with an improved quality of life that allows them more autonomy to control, and enjoy their own livelihoods much longer than previously possible.

This new spending power gives them first priority in the eyes of consumer-facing businesses, who now dedicate vast resources toward better understanding, testing, and developing technology that can drive adoption from this previously ignored user group. Set at the center of technological development in this space, Pittsburgh’s inclusion of their elderly sets an example for the rest of the globe to follow.

With technology that is now being actively designed toward their needs and uses, the elderly enjoy compounding beneficial effects of the digital revolution: they are better able to access, afford, and exploit technologies and the secondary products and services they support. Governments also follow suit; over half of their voting-age constituents are 65+, and services for them can now be easily used to support specific government services.

As producers, Pittsburgh’s elderly are also further empowered. Their quality of life is both better preserved and better supported by the latest technology, empowering them to contribute more quality and quantity to the workplace than previously possible. Within the workplace, this further compounds corporations’ cognitive diversity to include a stage of life not previously represented, giving further voice and visibility to their experience.

Changes in the workplace also cause a shift in the balance of wealth within families, in turn negating the need for younger family members to move away for economic opportunities. With the ability to keep the nuclear and extended family together physically, individuals and families can maintain their ties to place, community, and one another. This allowance is the lynchpin for further positive feedback loops at the individual and community level.

At the neighborhood and community level, individuals and institutions are now incentivized to invest in place and each other long-term. Downstream implications on ecosystem and sustainability still years away are considered critical to present decision-making, because the stakeholders are constant, and have seen cycles of change come and go. Social bonds strengthen over time, and the pace of life slows down long enough for neighbors to reach depths inaccessible in previous touch-and-go culture.

Finally, at the individual level, the biggest contributing factors to the social isolation of Pittsburgh’s elderly have been largely mitigated, if not entirely reversed. Just as groups and institutions are incentivized to invest long-term, so are individuals as they age; they are no longer forced to choose between abandoning their friends and community to be with family, or giving up those they love to stay close to the life they’ve built. Their own needs and abilities couple with those of their family; no longer a burden, they contribute in both income and safety/stability/security. And as they do inevitably age, their need for love, care, and attention couples with those of later generations, from their neighbors and local care workers to their very own grandchildren. “Social isolation” is no longer an inevitability, it is an occasional anomaly with safeguards in place to keep it relatively minimal and benign.

4.2 Backcast and Assessing the Present

Having already forced ourselves to consider the future in a vacuum, the second phase of our work was to backcast from that future and to assess the present, in service of building milestones that would serve as the skull, spine, and pelvis of the skeleton of our future transition plan to a desired future. Note: these milestones are not permanent; rather, they are a mechanism for our team to transition ourselves from just thinking about the future, to starting to consider how we might get there, and what we’d like to take/leave from the present as we do so.

Mapping

We based our mapping primarily on a matrix developed to chart established/existing practices and ways of doing things, and new and emergent ones. We did this through two exercises, completed in the following order: (1) Taking Stock, (2) Envisioning the Long-Term Transition.

Exercise 1: Taking Stock

As seen below, this first exercise breaks the overall transition down into a few more manageable initial questions that separate the wheat (what elements do we want to keep and/or include as we transition*?)* from the proverbial chaff *(*what elements from the present do we want to exclude?).

As we had done in the previous section, our team divided the work across members so that each of us would contribute a variety of content across each theme.

What isn’t working anymore and needs to transition “out”?

The team highlighted several ideas we’ve seen pop up time and again throughout this assignment: workforce discrimination as a root of financial and cultural dependency, lack of opportunity to age in place, and the corresponding tumult in identity and everyday life that transitioning to old age entails. In retrospect, even these three ideas can be attributed to one another in a greater narrative characterized by the positive counterparts to these ideas: one  in which access and support to meaningful work opens doors to a more meaningful and stable sense of self, family, and community.

What should we keep? How can we avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Here we see a variety of ideas that all play into the theme of care work discussed in previous sections. Aspects of current life that we think are important to maintain in the future are care workers to support the inevitable needs that come about with aging, in-family support services, and the spirit of government and corporations contributing to eldercare through pensions and social support. Here we see a direct link to the first phase of our work, Developing the Future, in which care work appears critical across layers at the family level, the neighborhood/community level, and the regional/governmental level.

What existing innovations & practices can disrupt business as usual & ignite the transition?

For the first time, we see significant variety in the responses provided by various team members. Themes spanned cultural innovation (the sexual health movement as an indicator of respect and vivacity), demographic changes (BIPOC elders driving momentum to age in place), and technological innovations (technologically- and socially-based support for community and sense of belonging). After focusing so extensively on the many complexities surrounding present-day problems, our team found it refreshing to begin to frame shift to seeds of life that have already been planted around us. This is distinct from the previous exercise because we were formerly futuring in an entirely fictional world; it was a breath of fresh air to see that there are, in fact, a few building blocks already in place.

What pieces of our future vision are already here in the present?

Continuing the metaphor of seeds already planted, our team cited several pieces we already see in the world around us:  the tech industry publicly setting concerted goals and metrics to support aging generations,  breakthroughs and research in assistive technology that have already been made, and AI-supported infrastructure at scale. It’s interesting to note the homogeneity of the team’s responses to this final question, especially in light of the variety we saw in the last one. This could be attributed to personal experience (we are, after all, studying at a technological university) or it could be indicative of the greater present climate in which most of society turns to technology for innovation and/or solutions, often overlooking less sexy and/or less scalable solutions.

This juxtaposition is also intriguing as a potential bridge; much of what we’ve highlighted as positive pieces of the puzzle focus on distinctly human aspects of life: belongingness, family, care work, etc. Thus, one aspect to further investigate in later work is the extent to which technological innovation could, in fact, facilitate points of intervention that open the door to these human experiences while recognizing its role as a facilitator, as opposed to a replacement.

Exercise 2: Envisioning the Long-term Transition

Once Exercise 1 was completed, we re-grouped to adjudicate and synthesize our responses to be able to map them into milestones set in the short- (5-10 yr), medium- (25-35 yr), and long-term (50-60 yr) range. We framed our milestone as “moments in time;” further detail on each is provided below.

Once we had created the milestones, we each made sure to refer back to the taking stock stage to ensure everything we had stated fell within the milestones. On observing “taking stock,” we concluded that we had been successful and needed only to conduct minor tweaks to ensure a consistent narrative.

Reflection and Next Steps

While mapping our desired future for experiences of older citizens of Pittsburgh, what we uncovered was more inevitability than speculation because most of our observations emerged from considerations of the impact of changing demographics. By 2060, around 150 million Americans will be over 65, accounting for as much as half of the total U.S population. The impact of their consumer and political decisions will become far heavier than it currently is, and therefore government and business must begin to consider how they will account for this new base. Team Resilience speculated upon seismic changes to all families’ cultural and social fabric, the way we care for the elderly, and what value older Americans can add to society. These perspectives of an envisioned future that has dealt with the wicked problem of isolation amongst the elderly may form crucial steps in the right direction for tomorrow’s businesses, government, and community.

Our visions of the future will also form crucial pathways to our creation of Assignment 5 which requires us to translate them into tangible interventions. It will be fascinating to see what ideas we can come up with that are leverageable in moving towards our desired transition.

Assignment 5: Designing an Ecology of Interventions

Collaborators: Fas Lebbie | Tasha Russman | Serena Wang

Introduction

The goal of our fifth, and final, phase of our work around Social Isolation of the Elderly in Pittsburgh was to develop an ‘ecology’ of systems interventions that together lay the foundation for moving the needle on the issue, so to speak. Before diving into the what and how, it’s important to first understand the why. The nature of this, and many other wicked problems, is complex, multifaceted, and situated within layers of relationships and histories. With this in mind, it’s important to understand the many factors at hand within the present, and with an eye toward the future; after all, there is no better time to begin something than the present. Our interventions map was put together with today’s realities in mind: constraints that range from budgets to timelines to geographic/strategic/thematic areas of interest. Our own goal is to represent interventions in both a digestible and situated way, so that any one individual or institution can see both how a single change can make a difference on its own, and/or in collaboration with others. Let’s now dive in.

Process

This final step culminates months of research across several lenses and bounds; reflecting this, we used a matrix that crosses variables we’ve seen in previous phases: one axis charts levels of intervention (from Household to Planet), and the other differentiates type (i.e. Infrastructure/Tech/Science, Politics/Legal/Governance, etc). As a team, our process covered several broad steps, through which we moved from divergent ideas to a final narrative.

First, we took a look at our own work from across the project to prime ourselves on the topics, themes, and conversations that underlie our investigation as a whole. It should be noted that we viewed this final step in our process as one better described by the term curation than design. Indeed, the ingredients had all been laid out before us in the form of our prior work – the question of intervention was less about what and more about the form they would take. For example, there were several themes that came up over and over again throughout our research: ability to age in place, legal protections in the social square and marketplace, and access to transportation, just to name a few. Previous work had also surfaced more grounded ideas such as a workplace benefit for eldercare, modeled after the current parental leave model. In this way, a quick look at our older work armed us with both ingredients and entirely designed solutions already at our fingertips.

Our following session saw us adjudicate and massage at both an idea- and thematic-level. We explored ideas that were half-baked, adding to them where possible, and throwing them out where they didn’t hold water. Likewise, we looked to emergent themes, and expanded them further where possible. A benefit to the visual nature of the matrix we used was that it highlighted vacant spots as immediately apparent; we pushed ourselves to ideate further in these areas, building on themes that had already begun to tie together the rest of the ecology before us. This step was a key one because it forced us to consider areas not as readily accessible in our brainstorm; for example, planetary-level interventions for elders proved more difficult than more localized, neighborhood-level ones. It was important to us that we not discount ideas simply because of a failure of imagination. Likewise, this forced us to recall more areas we had all also overlooked in our review, such as the basic idea of accessible transportation services and other critical infrastructures.

Finally, we again honed our latest iteration of the ecology; we connected the final ties of the ecology, and cut the loose threads where ideas didn’t support one another in the greater scope of the ecology. In truth, and perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those “loose threads” were those same ideas that had been added in the most recent step, as was the case with most planet-level interventions. On the one hand, this may very well represent the bias of our research team and/or the subjective nature of ideation. On the other hand, we believe that both the extra push, and the final trim were both important steps in our process in an effort to build, affirm, and reaffirm the efficacy and collaborative nature of the ecosystem we built. Additionally, this final step reiterated a standing hypothesis that we had carried around the import of locally-based solutions regarding both our own wicked problem, and its overlap with many related issues. Until this final step we had held that “the more local the better” as an assumption; only after adding, and then re-trimming, ill-fitting solutions could we come back to that assumption with a higher level of conviction around its import in the greater scope of the tapestry of solutions.

Content

Our matrix covers several prominent themes, nearly all of which are highly synergistic both between and within each other. Given the constraints of this write up, we will focus on three key themes as a basis for exploring the majority of the matrix: 1) Interventions that make local spaces more livable, 2) Assistance for families who stay in place, and 3) Helping older adults in the workplace.

1) Interventions that make local spaces more livable

Adapting Neighborhoods Disabled Bodies Grants gives communities funding to conduct small scale projects that can make their neighborhood more livable, such as community cleaning projects and the creation of community gardens.

Modeled off of Los Angeles’s Neighborhood Councils, this is a quintessential near-term, local-level intervention with synergies that has both material and non-material consequences. At its most basic level, it is geared toward two ends: creating material changes in local communities to benefit residents and their physical restrictions, and placing the responsibility and autonomy of that process within the local communities most familiar with residential needs. Simple examples of this could look like physical accommodations and accessible infrastructure, or even simple community gardens to support physical and social health. One level deeper though, and it becomes clear that the inputs and outputs also facilitate further synergies with other non-material solutions: projects like community gardens also create spaces for community togetherness and bonding reduces social isolation, and the nutrition from healthy food is much needed for healthy elders and their families. Likewise, locals responsible for allocating funds to help their neighbors incentivizes one another to learn about, and help support, one another; this ties directly to other cited initiatives on the matrix around intergenerational education, support, and aging in place.

Age in place infrastructure Act: all developers must consider aging when creating new builds, forcing them to develop environments suitable for older Americans.

Unlike the first, this second intervention takes place at a City- (or perhaps even State-) level, and over a longer span of time. It would require time to get budget allocated, officials elected, and for plans to get implemented and structures built. Similarly, the results would likely last far longer, taking into account consequences in the far-term like urban planning that situates accessible, affordable housing within easy distance to community and health centers, and other similar areas of key infrastructure. This could directly facilitate elders in the future and their ability to live happy, healthy lives within the same physical vicinity of their loved ones, and would take into account other facilitating factors (like transportation, for example) to facilitate access to other foundational supports in other areas (i.e. other sources of food, income, work, etc). While they work at different levels, timelines, and in different ways, both interventions speak to key human needs cited by theorists such as Max-Neef, and support well-being across levels, timelines, and across other interventions.

A second prominent theme in our ecology centers around the ability for elders to age in place, and/or with their families. Again, we immediately see the ties highlighted above under the Age in Place Infrastructure Act intervention. Building on this, we highlight two more opportunities for political/legislative support:

Age in Place Family Law: all companies must give workers elderly visitation leave. Age in Place Working Law: age-based workplace discrimination is criminalized.

-And-

Age in Place Grants are created to provide a basic level of funding for families to support their relatives aging in place.

Both of these interventions speak to the import of individuals to be able to continue to age where, and with whom, makes the most sense for them, no matter what stage of adulthood they may confront. Just as an individual in their 40s or 50s may wish to live with their nuclear family, extended family, and/or surrounding community, the same agency should be available in the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. As in the examples of the first theme, it becomes clear that interventions target both material and nonmaterial outcomes simultaneously; on the one hand, we see that arbitrary numbers delineating who is “elderly” has material consequences that need to be counteracted; likewise, there are realities that families need to take into account regarding expenses associated with supporting family members of any age. On the other hand, the ultimate goal is as abstract and esoteric as possible: what is the point or meaning of life if you’re not able to spend it with the people you love? And more concretely, how can we move tangibly closer to a world in which these questions may be answered with concrete, affordable action steps that individuals and families can take in their pursuit of a more meaningful life?

Finally, the question of elders in the workplace proved a frequent theme throughout the project as well as this matrix. Here, rather than introduce new interventions, we take this as an opportunity to pause on the highly synergistic nature of the ecology we’ve presented in the matrix; to do so, we’ll look at ideas and interventions already discussed, and weave them more tightly through the lens of the workplace.

First, we see the very straightforward tie between the Aging in Place Legislation discussed above and the import of further criminalizing age discrimination in the workplace. While such legislation has myriad benefits, the most wide-reaching is the autonomy that an individual possesses when they earn a livable wage. Coming full circle, we return to the cycle of yin <> yang with which we began: autonomy can take the form of both material financial spending power and non-material social, mental, and cognitive health. However, a key bottleneck for this lies in the marketplace and the nonmaterial, and centuries-long entrenched societal beliefs that elderly have no place in the marketplace. In order to unlock the vast-reaching gains that autonomy affords, we suggest nudging businesses through incentives of regulation and recognition of the elderly as a growing spending class. Such near-term, tangible legislation is a first step toward a cultural shift in which the elderly are literally and figuratively empowered to cater to their own needs.

Indeed, such a shift would be long, slow, and foundational to a future in which adults of any age could make decisions for themselves as long as their faculties allow. Fast forward to a future when this is well on its way, and we no longer need several of the shorter-term grants cited above. Families would no longer be “burdened” with extra costs of someone who has no way to pay for their own care, nor would communities be “tasked” with researching, deciding, and creating “on behalf” of the elders in their locale.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Our matrix is small, and this write-up explores just an excerpt of the interventions we see possible. The good news in all of this is that the world is our oyster; the complexities we see before us as a society are not insurmountable, and that most interventions we have explored hold myriad benefits across lenses, groups, and categories. Months of diving deep into the wicked problem here has left us more hopeful than ever; the future is bright, and we have seen that just one small strike of a match is enough to light the whole thing up.

Experiential Future Brief

Step 1 – Introduction and Area of Exploitation

This study aims to experiment with alternative transition pathways to post-extractivism within Kono District, Sierra Leone. It seeks to activate the potential of civic duty and a geofuturist mindset to enable the healing of the trauma of exploitation.

Theory – Post-Extractivism

The term post-extractivism was formulated in 2013 by Eduardo Gudynas as an “alternative to development”, posing a substantial challenge to “growth-oriented extractivism” and the destructive model that supports it.^[1] Arturo Escobar explains the theories feasibility.

“The post-extractivism framework does not endorse a view of untouched nature, nor a ban on all mining or large-scale agriculture, but rather the significant transformation of these activities to minimize their environmental and cultural impact. It posits a horizon with two main goals: zero poverty and zero extinctions, to which we need to add, from a political ontology perspective, zero worlds destroyed.”^[2]

Therefore, building contextual interventions through a post-extractivist lens would require two primary considerations, ensuring there are “zero worlds destroyed.” The first of these considerations is, will nature allow mineral extraction in this locality? To assess this, we must consider how the biotech environment will react if we extract non-renewable mineral resources. The second consideration surrounds the available mining practices, asking if they will damage the ecosystem and how will that contribute to global climate change?

Theory- Geofuturism

The second key theory for this study is geofuturism. It offers a more holistic response to the current system, which reduces “life into objects for the use of others” and is constructed around “non-reciprocal dominance-based relationships on [and with] the earth.”^[3]

^[1] Gudynas, E. 2011. “Transitions to Post-Extractivism: Directions, Options, Areas of Action”, Science, 333, 165; Escobar, Arturo. 2015. “Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation”, Sustainability Science, 10(3), 456.
^[2] Escobar, Arturo. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press, 150.
^[3] Klein, Naomi. 2015. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, London: Penguin Books, 169.

Geofuturism offers a speculative vision of humanity that uses resources while preserving the natural capital of a locality and preventing the destruction of indigenous life support systems. It attempts to allow people in localities to practice  in situ resource utilization to balance culture, place, environment, and people.

Step 2 – Research Problem Statement

Overconsumption has destroyed livelihoods, ecosystems, and cultures in the name of excessive extraction of non-renewable minerals and the accumulation of resources. The localities where resources are available have become “sacrifice zones” and everything within them becomes a liability. Indigenous occupants  have become  what i called “sacrifice bodies” as they are forcefully removed from their home, and offered no alternative livelihood.

These sacrifice zones are spread throughout Africa. Its position as the most resource-rich continent has made them vulnerable to unfettered extraction. Cameroonian philosopher Joseph-Achille Mbembe coined the term “necropolitics” to refer to how “the concentration of activities connected with the extraction of valuable resources around these enclaves has… turned these enclaves into privileged spaces of war and death.”^[4] African leaders have been convinced to follow this path of destruction through promises of “progress” within the Western hegemony of development theory. The required ecological and social compromise has left African communities with the existential threat of collapse.

Step 3 – Research Purpose Statement

This study aims to create experiences for grassroots actors within Kono’s non-renewable mineral resource extraction systems. The experiential future will deconstruct the exploitative systems these individuals are trapped inside and introduce post-extractivist theories and the importance of a geofuturist mindset. It will encourage participants to utilize their indigenous knowledge to design futures for their context, thus affirming its value and helping participants leverage their indigenity when creating interventions for the present.

^[4]Mbembe, Achile (2003) “Necropolitics”, Public Culture, 15(1), 33.

Step 4 – Research Questions

The study asks if using indigenous Kono practices and theater of the oppressed methodologies can allow indigenous people in extractivist localities to think/feel just and attainable distributed mineral resource systems (DMRS) that do not require sacrifice zones to extract resources – connects community, nature, and people – and leverages indigenous sovereignty.

• How will the experience allow people to visualize and think/feel place-base  sovereignty without displacement of their land and stewardship over it?
• How can a utilization of Julia Watson’s concept “Lo-Tek” allow the materialization of the future to be “sustainable, adaptable, and borne out of necessity” and therefore ensure that the study does not contribute to further extractivism?^[5]
• In promoting receiving over taking from the land, how can participants interact with ways to have the authority to steward their land contrary to the destructive desires of Trans-National Mega corporations?

Step 5 – Futures and Design Methods

According to the types of futures outlined by Sohail Inayatullah, the study will leverage a combination of critical and anticipatory action learning futures.^[6]

In the critical future, theater of the oppressed methodologies will be used, whereby participants will be introduced to a scene of oppression and encouraged to consider interventions. Therefore, it aims to disturb power relations and the contemporary structure of a system. The choice of post-extractivism as a theory to center the study around also makes it critical, as post-extractivism requires removing exploitative systems and securing ecological resilience.

The study will also be an anticipatory action learning future because it will ask participants to question the future presented to them, considering how a distributed natural resource system will function within their specific context. Therefore, they will be asked to ritualize it by avoiding speculating on a single future but considering its multiple manifestations.

^[5] Watson, Julia et al. 2021. “Design by Radical Indigenism: Equitable Underwater & Intertidal Technologies of the Global South.” Spool, 8(3), pp. 57-74.
^[6] Inayatullah, Sohail. 2007. Questioning the Future: Methods and Tools for Organizational and Societal Transformation. Tamkang: Tamkang University Press, p. 199.

DAY 1

 Experiential Future Ladder

The first phase of the study, thinking about the future, was formulated according to the experiential futures ladder created by Stuart Candy and Jake Franklin Dunagan.^[7]

Setting

The ladder begins with “Setting” as a top-level description of the future. The study is based on the generic image of an apocalypse in  Kono District, Sierra Leone, where the contemporary sacrifice zone has worsened exponentially. The critical future will imagine 2085, picturing a situation where extraction has increased, impacting wellbeing and ecological resilience all over Sierra Leone. Therefore, the present sacrifice zone has become unimaginably more expansive, with all Sierra Leoneans becoming either laborers or refugees in exile in their own land. 

Scenario

The “Scenario” is the next most specific layer, where a particular narrative proposition and chain of events are created that give context to the future. The above-described apocalypse is based on a resource discovery from 2021 of vast deposits of industrial minerals, including bauxite, rutile, and nickel.^[8] These ores are sought after by industrial conglomerates, with bauxite used in aluminum production, rutile used in single-use plastics, and nickel used in rocket engines.

In 2030, this deposit was discovered to be significantly larger and thought of how expansions in the industries mentioned earlier would lead to the West urgently chasing these resources. According to the Mines and Minerals Act, the National Minerals Agency of Sierra Leone enforces mining laws and distributes licenses.^[9] However, Sierra Leone struggles to act autonomously as foreign aid has “economically crippled the country,” “created a relationship of dependency,” and “induced corruption.”^[10] Therefore, Western nations were able to threaten a

^[7] Candy, Stuart and Dunagan, Jake Franklin. (2016) “The Experiential Turn.” Human Futures, 26, p. 29.
^[8] Thomas, Abdul Rashid (2021) “Sierra Leone Discovers New Deposits of Diamond, Bauxite, Iron Ore, Gold, Rutile, and Nickel,” Sierra Leone Telegraph, accessed 03/02/2022, https://www.thesierraleonetelegraph.com/sierra-leone-discovers-new-deposits-of-diamond-bauxite-iron-ore-gold-rutile-and-nickel/.
^[9] Koromoa, Ernest Bail. 2012. “The National Mineral Agency Act 2012.” Supplement to the Sierra Leone Gazette, CXLIII(23).
^[10] Elnour, Amna. 2018. “A Comparative Analysis of the the Role of Foreign Aid in Post-Conflict Reconstruction of Rwanda and Sierra Leone.” Thesis submitted to The American University in Cairo: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, p. 7.

withdrawal of aid should the NMA continue to refuse mining licenses to mining conglomerates. Facing economic destitution, the Sierra Leonean government was forced to comply.

Therefore, mass mining projects began on an unprecedented scale, with growing mining infrastructure, police control, and a refugee crisis turning most of Sierra Leone into a sacrifice zone.

Setting

Within this scenario, the study’s cognitive mental exploration is centered on two aspects. The first is those left inside the sacrifice zones to labor. These individuals live hard lives akin to modern slavery under tyrannical police rule. The second aspect of the experience is those who have been exiled from the sacrifice zones and forced into mass refugee camps on the Sierra Leonean border.

Staging The Experience

For the first section, the participants imagine that they are a group of concerned Kono residents who are meeting to discuss the problems within their sacrifice zone and the measures they could take to mitigate them. The participants would be divided into groups of four consisting of individuals from the same locality. Leveraging the four chair listening exercise presented in week 1 class session, participants will be presented with  six images describing issues within their sacrifice zones. The group members are then given a role each: “Speaker,” “Chair of Emotion,” “Chair of Facts and Emotion,” and “Chair of Motivation.” The speaker then selects an image and describes the problem. The “Chair of Emotion” discusses how it made them feel, the “Chair of Facts and Data” discusses the objective ramifications of the problem, and the “Chair of Motivation” then describes why it is so important the issue is resolved and suggests potential mitigating solutions. This process is repeated to cover all six pictures, and the participants swap roles each time.

Healing with the  Experience

The second section of the experience predicts that the first could be fairly traumatic and therefore participants will consider how this trauma can be healed by imagining how the trauma of displacement might be healed amongst refugee communities. After the civil war, there was a revival of traditional dance as Sierra Leoneans attempted to use their heritage to heal trauma and reconcile divisions. The study imagines that a similar revival occurs amongst refugee communities. Therefore, participants will be asked to participate in a dance event whereby traditional dance experts teach them dances that have been carried out for hundreds of years in Kono with the help and arrangements of cultural artifacts. After taking part in the dance, the participants will fill in a questionnaire where they will consider two aspects. Firstly, did the traditional dance help them regain connections with their heritage and separate themselves from Western hegemony? Secondly, did the dance help in beginning conversations of  healing prior tensions, anger, and trauma that participants felt during the first experience.

Stuff

The final layer of the experiential futures ladder is “Stuff” whereby we must consider the exact artifacts from our future that can be leveraged to give our experience tangibility and materiality. As there are two aspects to the study, two types of stuff are required. For the first experience, the individuals will engage with images published in an underground newspaper, helping them understand the extent to which they act outside of legal boundaries. In the second experience, individuals will wear traditional Sierra Leonean dancing costumes, which will cast Sierra Leone’s past and heritage into the study’s future.

DAY 2

Transitioning to Making Prefered Futures through a game

For the final stage of the study, the participants will take part in an anticipatory action learning game. Having engaged in the cognitive mental exploration through taking part in the experience, they will design a future for their locality through a lens of  post-extractivist and geo-futurist paradigm.

Game Design

Having got back into their groups of four with others from the same locality, the participants will be given two decks of cards and a list of goals. The first deck will be “Sacrifice Zone Cards,” which describe aspects of the future sacrifice zone in Kono. For example, “Pollution and Toxicity.” The second deck will be “Nodes for Counter Power,” which describe potential leverage points from which the participants can design their future. For example, “Indigenous Knowledge and Technology.” Finally, the list of goals will describe participants’ aims when designing their future. These include “Receiving not Taking from the Land,” “Locality forms own Criteria for Success,” and “Ecological Resilience.”

The group will select a “Sacrifice Zone Card” and a “Node for Counterpower Card” to play the game. They will then use their counterpower to design an intervention, artifact, or idea of a future that reconciles the aspect of the sacrifice zone and fits with the list of goals.The team will repeat this several times until they have created their own versions of a post-extractivist and geofuturist world that contextualizes with their localities. At the end of the activity, the groups will present their different futures, observing how they are different depending on the locality of the group.

Step 6 – Anticipated Data Outputs

Having conducted the study, I anticipate an array of data outputs that will inform my research moving forwards. These outputs will vary based on a number of factors surrounding how participants experience the cognitive mental exploration.

Firstly, the primary output will be the emotional response of participants. The study will require them to look deep into a future much like their present, only much more traumatic. Enabling the maximum emotional response will require the experience to give permission for participants to thinkfeel in a profound manner. 

Secondly, it will be fascinating to observe how the participants are able to question their assumptions of “time”. For individuals stuck in sacrifice zones, it can seem that sacrifice is a fact of life. Therefore, how can the study allow them to imagine the unimaginable, and how vital will immediacy prove in granting them an immersive experience?

Sensory vectors will also form a crucial data output and participants will be engaging with the senses of their past. When they hear traditional Kono music, and listen and feel Kono dance, will ancestral memories be triggered, and how will that impact the way they interact with their environment and culture? All these anticipated data outputs will interact with the participants’ experience of the present.

As the temporal space between the participant and the study grows, it will be fascinating to see how the cognitive mental exploration is impacting their actions in the present. Moreover, how will they continue to interact with the future in their everyday lives?

References

• Bell, Jon. 2018. “New Details, Renderings of $94M Diamond Plant Emerge after Groundbreaking in Gresham.” Portland Business Journal. Accessed 02/23/2022 https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2018/06/29/new-details-renderings-of-94m-diamond-plant-emerge.html
• Candy, Stuart and Dunagan, Jake Franklin. (2016) “The Experiential Turn.” Human Futures, 26, pp. 26-29.
• Elnour, Amna. 2018. “A Comparative Analysis of the the Role of Foreign Aid in Post-Conflict Reconstruction of Rwanda and Sierra Leone.” Thesis submitted to The American University in Cairo: School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
• Escobar, Arturo. 2015. “Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation”, Sustainability Science, 10(3), 451-462.
• Escobar, Arturo. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press.
• Garside, M. 2022. “Diamond Industry –  Statistics & Facts.” Statista, Accessed 02/23/2022 https://www.statista.com/topics/1704/diamond-industry/#topicHeader__wrapper
• Gudynas, E. 2011. “Transitions to Post-Extractivism: Directions, Options, Areas of Action”, Science, 333, 165-188
• Inayatullah, Sohail. 2007. Questioning the Future: Methods and Tools for Organizational and Societal Transformation. Tamkang: Tamkang University Press.
• Kimmer, Robin W. 2020. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, London: Penguin Books Limited.
• Klein, Naomi. 2015. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, London: Penguin Books.
• Koromoa, Ernest Bail. 2012. “The National Mineral Agency Act 2012.” SUpplement to the Sierra Leone Gazette, CXLIII(23).
• Mbembe, Achile. 2003. “Necropolitics”, Public Culture, 15(1).
• Thomas, Abdul Rashid. 2021. “Sierra Leone Discovers New Deposits of Diamond, Bauxite, Iron Ore, Gold, Rutile, and Nickel,” Sierra Leone Telegraph, accessed 03/02/2022, https://www.thesierraleonetelegraph.com/sierra-leone-discovers-new-deposits-of-diamond-bauxite-iron-ore-gold-rutile-and-nickel/
• Watson, Julia et al. 2021. “Design by Radical Indigenism: Equitable Underwater & Intertidal Technologies of the Global South.” Spool, 8(3), pp. 57-74.
• Yarnell, Amanda. 2004. “The Many Facets of Man-Made Diamonds” C&EN. 82(5). Accessed 02/23/2022. https://cen.acs.org/articles/82/i5/FACETS-MAN-MADE-DIAMONDS.html

Week 1

Blogs

Natural Resource Systems

Natural resources are the materials that exist in nature that have utility in human economies. They are distributed unevenly across the globe, with the resource type and quantity being determined by the geological processes within that context. There are several types of natural resources, but they can be divided into renewable and non-renewable. My research and the rest of this blog post focuses on non-renewable mineral resources.

This resource lottery has favored Africa as the most resource-rich continent on earth with 30% of global resources. These resources began to be extracted as technology industries grew in the 1970s and 1980s, which required a host of rare metals, including diamonds and cobalt from Sierra Leone.

As the technology industry has grown to unprecedented heights, nature has become a “standing reserve.” In the current natural resources system, ecological collapse is brought about as extractivism grows to reach impossible and exponentially increasing requirements. Environmental impacts arising from resource extraction include air pollution leading to global warming, poisoning of water systems through eutrophication, and habitat destruction while the human and non-human actors within extractive areas are subjected to toxic materials.

Despite the mass exploitation of raw materials in Africa, it has not seen the economic development of the nations it exports raw materials to. Richard Auty has referred to this as the “resource curse”, the counterintuitive phenomenon whereby endowment with natural resources has prevented economic growth. This is because natural resources and the hunger for them has led to “human rights abuses, authoritarianism, civil conflicts, and wars.  Furthermore, Western importers stubbornly refuse to pay the actual value for Africa’s natural resources, forcing its people to labor intensively for little reward. A striking example is Sierra Leone’s diamond industry, which exports $250 million of rough diamonds annually, which are then cut and sold for $6 billion..

However, extractivist states struggle to exit this system and seek alternative means of sustenance because they are caught within a neoliberal trap of free trade and conditional aid. In “An Aid Institutions Paradox?” Todd Moss and his colleagues conclude that international aid makes leaders accountable to the needs of the international community rather than their citizens. As their primary motivation is to keep money coming in so that they can survive in the neocolonial system, they are unable to break from it and must continue to allow unfettered extraction in their nation.

A Speculation Towards the Role of Transition Design in Natural Resource Systems

From the Berlin-Congo Conference until the present day, Africa has existed as the periphery whose resources have fueled Western development. Development theories brought to Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, have forced it into extractive obesity with aid tying the continent to the demands of the West. African leaders have become complicit in this extractive obesity, unable to reconcile the challenge of developing to provide for their people against securing the resilience of their ecosystems. This blog post will speculate on what Transition Design can offer to rectify these difficulties. 

Distributed Natural Resources Systems (DNRS)

Natural resource systems, the processes by which we extract and utilize natural resource opportunities, are a wicked problem of overwhelming scale. We extract 100 billion tonnes of raw materials annually when the world can only sustain half that. Mining this vast quantity of raw materials necessitates the exploitation of natural resource communities to the extent that they have become sacrifice zones. The people and communities within them are regarded as disposable to feed our uncontainable consumerism.

“Distributed systems operate on the basis of decentralized elements that become mutually linked to wider networks.” Reconciling the contemporary natural resource system into a DNRS will end extractive obesity by leveraging “communication networks, small-scale technologies, and distributed consumption and production systems,” with the aim of increasing the proximity between producers and the consumers. This heightened visibility will inspire the creation of interventions that lessen the extraction burden on sacrifice zones and changing the ways that natural resource economies function.

For those who have access to surplus resources in contemporary natural resource systems, welfare can be enhanced while also lessening the resources required through commoning, whereby resources are publicly owned and allocated within nested systems of mutual aid. The Nieuwland project in Amsterdam set a fascinating precedent of energy commoning, in which shared living spaces were created, and members of the collective were allocated resources and energy as required. Such living methods hold the keys for degrowth, as detailed in the below section, through the democratization of natural resources.

Meanwhile, in areas with insufficient resources, the priority of reformulated DNRS should be to prioritize the localities’ needs by reducing the exploitation of their resources, giving them the freedom to sustain themselves through in situ utilization. Experimenting with post-extractivism may allow localities to utilize their resources sustainably, and encouraging entrepreneurial endeavors may activate economic opportunities. Activating the power of the local will be particularly challenging in Africa, a continent from which design movements seldom emerge. In the subaltern world, substantial movements often emerge from a South American context. Buen Vivir is a key example of this. So therefore, designers must consider how African indigenous knowledge can be leveraged to form movements for a DNRS within an African context.

Transitions like that required to create a pan-African unity behind a post-extractivist movement are not designed but are emergent, as is displayed through Escobar’s concept of “crisis and transitions.” Escobar argues that after a time of crisis, populations become more malleable to the next regime in their hunt for stability. There are precedent cases of transitional periods successfully occurring after African crises, as was seen after the Rwandan Genocide. The president was able to leverage the transitional “readiness” of the population for “the construction of six green built secondary cities and the modernization of the capital.” Therefore, can mindsets and postures that display “readiness” for transition be found as a result of the growing crisis in Africa’s natural resource systems.

Reformed DNRS are not only inward-looking but will also benefit from connecting the local to the global. Sustainable models can be created that center economic benefits for localities and allow them to be visible worldwide. The answer to finding this connection may lie in a blueprint that combines degrowth with post-development theories, as is tackled below.

Degrowth and the Challenge of Post-Development in African Nations

Alternative solutions to this wicked problem have emerged from the Global North and the Global South: degrowth and post-development. These concepts currently exist independently of each other and, in their current form, cannot be taken as rectification of DNRS.

Degrowth has emerged in the West as a challenge to the idea that renewable energy alone will be enough to prevent environmental collapse. It argues that as the economy grows, the energy use required will grow too fast for renewable energy to be introduced before ecological collapse.

Degrowth, therefore, challenges “economic growth as the number-one arbiter of what societies do” by proposing a period of “economic contradiction or downscaling” in the West to bring our consumption in line with the rest of the world.

Degrowth economists such as Serge la Touche and Giorgios Kallis haveproposed thatabandoning GDP as a metric of success will not lead to a decline in welfare, allowing oureconomies to be recentered around human needs.14Should these inalienable needs be de-commodified, they could be satisfied with far less capital.This idea also has decolonizing potential as it would free Global South sacrifice zones from thenecessity to extract natural resources at unsustainable rates as the Western industries theyfeed would no longer require ever-increasing yields.

However, the challenges felt by African societies has led degrowth to be unsuitable for thatcontext. The means to sustain life are abundant in the Global North, but a pragmatic roadblockis hit in the Global South. African leaders must ask, how can we secure the welfare of ourpeople without bringing ecological collapse to our ecosystems?

Post-development has emerged to answer this question, responding to development theoriesthat colonizers forced upon the continent in the mid-20th century. It argues that developmentisa “ruin in the intellectual landscape” and “alternative to development” are more appropriate forthe Global South.15These development theories brought Africa into the Western idea thatwelfare can be secured by maximizing economic growth. A “crisis of aspiration” has emergedfrom development theory, whereby African leaders consider themselves to have failed if they donot bring their economies closer to Western productivity levels. In many cases, they have givenfree rein to trans-national mega-corporations who extract their country’s resourcesunsustainably with tainted promises of providing jobs and economic progress.

Post-development can potentially end this self-destructive behavior by ending theconceptualization of the West as advanced and the South as backward. Freed from Westernhegemonic ideas of growth, global south communities can set their own agenda fordevelopment, able to prioritize individual wellbeing and ecological resilience.

These ideas undoubtedly can contribute to the conclusion ofextractive obesity and theecological destruction that comes as a result in their respective areas. However, unless theycan be brought together to work in conjunction, global natural resource systems will not bereformed. As my research progresses, I must search for the connection between degrowth andpost-development and ask whether interactions with natural resources can act as a crucialtouchpoint.

To speculate on what this blueprint for dismantling the “architecture of economism” may looklike, it could allow the global South to take ownership of their natural resource opportunities andsustain themselves through the in situ utilization of these resources. Meanwhile, a period ofglobal “degrowth”-particularly in the north-would end the consumptivepractices driving theneo-colonial practices that push the entire planet to destruction.

Post-Extractivism

Such a blueprint could be the gateway to a post-extractivist utopia, as imagined by EduardoGudynas.16Post-extractivism could increase the proximity between sacrifice and privilege zonesby reducing the burden of extraction on Global South communities. Arturo Escobar summarizesthe role that Gudynas’ theory would have after the dismantling “economism”:

“The post-extractivism framework does not endorse a view of untouched nature, nor a ban on allmining or large-scale agriculture, but rather the significant transformation of these activities tominimize their environmental and cultural impact. It posits ahorizon with two main goals: zeropoverty and zero extinctions, to which we need to add, from a political ontology perspective,zero worlds destroyed.”

Therefore, to design a post-extractivist DNRS would mean asking two fundamental questionsthat the resource utilization infrastructure could be designed around. Firstly, will nature allowresource utilization in this specific place? Answering this question requires investigating whetherthe ecosystem is stable enough to remove resources from it. Having concluded it is possible todo so, considering the feasibility of extraction based on the practices available is required. Thisinvestigation must ask, will our mining practices significantly undermine the resilience of thisecosystem?

Transition Design andthe Ecologizing Technology in Natural Resource Systems

Simply generating frameworks for degrowth, post-development, and post-extractivism isinsufficient to heal the wicked problem of extractive obesity, generating systems-level change.Ivan Illich argues that we should seek transitions from selfish and destructive industrialcapitalism to convivial societies driven by mutualism.

While a DNRS must center around Illich’s convivial societies, designers cannot ignore the factthat businessis deeply embedded within the current system, and will be near impossible todisplace. Business forms an ever-present force in our everyday lives that drivesoverconsumption and surplus in the name of progress, growth, and profiteering.

Therefore, if aDNRS will require some elements of the contemporary capitalist model for it tobe possible, can business be altered to focus on ecological resilience to the same or a greaterextent than the profit motive?Altering the nature of business will not be easy,but it is necessarybecause it has formed a pillar that, as Thomas Berry argues, keeps “the story in place frombeing replaced.”19Therefore, Transition Designers must ask, how can we reorientateentrepreneurs’ and business’ goals and solve the business question for Transition Design? Andhow can we present social innovation as a legitimate form of entrepreneurship?

Current Transition Design techniques that are centered around mapping stakeholder relations,identifying tensions, and proposing interventionsthat can heal the tensions may be insufficientfor natural resource systems. Natural resources supply chains are complicated and fractal in theextreme, built upon layer after layer of sub-contractors, each of whom exploit the sub-contractorbelow them tomaximize profits.20Reconciling this near untraceable supply chain exploitationwill require Transition Design to provide interventions that can persuade all actors within it tomove away from the profit motive, and cease their exploitation.

Whether thisis even possible within Pope Francis’ conceptualization of a “technocraticparadigm” is questionable. Pope Francis observes how this contemporary paradigm is soembedded in society that our ability to act and change has faded as we are controlled by new“blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, or self-interest, and of violence.”

Francis observes that technology is here to stay, and assuming this is the case, is it possible torepurpose and reimagine this innovation? Is it possible to shift the goals of business’technological progress to enhance “human dignity,” “social justice,” protect the “intrinsic value ofnon-humans ( biocentrism),” and ecological sustainment? An accomplishment of this task willbegin to turn the tides of our current landscape. Yet, these goals may be contradictory totechnology itself. Perhaps with the process, development, and use of modern technology, therelies fundamental mechanistic and reductionist tendencies that decontextualize everything ittouches for the sakeof progress and optimization? And perhaps the issue is furthered still if weconsider that the issue is not with technology itself, but with a society that has embedded thesewicked problems within it. Therefore, can we ever imagine technology as somethingthat can beecologized, or must this happen within wider systems change?

Precedents for the Ecologization of Business

Luckily, there are precedents of organizations that have created interventions to alter business’motivations and break the connectivetissue that holds exploitative stakeholder relationshipstogether. For example, B Corp has aimed to “make business a force for good” by guidingenterprises on how they may “alleviate poverty, preserve ecosystems, and build strong communities and institutions.” They provide resources that help businesses to measure theirimpact, measure their alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and getinvolved with community collective action.

A company that B Corp uses as their model business for ecologization is the clothing companyPatagonia Works, who they have awarded with a 151.4 “Overall B Impact Score.” This is 100points higher than the median business and 71 points higher than their boundary score for BCorp Certification. B Corp notes that Patagonia aims to “cause no unnecessary harm” byrecognizing that their activities are part of the environmental problem and therefore changingtheir business models accordingly. Patagonia also aims to “use business to protect nature,”therefore going significantly further than simply reducing harm.23A key example of this is their“Regenerative Organic” program which pushes back against industrial farming to prioritize“pasture-based animal welfare, fairness for farmers and workers, and robust requirements forsoil health.”

Moving forwards, my research will use cases like Patagonia Works and other B Corp certifiedcompanies to ask what counts as Transition Design for natural resources, business, andtechnology within the dynamic African context and for the natural resource space in Kono? Thisquestion will help designers to consider how Transition Design can account for aspects ofeveryday life such as business relations, sickness, and education. If Transition Design canoperate within these systems, it maybecome practical, not just theoretical.

Processes for Interventions in the Natural Resources Space

Framework 1

A roadmap for making natural resource systems sustainable on a local and global scale.	Begin a creative and interdisciplinary movement for a wave of natural resource systems reformation and interventions.	Resilient responses to the ongoing crisis continuum.
Action Plan Turning challenges within natural resource systems into opportunities for economic empowerment and welfare enhancement.	Action Strategy Combining degrowth and post-development as a new cultural project globally.	Systemic Intervention Program Developing resilience in DNRS through designs with intentionality.

Framework 2

Phase No. and Description	Approaches
1: Reframing: Past and Present	Mapping the Problem The History of Natural Resources research project is used to map the evolution of the wicked problem, and how natural resource epistemologies change over time.   Mapping Stakeholder Concerns The deployment of a pilot study in Kono that will engage with the indigenous people to gauge their thoughts on land and extractivism.   Developing visions of the Future Creating an experiential future for the Kono people, where they can experience their natural resource system reaching an even greater crisis point, and consider pathways for transition.   Backcasting to Create Transition Pathways Lorum ipsen[1]
2. Designing Interventions	Multi-Level Perspective Leveraging a reformed ecocentric cosmopolitan localism to engage stakeholders at all levels at the local level, while connecting them to global systems.   Domains of Everyday Life Applying transition design principles to the organizations and institutions that stakeholders are in constant contact with: TNCs, Government, healthcare, and education.   Max-Neef’s Theory of Needs Ensuring that the designed interventions follow Ezio Manzini’s SLOC framework, ensuring they enhance the wellbeing of the Kono people while connecting with other communities globally.   Social Practice Theory and Design for Behavioral Change Developing means to gauge and create readiness for transitions through facilitating mindset change.   Winterhouse Social Pathways Matrix Lorum Ipsen[2]    Linking and Amplifying Connecting with pre-existing land reclamation projects run by Resolve to enhance the work they do in creating alternative livelihoods to diamond mining in Kono.
3. Waiting and Observing	Slow Knowledge/Long Time Horizons/Patience Aiming to make small and meaningful impact rather than aiming for a single intervention that will facilitate systems change, with the hope that the small impacts will build in scale over time.   Design with Living Systems Principles Reacting to emergent changes amongst the Kono people, and designing interventions accordingly, not forcing interventions onto them.   Speculation vs Certainty Reacting pragmatically to developments and adjusting interventions accordingly, therefore ensuring that interventions can work in symbiosis with local communities and their ecosystems.

References

• Carrington, Damian (2020) “World’s Consumption of Materials Hits Record 100bn Tonnes a Year,” The Guardian, available online https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/worlds-consumption-of-materials-hits-record-100bn-tonnes-a-year, [accessed 02/11/2022.]
• Clay, Karen (2010) “Natural Resources and Economic Outcomes” in Economic Evolution and Revolutions in Historical Times, ed. by Paul Rhode, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Crawford, Kate (2018) “Anatomy of an AI System: The  Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources”, Anatomy of AI, available online https://anatomyof.ai/, [accessed 02/15/2022]
• Downey, Liam et al (2010) “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation”, Organ Environ, 23.
• Duruigbo, Emeka (2005) “The World Bank, Multinational Oil Corporations, and the Resource Curse in Africa”, U. Pa. J. Int’l Econ. L., 26, pp. 1-67.
• Escobar, Arturo (2017)  Designs for the Pluriverse : Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Duke University Press, Durham, N.C.
• Gudynas, E, (2011), “Transitions to post-extractivism: directions, options, areas of action”, Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America, Permanent Working Group on Latin America, pp. 165-188.
• Handby, Michael. (2015) “The Gospel of Creation and the Technocratic Paradigm: Reflections on a Central Teaching of Laudato Si.” Communio. 42. pp. 724-747.
• Hudani, Shakirah Esmail (2020) “The Green Masterplan: Crisis, State Transition and Urban Transformation in Post-Genocide Rwanda.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44(4), pp. 673-690.
• Illich, Ivan. (2001) Tools for Conviviality. Marion Boyars.
• Irwin, Terry (2018) “The Emerging Transition Design Approach”. Design Research Society Conference, University of Limerick.
• Kallis, Giorgos (2011), In Defense of Degrowth: Opinions and Minifestos, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
• LaTouch, Serge (2004) “Why Less Should be so much more: Degrowth Economics”, Le Monde Diplomatique, pp. 1-5.
• Kinsella, William J. (2007) “Heidegger and Being at the Handford Reservation: Standing Reserve, Enframing, and Environmental Communication Theory.” Environmental Communication, 1(2), pp. 194-217.
• Kossoff, Gideon (2019) “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place.” Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, 73, pp. 51-66.
• Lebert, Tom (2015) “Africa: A Continent of Wealth, A Continent of Poverty”, New Internationalist, Available online https://newint.org/blog/2015/06/24/africa-a-continent-of-wealth#:~:text=Their%20absence%20speaks%20volumes.,significant%20oil%20and%20gas%20reserves, [accessed 02/15/2022].
• Matthews, Sally (2004) “Post-development Theory and the Question of Alternatives: A View from Africa”, Third World Quarterly, 25-2, pp. 373-384.
• Moss, Todd et al (2005) “An Aid-Institutions Paradox? A Review Essay on Aid Dependency and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa”, The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, 11, pp. 1-26.
• “NieuwLand”, available online https://nieuwland.cc/, [accessed 02/15/2022]
• “Patagonia Works.” B Corporation. Available online https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/patagonia-inc/, [accessed 03/07/2022.]
• “Programs & Tools Overview,” B Corporation, available online
• https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools, [last accessed 02/11/2022]
• “Why Regenerative Organic?” Patagonia Works, available online https://www.patagonia.com/regenerative-organic/, [accessed 03/07/2022.]

Wireframe

Constants

DNRS at a local and a global scale.

Overall Goals

(1) pragmatic solutions that prioritize localities’ needs and reduce exploitation in natural resource extraction. (2) Activate opportunities of sustainable models that center “economic” benefits for localities and engage in new ways of connecting the “local” to the “global.”(3) Experiment with alternative transition pathways to post-extractivism through speculative experiential futures.

Blog Theme

Course introduction: raising key framings and ideas that Transition Design raises for DNRS generally.

Natural resources have clear colonial connections.

Key Insights

• Degrowth and the Challenge of Post-Development in African Nations – Interesting friction between degrowth and post.
  • Degrowth needed in West, because the more you grow, the higher your energy demands are. Therefore changing how we gain energy isn’t enough.
    • Scaling down material economy because that is the main use of energy.
    • A fall in GDP doesn’t necessarily mean a fall in people’s welfare, but thinking it is justifies perpetual growth and extraction.
      • Abandon GDP as an objective, and refocus on what people actually need.
      • Scale down unnecessary and destructive industries.
      • Sharing necessary work more equitably.
      • Decomodify public needs, so that we need less private income to flourish.
    • Degrowth as decolonizing because it frees global south sacrifice zones from extraction.
  • Degrowth economies don’t work in the Global South, because a degree of development is required for their sustenance. .
  • A concept based on how the West is increasing their consumption and causing ecological collapse. They must work out a way to reduce their consumption to protect the environment.
  • Post-development created in response to the development ideas brought to the global south by the West in the 60s and 70s.
    • Development ideas have come to hinder the global south.
      • Aid and NGOs coming in to develop Africa.
    • Dilemma for African leaders is that they want to develop and industrialize, while at the same time reducing extraction and ecological collapse.
      • Real issue that challenges the global potential of degrowth.
  • Key Question – What can Fas bring that can connect degrowth and post-development?
    • Removing paternalism, development theory, aid etc.
    • How can the two theories touch each other through interacting with DNRS?

Key Questions for DNRS at a Local and a Global Level

• What counts as Transition Design in entrepreneurship/business?
  • Can there be ethical consumerism under capitalism?
    • When capitalism itself is the problem
  • How can entrepreneurship be reorientated?
  • What does it mean to take seriously the insights of Transition design in business/entrepreneurship work?
    • B Corp
    • La Patagonia
  • How does the state become an adversary for transition design?
    • 60% ish of mining lands owned by TNCs (check)
  • Finish with, what counts as Transition Design? What counts as TD for natural resources, business, and technology?

Week 2

Blogs

Wicked Problems in the Natural Resources Space at a Local and Global Level

In their 1973 article “Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning,” University of California scholars Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber created their “wicked problem” concept. They observed that science tended to deal with “tame” problems and ignore the “complex workings of open societal systems.” Transition design emerged to tackle these “unsolvable” problems by intervening in societal transitions. It leverages “wicked problems” to diagnose the complexity of issues within a space and map potential interventions that could form mitigation.

However, globally applying the “wicked problems” framework that emerged from a contemporary western landscape is insufficient as fundamental Western theories are rarely effective in non-Western contexts. In “Wicked Problems in Africa: A Systematic Literature Review,” Niskanen, Rask, and Raisio understand the “limitations of using the concept in a non-Western frame of reference.” They observe that articles on “wicked problems” in Africa constituted just 3% of the total, often because the issues described as “tame” when Rittel and Webber created “wicked problems” are of utmost seriousness in Africa.^[1] Examples include infrastructural problems, severely restricting people’s movement in Africa, and creating isolation between rural areas and population centers.

Furthermore, “wicked problems” challenge to “tame” problem solving is peculiar to a pertinent criticism of “technical problem-solving approaches” that were emergent in the United States during the 1970s. This criticism of “technical problem-solving approaches” was less at the forefront of public discourse outside of the West. Therefore, if the societal framing posited by Rittel and Webber holds little relevance in other contexts, it calls into question the ability of “wicked problems” to diagnose issues in the global south.

Do Non-Renewable Mineral Natural Resource Systems Qualify as a Wicked Problem?

Beyond this critique of “wicked problems,” it is worth considering if non-renewable mineral natural resource systems even fall within the boundaries of “wicked problems.” In “Transition Design as a Strategy for Addressing Urban Wicked Problems,” Irwin and Kossoff establish six critical facets of “wicked problems” that can be taken as criteria when establishing if something is a “wicked problem.” The following section will show how non-renewable mineral natural resource systems and the extraction of non-renewable resources fit these criteria.

Multi-scalar, Multi-Causal, and Interdependent “Wicked problems are “multi-scalar, multi-causal, and interdependent,” meaning that they exist from a local to a global level, are caused by an array of social, cultural, and political factors which are connected with other “wicked problems” as part of nested, interdependent systems. The multi-scalar nature of non-renewable mineral natural resource systems is explicit because there are many problems from a local level – ecological destruction, exploitation, sacrifice zones – to a global level (climate change, neocolonialism.) Moreover, problems of non-renewable mineral natural resource systems are multi-causal and connected to broader wicked problems. The most significant of these is Capitalism and the overconsumption that results. Embed within this economic globalization is extractive obesity and “social inequality and social exclusion.”

Self-Organizing

Kossoff and Irwin note that the essential component of “wicked problems” is “people.” They argue that society is constructed from the principles of “chaos and complexity theories,” and therefore, how it will respond to interventions is “self-directed,” “unpredictable,” and generates “emergent forms of behavior.”

We can find self-organizing behavior throughout non-renewable mineral natural resource systems, notably in acquiring mineral resources to construct electronic products, as can be seen from Phillips’ tens of thousands of contractors and sub-contractors within their untraceable supply chain. This unfathomable quantity of mining, sourcing, transportation, and manufacturing firms shows how when a technology company orders minerals, the non-renewable mineral natural resource systems self-organize to fulfill the requirements.

Multiple Stakeholders with Conflicting Agendas

Conflicting stakeholder relationships adds further complexity to “wicked problems,” with each stakeholder – human and non-human – holding different positionalities inside the problem and having alternative ideas of how they should solve the problem.

As is the case in non-renewable mineral natural resource systems, it is not guaranteed that all stakeholders will acknowledge there is a problem. It is prevalent in non-renewable mineral natural resource systems as it is common for a stakeholder to exploit another stakeholder. It took the leaking of the Panama Papers in 2016 for Kono’s primary mining firm Octea’s exploitation of the local community to be revealed. Discoveries that Octea owed $150 million in loans to Tiffany and Co. and Standard Chartered Bank led to investigations revealing that Octea had agreed to 5% profit sharing with the local community and 1% annual profit contribution to the community development fund return for tax breaks. The following blog post will go into more detail by mapping the stakeholders within non-renewable mineral natural resource systems, showing how cases like these have exacerbated wicked problems.

Moreover, the conflicting agendas of stakeholders are further complicated by the fact that they may have agendas that are not in their best interest. The global “crisis of perception,” which is used by Capra to refer to how most people and institutions “subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview” within “a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world,” has manifested in Africa through the “crisis of aspiration.” I have observed this amongst the Kono community that has emerged from development theory. This colonial influence has convinced many Kono’s that they must match Western hegemonic development even if it leads to a destruction of their traditional values, indigenous knowledge, and ecosystems.

Feedback Loops

“Wicked problems” are exacerbated by positive feedback loops, which amplify the effects of an intervention, and are sustained by negative feedback loops, which exist as barriers to resolutions. Kossoff and Irwin explain how difficult it is to remove negative feedback loops, stating,” the habits of a lifetime cannot be broken via a single financial incentive, so the potential for change is “damped down” by the feedback loop of entrenched, non-sustainable behavior and practices.”

Both positive and negative feedback loops are present throughout non-renewable mineral natural resource systems. A key node that prevents resolution is the tendency for the police to side with mining conglomerates, making it impossible for locals to challenge ecologically and socially destructive operations. Events such as those in Bumbuna in 2012, where police shot live ammunition at unarmed protesters leading to one woman’s death, are commonplace in non-renewable mineral natural resource systems sacrifice zones.

Another prevalent feedback loop that furthers the severity of sacrifice zones amongst extractivist populations is that of population growth and poverty, which Capra argues is a “self-amplifying feedback loop.” This is because almost every human actor consumes technologies that are “energy-intensive and fossil-fuel-based.” The more that population grows, the further resources are required to sustain their consumption. This leads to further extraction being required and then resource depletion. Once resources are depleted, extractivist may either expand their extractivist operations at the detriment of their local ecology and the wellbeing of indigenous people or accept reduced yields and the resultant financial insecurity.

Straddling Institutional, Disciplinary and Sectoral Boundaries

An important note for “wicked problems” to separate itself from other problem-solving approaches is its ability to cross disciplines, institutions, and areas of expertise. In non-renewable mineral natural resource systems, the “wicked problem” is economic (how the value of resources are shared), political (who gets to decide which resources are extracted), and cultural (how much overconsumption exacerbates the issue).

Manifesting in Place, Cultural, and Ecosystem-Specific Ways

We can find the same “wicked problem” in multiple contexts. However, how people experience the “wicked problem” will vary as the “wicked problem” will encounter others unique to that context. Kossoff and Irwin rightly use the example of water shortages as a “wicked problem” that manifests differently where there is also the “wicked problem” of gender inequalities. They note a unique character arising from the cultural expectation that women and girls will trek miles to gather the water.

Thoughts on Place

“Place,” as described by Tim Cresswell in his enlightening book Place: An Introduction, is a concept that is powerful in both simplicity and complexity. Cresswell explains how it is “not a specialized piece of academic terminology” but a “word we use daily in the English-speaking world.” Its usage has led to the assumption that it is a simple term used by all with common sense, but complexities have allowed “place” to have a diversity of uses. Before considering how I plan to use place in my research, this anthology examines the complicated nature of “place” that has allowed a vast array of usages.

Walter Mignolo is explicit when discussing the decolonial power of place through his concept of “decolonial localism.” Mignolo applies decoloniality to place because colonialism is the removal of place. It attempts to force indigenous people to behave as if they see their locality in the same manner as the colonizers: a “blank space” to be exploited. Colonialism has impacted people’s sense of place globally in this way, as is visible through Western hegemony and the resultant rise of “placelessness.”

Without place, we are disorientated and disconnected from our ancestors who occupied the same place as us. “Place” is, therefore, most potent where it serves as a “place of memory,” ensuring that the experience of our ancestors is never forgotten.

Maintaining place is most pressing where these “places of memory” remind us of our recent history. In Sierra Leone, the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” created the “Sierra Leone Peace Museum” in 2013. It works to preserve documentation and present a narrative history of the Civil War for visitors. Such museums are examples of “places of memory.” Ensuring that experiences of conflict and violence are remembered and thus propagating future peace.

Places like the Sierra Leone Peace Museum are performative, and the location selected for the exercise of “place” is intentional. Visitors can find the museum at the site of the Special Court

for Sierra Leone, an international tribunal that tried those accused of war crimes in the civil war. The court became the first to convict warlords for their use of child soldiers, and the severity of these crimes makes it a compelling selection of place for the Sierra Leone Peace Museum. It has added permanence to this place, meaning its function of holding warmongers in Sierra Leone is continued by highlighting the horrors they created during the war.

My place-based approach to natural resources will also be performative as it is functional. Disentangling artisanal miners from exploitative international supply chains will allow them to earn the full value of the diamonds they extract. No longer forced to maximize extraction, they will be free to steward their land, receiving from it only the diamonds they require to be empowered. Therefore, the performance of mining in their indigenous place will shift to become less harmful to the local ecology and the health of indigenous people. Having made this change, the mine will become a performative node for removing neocolonial control, displaying an alternative path to uncontrolled extractivism.

References

• Cresswell, Tim (2015) Place: An Introduction, Chichester: Wiley.
• Mignolo, Walter (2011) The Darker SIde of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press.
• Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone, viewed 12/01/2021, http://www.rscsl.org/.
• Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Peace Museum, viewed 12/01/2021 https://www.sierraleonetrc.org/index.php/sierra-leone-peace-museum.

Thoughts on Place-Based Knowledge

Ecosystems are chaotic, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. People must exist within them, not alter ecosystems to fit their purposes. Doing so is dangerous because of the “deterministic chaos” that rules an ecosystem’s operations. The “butterfly effect” illustrates this: “Tiny disturbances can produce exponentially divergent behavior.” This anthology explores how indigenous knowledge can be leveraged so that people can exist within these complex ecosystems.

Many frameworks have been proposed that offer the chance for a more sustainable society, including “waste equals food.” This is the concept that all capturable waste products must have a productive use in another space. However, even this solution will not create perfectly sustainable ecosystems, as some waste products such as carbon dioxide will inevitably escape. These greenhouse gases have the potential to destabilize the fragile “Gaia self-regulation,” and therefore, Fritjof Capra proposes that genuinely sustainable systems must “use only as much energy as it can capture from the sun.”

While Capra is correct in diagnosing the problem, he is mistaken in prescribing a solution. He argues that sustainable societies “modeled after nature’s ecosystems” will be “sustainable, not efficient.” The implication is that a downgrade in the utility of technology is necessary to upgrade sustainability. Harnessing place-based indigenous knowledge through Julia Watson’s “Lo Tek” proposes a means to create complex and efficient designs that do not sacrifice sustainability.

Watson proposes that the current innovation paradigm is “drowning in knowledge while starving for wisdom.” Instead, she suggests the “radical indigeneity” that has created hundreds of innovations for every ecosystem on earth inspires current design. These innovations have existed in symbiosis with the natural environment for thousands of years, using local resources to fulfill place-based needs, and following the rules of “guardianship” to ensure that their designs always hold a reciprocal relationship with their non-human surroundings.

Indigenous solutions have inherent eco-literacy because they are place-based, and they hold specific knowledge that is only accessible to those situated in their place. Whereas modern design often creates solutions for communities they have no intimate connections to, indigenous communities rely on the health of their surrounding ecosystem to survive. If their local ecology collapses, the survival of an indigenous group is heavily jeopardized, so their designs must be fitting with their local context.

Watson refers to this as “Lo Tek” to refer to how these indigenous solutions are often mistaken for showing a lack of development. I am familiar with this from when I returned to Kono District, Sierra Leone. Influenced by Western ontologies of progression, I drove past villages that had not changed since my exile and automatically thought of them as “backward.” Realizing I had picked up this ontology and the epistemologies that underlie them has forced me to question how I can envision a better solution for a place I am not living in. What right do I have to displace the indigenous systems in Kono for decades?

Moreover, as I continue to research in Kono, I will acquire valuable indigenous knowledge. When I am applying this indigenous knowledge alongside transition design to create place-based designs in the natural resources space, I must make sure I have learned from it without falling into the trap of appropriation.

References

• Capra, Fritjof (2005) “Speaking Nature’s Language: Principles for Sustainability” in Ecological Literature: Educating Our Children for a More Sustainable World, ed. By Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 252-257.
• Goodwin, Brian, (1998), “The Edge of Chaos” in The Spirit of Science: From Experiment to Experience, ed. by David Lorimer, Edinburgh: Floris, pp. 149-161.
• Sheldrake, Rupert (1994) The Gaia Hypothesis, in The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God, Rochester: Park Street Press, pp. 153-157.
• Watson, Julia (2019) Lo Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism, Cologne: Taschen.
• Whitt, Roberts, Norman and Grieves (2001) “Indigenous Perspectives”, in A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, ed. by Dale Jamieson, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 42-53

“Small” is More complex than “Big”

I first heard this idea at a conference where Jonathan Chapman spoke about his book- “Design that Last.” He mentioned that sometimes we are sold on the idea that big/large is complex and small is simple.

Pulling on this thread further, I realized that organizing and maintaining small systems requires complex threading of principles. Creating small contextualized and localized specificity can quickly become more complex than large mono systems. Before I heard this idea, I assumed that small is simple, and large tends to be more complicated. Scale reduces complexity by universalizing truths as homogeneous. Before this encounter, I was sold to the idea that we require simplicity to be efficient.

Much of my background entrepreneurship is currently led by a ‘bigger is better’ concept, that big things are complicated, modern, and developed, and small things are simple and even backward. There is an obsession with making something universal that will change the lives of everyone on earth. Terry Irwin refers to these as “preplanned and resolved solutions” that are imposed without thought upon a context. They restrict the capabilities of indigenous people to design for their context.

Optimizing scale requires reductionism because universal ideas conflict with the localized specificity of an area. This conflict is displayed in Toluwalogo Odumosu’s study “Making Mobiles African,” which observes how Western designed mobile phones have been applied to the African context without considering how they would need to operate differently for African localities. Indigenous people have had to create new patterns of usage through “constituted appropriation” to make their devices functional, but the non-indigenous telecommunication companies did not predict the increased network demands from these usage patterns. It was not until indigenous telecommunications workers operated the network that the indigenous usage patterns were manageable.

Odumosu’s case study of mobile phones illustrates the perils of universalizing reductionism. When scale is optimized, a singular design is imported and universally applied to expect the context to adapt to it.

Fractal ontology is the process of learning from our surroundings, drawing from “experience and observation as opposed to theoretical abstraction”. They exist as a polar opposite to this reductionism, arguing that while contextualization is complex, it is necessary to ensure that design fits the localized specificity of the people. Scholars of fractal epistemologies allow local people to leverage their “selfhood” to design for a unique context. This “selfhood” must exist within dynamic and interrelated stable systems in a manner that is self-organizing and regenerative.

I have also had to tackle this problem in my work, which has moved in line with fractal epistemologies during my academic career. Initially, I hoped to design a holistic solution for the entire problem space of Distributed Natural Resource Systems, but a more fractal positionality has shifted my position. Now, I hope to generate small, meaningful impacts that are specific to the Kono District, Sierra Leone context.

References

• Bourget, Chelsea (2020) LIVING TREES AND NETWORKS: AN EXPLORATION OF FRACTAL ONTOLOGY AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE, University of Guelph.
• Irwin, Terry (2015) “Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research”, Design and Culture, 7(2), pp. 229-246.
• Jaques, William S. (2013) Fractal Ontology and Anarchic Selfhood: Multiplicitious Becomings, McMaster University.
• Odumosu, Toluwalogo (2017) “Making Mobiles African”, in What do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?, ed. by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

On Cooperating with the Natural Environment

Behaving in harmony with our ecosystems requires us to apply Theodore Roszak’s “ecopsychology,”; the idea that we must live in balance with nature for our physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Following “ecopsychology” forces me to ask as I think about my entrepreneurship practice with a place-based lens, “what is here?”, “what will nature permit here?” and “what will nature help us do here?” whenever we are designing for a locality.

Ecopsychology is born from the desire to obtain a “Gaia” connection with local ecosystems, acknowledge that our earth is fragile “homeostasis,” and avoid destabilizing its fragile networks.

Maintaining an “ecopsychology” led approach is further complicated when applying it to natural resources, as extraction is the process of removing something from within the system. All current extraction has an ecological impact, causing damage to the extracted land, polluting the air, and poisoning waterways. My designs within this space must do better, “receiving” not “taking” from the land, by mitigating environmental impacts and sustaining extraction only as long as it is required to empower indigenous people in the locality. If resources cannot be “received” from an ecosystem without exploiting it, we must challenge if extraction can occur within that system.

Making interventions into a locality’s ecosystem requires an intimate knowledge of the complexities within that ecosystem to recognize its complexity and position within the wholeness of the planet. Therefore a “Gaia” connection, acting in synchrony with the local ecology, can only occur by having experience of that place. It is mistaken for outsiders to enter a locality’s ecosystem and expect to make more ecoliterate interventions than the indigenous people.

Overcoming these difficulties is only possible through research while embedded within my locality of interest: Kono, Sierra Leone. My previous study made the error of only considering human actors, driven by solutions that could empower them without considering the impact of my efforts on the natural environment. Last year’s research trip comprised two months focusing

on the inequities in the diamond supply chain from the Kono perspective, but it missed the ecological destruction of land from mining that was happening before my eyes.

My future research must transfer a significant proportion of my energy to environmental factors, leveraging indigenous knowledge to understand how the Kono people have existed in synchrony with their ecology for centuries. Cultural probes and narrative inquiry techniques will allow me to gauge how the Kono people position themselves within their ecosystems.

References

Lovelock, James E. and Margulis, Lynn (1974) “Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the gaia hypothesis”, Tellus, 26:1-2, pp. 2-10.

Roszak, T., Gomes, M. E., & Kanner, A. D. (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind. Sierra Club Books.

Geo-Futurism: Imagining New Realities for a Post-Extractive Africa

Close your eyes,

Imagine the diamonds that are still in the crust of the earth,

Imagine the indigenous people who live peacefully above these diamonds,

Imagine the mining conglomerate executive signing to acquire the land,

Imagine the bulldozers rolling up to force the indigenous farmers of their land,

Imagine the tones of heavy machinery rumbling onto the land and digging up layers of earth that have not been seen for thousands of years,

Imagine the ground shaking and the boom of destruction that fills the air,

Imagine the pollution that fills the flows into the waterways and is drunk by the indigenous people,

Imagine the indigenous locals, forced to remain in their polluted locality by international borders,

Imagine the first diamond found on the land and the miner who pockets just $5 for his discovery.

Now imagine the world is different,

Imagine an absence of top-down and coercive control of land by outsiders,

Imagine the indigenous landholder has a stewardship and the freedom to work their land how they want,

Imagine they leverage indigenous knowledge to understand their relationality and participation in the “more than human world.”

Imagine they utilize resources in harmony with the local ecosystem,

Imagine a stable dynamic, interrelated system that is self-organizing and regenerative.

To imagine this future is to imagine a world in which indigenous people would gain sovereignty over their land. Fresh water and resources would no longer be controlled by the government or wealthy corporations, and indigenous people could achieve sustenance from the resources available in their locality. Without relying on the Western hegemony for survival, indigenous people’s behavior will no longer be altered from having to placate this hegemon. They will be

able to reframe resources from something to be “taken” for financial gain to something to be “received” for sustenance.

Africa as a country will be eco-focus and empowered. The countries, territories, regions, lands, the biosphere, and humans could exist in harmony, “receiving” the necessities of life from each other and cohabiting the same localities peacefully. Through a Geo-Futurist lens, Africa looks beyond aid and extraction as a continent with empowering rich ecosystems and indigenous knowledge.

References

• Acland, Olivia (2017) “One Man’s Search for Diamonds”, BBC News, last seen 12/02/2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-38302289.
• Escobar, Arturo (2015) “Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation”, Sustainability Science, 10(3), p. 456
• Linne, Diane l. et al (2017) “Overview of NASA Technology Development for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)”, 68th International Astronautical Congress, p. 1.

Thoughts on Place-base Natural Resources and Disability

The cotton tree is famous in Sierra Leone not for its trunk as wide as a car or its sprawling canopy but for the scores of beggars who work under it. They are usually disabled, affected by blindness or the loss of limbs from the civil war. These beggars often have their children with them who are deprived of normal education as their entire days are spent begging on the streets. One in three Africans lives below the global poverty line, including vast amounts of non-disabled people, systematically prevented from gathering the necessities for life. When access to these necessities is already challenging, how hard must it be for people struggling with disabilities? And what is our obligation to help?

I continue to wrestle with these questions as an entrepreneur and designer who prototypes ideas and implements them in Africa. I also think about what role economic empowerment in natural resources for Sierra Leone plays in tackling this big systemic problem in not just Sierra Leone but also other African countries.

The rights to these resources are for all citizens of that place. All too often, the disabled do not gain from the economic benefits of these natural resources as government institutions have failed to cater to their needs. So what small and impactful steps can be put in place to include them as citizens with a right to their place-based resources? How might I create inclusive, sustainable models in the natural resource space for the diable? How might I think beyond providing aid as a means of survival to provide job opportunities for personal empowerment for the disabled?

In the north, progress is clear in bringing disabled people back into the community as actors with value. Charities like EPIC (Empowering People for Inclusive Communities) help young disabled people become leaders in their communities and take on previously barred roles. Disabled teenagers working with EPIC are given leadership education and opportunities to help develop their local communities. Through this valuable education and the multitude of skills gained, the teenagers will access new pathways into employment, higher education, and healthier lifestyles.

Charities like EPIC are effective because they create flexible spaces that accommodate different bodies’ functions. These spaces become those of self-development and skill acquisition, preparing young people for the adult world and allowing them to find their value within it. It transforms the outside world from friction and difficulty to opportunity.

Organizations like EPIC are important in reframing how we view disability. Sarah Hendren discusses this reframing at a great length, responding to a study by the WHO, which found that roughly 1 billion people are disabled in the world. In her book What Can A Body Do? Hendren argues that disability has less to do with the minds and bodies of the disabled than it has to do with how the able world responds to it. She argues that disability arises when the “shape of the world…operates rigidly, with a brittle and scripted sense of what a body does or does not do.”

Rigidity isolates and “others” who cannot fit with the able-bodied world. It forces them to become “misfits” to borrow Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s ingenious description. “Misfits” clarifies that it is the intersection between the body and the designed world where disability is produced. “Misfits” also empowers disabled people to highlight where society has gone wrong and to use their wisdom to light a new path.

Hendren’s work and charities like EPIC are insightful because they do not seek to change the bodies of disabled people but to make the world more flexible for disabled bodies. In “What Can A Body Do?” Hendren makes this most apparent when introducing us to those who have lost body parts, such as Audre Lorde: the poet, writer, and activist. Lorde opted out of a mastectomy, telling the world that bodies are not binary: disabled or abled. They exist in plurality, and people learn to use their bodies most effectively when society allows them to function without costly prosthetics.

The precedent set by organizations like EPIC is fascinating, and this framework must be tested and implemented in new spaces. As I take the Root Diamond initiative to Sierra Leone, integrating the disabled is a priority. This could be through using the profits to create spaces for the education of the disabled to follow the model of EPIC or by creating spaces for their gainful employment. Diamond cutting, for example, is a highly-skilled job that requires the worker to sit

for an extended period. This could be excellent to get those who cannot walk involved in Root Diamond.

In recent history, natural resource economies have been a place of excessive greed and exploitation. It is not only the planet ravaged but also the people living in natural resource-rich areas. The prosperity that their homes should have provided has been stolen from them. Designers in this space have an opportunity to transform the industry into something more humane.

Positionality: Negotiating my Own Complexities

“It turned out that the question of who I was, was not solved because I had removed myself from the social forces which menaced me—anyway, these forces had become interior, and I had dragged them across the ocean with me. The question of who I was had at last become a personal question, and the answer was to be found in me.”
James Baldwin, “Introduction,” in Nobody Knows My Name, 1961.

I am a privileged American citizen-immigrant originally from Sierra Leone but embedded within an elite university institution. My positionality has led me to constantly negotiate between my epistemologies and ontologies originating from the global north and south. As is the case for many in immigrant communities, I have significant anthropological, intellectual, and professional contradictions that have had an unconscious impact on my work. I am ethnically Sierra Leonean, but I have studied in the USA, where a Western education has given my subjective mind Western epistemologies.

At times, I have fallen for the narrative of modernity, the celebration of “European achievement while concealing its darker side, coloniality.” I have taken modernity to heart, where I have focused too heavily on innovation above tradition/heritage, science and technology above indigenous knowledge, and individualism above collectivism.

As a partial outsider in the communities that were once my home, I must question how I can prevent the unconscious coloniality of the above ideas from clouding my observations when I return to Sierra Leone. Integrating more of my cultural and indigenous practices can decolonize my subjectivities and challenge the western conceptualization of progress.

Traveling to Kono District, Sierra Leone, for research this summer will undoubtedly raise a wealth of indigenous knowledge and help me to generate ideas for small and meaningful impacts in the area. I hope it will also allow me to “excavate deeper into the cognitive layers of [my] ancestors.” While in the USA, I have lost contact with my “Root Metaphors” – the unconscious

thoughts that “we use to frame other aspects of our meaning” – and I hope to rediscover them by returning to my ancestral home.

As I continue my Ph.D. study at CMU, I know my obligation to do more. I am acutely aware of the privilege I have been afforded, and I cannot allow it to cloud my judgment. Working to excavate my subjectivities will facilitate greater consciousness of the epistemologies that impact my designs.

References

• Baldwin, James (1961) Nobody Knows My Name, Dial Press.
• Lent, Jeremy (2017) The Pattern Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanities Search for Meaning, New York: Prometheus Books.
• Mignolo, Walter D. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Knowledge that would be Useful : “3 P A”

“The reason there will be no change is because the people who stand to lose from change have all the power. And the people who stand to gain from change have none of the power.” Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

The “3 P A” theory of hegemonic design holds that individuals who control power, privilege, politics, and access use their disproportionate influence to impose solutions on others. They are free to design spaces where they can extract resources from disempowered groups, relying on the insufficient autonomy within dispossessed groups.

“3 P A” has arisen from imperialistic prejudices against traditional cosmologies that are considered “primitive.” An obsession with progress dictates that Western society is future-facing; traditional civilizations in the global south are stagnant and only have a purpose when relegated to museums. It is a crucial node where the “colonial power matrix” is observable.

The ongoing colonial matrix of power is a complex entanglement of several intersectional hierarchies that affects all dimensions of social existence, impacting labor, gender, sexuality, and religious relations within nations, and Europe-not Europe, East-West, and modern-not modern relations between nations. This colonial matrix of power advantages the West by erasing alternative ways of being and knowing, thus homogenizing according to Western models.

Creating alternative imaginaries is the only way to displace the influence that “3 P A” still has over which individuals can design the future. Walter Mignolo defines the imaginary as “the ways a culture has of perceiving and conceiving of the world.” Therefore, if imaginaries are created that can compete with the hegemony of Western Modernity, a more pluralistic world will emerge where Western ideas are unlearned.

Pluriversal concepts were driven to the front of design’s attention by the release of Constructing the Pluriverse, edited by Bernd Reiter. Reiter’s team added depth to pluriversal ideas, surpassing previous colonial modernity critiques and considering pre-existing pluriverses. They documented

an array of non-Western practices within critical areas, such as the oral transfer of knowledge and stories in the West African context. This work has created a new “toolbox” for designs that dismantle the products of Westernization, like the power of “3 P A.”

“3 P A” is a tricky aspect to deal with when designing new spaces and solutions for Sierra Leone. I must acknowledge my positionality and privilege of holding all the “3 P A” attributes in some form or through my geopolitical position, professional background, and comparative wealth. Moreover, I must recognize that I benefit from a fourth “P”: patriarchy. I am in a family where I am the only son. I have seen countless instances where people will automatically take my word over my mum or my sisters, or how people can expect my women relatives to have a male figure to provide for them. With this privilege, how can I make sure I continue to seek ways to dismantle these “root metaphors” of power, privilege, politics, and patriarchy in my personal life and design practice.

References

• (2018) Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, ed. by Bernd Reiter, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
• Grosfoguel, Ramon (2011) Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking and Global Coloniality, University of California eScholarship.
• Mignolo, Walter (2009) “Coloniality at Large: Time and the Colonial Difference”, in Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization, ed. by Saurabh Dube, India: Routledge.
• Mignolo, Walter (2012) Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Washington D. C.: Princeton University Press.
• Quinjano, A. (2000) “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”, Nepantla: Views from the South, 1(3) pp. 533-580.

Building New Ontologies : The 7 Rules of the Zapatista Movement

The Zapatista Movement and its diverse, worldwide network immediately stood out as an applicable ontology when I learned of it this semester. This anthology notes the rules that guide the Zapatista and how they have and will tangibly develop my work.

The 7 Rules of the Zapatista when designing are: Lead by Obeying, Propose Don’t Impose, Represent Don’t Replace, Anti-power Against Power, Convince Don’t Defeat, Everything for Everyone, and Construct Don’t Destroy.

The most important rule for my work is Rule 7 (Construct Don’t Destroy) and Rule 2 (Propose Don’t Impose), which force us to create constructive options for stakeholders we design for. It also becomes of great importance when facilitating design interventions for indigenous communities by ensuring these interventions do not damage the pre-existing way of life but conserve it.

The 7 Rules of the Zapatista Movement offers some intentionality in generating ‘alternatives’ for new worlds in the pluriverse, preventing us from using our designs to pull indigenous communities into our pre-existing worlds.

As I move forward in my academic, philanthropic, and entrepreneurial careers, applying the 7 Rules of the Zapatista Movement will be crucial in stopping me from attempting to impose new designs that embody western hegemonic ideas. By acknowledging our own “3 P A,” while enacting the 7 Rules of the Zapatista Movement, we can enact or liberate new sensibilities that situate us to facilitate new interventions that are contextualized and localized to fractal environments.

Benefits, Burdens and Reclamation

While I cut my teeth in the design world, my work followed the Western epistemologies of Max Weber’s “protestant work ethic,” aiming to optimize the productivity of my designs with little care for the environmental and social impact of what I was doing. I focussed too heavily on the groups my designs could benefit from, with no understanding of the potential burdens I could add to indirect stakeholders.

Thankfully, a strong interest has developed in the epistemologies and ontologies of the global south as I continue my Ph.D. study at CMU. I started to understand the importance of “ways of being,” reflecting the” historical trauma” and background underlying my indigenous knowledge.

I have also begun to think about more tangible reflections of my indigeneity by considering the symbols and images that reflect my indigenous culture’s history and are applicable in my research. Artists and designers such as Michael Heizer have conducted groundbreaking work in reclamation art. Heizer’s Effigy Tumuli uses the indigenous American “mound building” techniques to create “geometrically abstracted animals.” Research and discovery of this traditional indigenous imagery can be leveraged to gain a greater understanding of the indigenous culture that has been displaced by Western hegemony. I hope to use reclamation art to add to Kumba Femusu Solleh work on the indigenous culture of the Kono people, adding further traditions to the Damby tradition that Solleh investigates.

Much work has been done by Eduardo Duran, John Gonzalez, and others into South America, a continent that has dominated the decolonial landscape. My research will look for ways African scholars can engage and be heard within decolonial design research and practice.

References

• Duran, Eduardo et al (2008) “Liberation Psychology as the Path Towards Healing Cultural Soul Wounds”, Journal of Counseling and Development, 86(3), pp. 288-295.
• Gorgi, Liana (1990) The Protestant Work Ethic as a Cultural Phenomenon, European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 499-517
• Solleh, Kumba, Femusu (2011) The Damby Tradition of the Kono People of Sierra Leone, West Africa, Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse.

Buen Vivir And the Logic of the Capital

Translating as “good living,” Buen Vivir is a philosophy that design should work only to enhance the collective wellbeing of a community, treating all stakeholders with dignity and respect. Carrying respect in everything we do helps begin the path towards a pluriversal world because it becomes impossible for “othering” different communities.

By its nature, Buen Vivir denies the Western epistemology that the logic of capital must be followed at all times, as to do so would make human life a secondary concern. The capitalist system constructs itself around the maximization of productivity and a naive theory that doing so will enhance the wealth of everybody. Of course, capitalism has failed to guarantee prosperity for all it touches instead of creating inequality globally.

Despite its failures, Western capitalism and the profit motive have been entrenched by the accumulation by dispossession of the other. People now see the land in their localities as something to be exploited for maximum short-term profit, with little care for the damage done to the natural environment. Buen Vivir and its denial of the logic of capital has the power to replace the prioritization of short-term profit with long-term ecological and social wellbeing.

References

Calderon, Carlos (2018)

Thoughts on Cosmopolitan Localism and Cultural Entrepreneurship

Every year, Sierra Leone exports around 700,000 carats of diamond, yet Sierra Leone is still one of the most impoverished nations on earth, with a child mortality rate of almost 10%. These damning statistics, as well as my own experiences in Sierra Leone, have provoked me to explore disentangling the country’s resource wealth with its poverty and its invisible position within the international community. Cosmopolitan Localism is a significant thread that has emerged in my efforts in this space.

Cosmopolitan Localism is “the theory and practice of inter-regional and planet-wide networking between place-based communities who share knowledge, technology, and resources.” It proposes place-based solutions to deal with the need for subsistence in everyday life, whereby communities sustain themselves from the resources available within their localities. They may fulfill Max-Neef’s other nine universal needs within their more expansive Cosmopolitan Localist systems. These are the non-tangible needs for protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity, and freedom.

Cultural entrepreneurship can help fulfill the non-tangible needs within a Cosmopolitan Localist system. It is a theory for designing nested webs of small and meaningful enterprises that consider the cultural and social fabric of the place they are being designed in. These designs can immediately impact their locality and have a wider influence by allowing other communities to appropriate the designs for their own context.

In a cosmopolitan localist system, nested cultural entrepreneurship networks can be applied to the natural resources space—freedom to steward their land, approaching it with reciprocity capitalism and a “seven generations ahead” mindset. Furthermore, as a Lakota farmer may organize a feast for the community when they harvest, ommunities may share surplus resources with others in a nested cultural entrepreneurship network

As I reflect on my exile from Sierra Leone, I realize the impact Cosmopolitan Localism and Cultural Entrepreneurship could have had on my own life. If Kono people’s need for sustenance could have been fulfilled from the resources available to us without relying on diamond extraction, the civil war may never have happened, and I may never have been forced to flee. Having my other needs fulfilled through Kono’s position within a wider Cosmopolitan Localist system will have changed my entire life trajectory.

References

• (2018) “Sierra Leone”, Kimberley Process, last seen 12/4/2021 https://www.kimberleyprocess.com/en/sierra-leone-0#2017
• (2019) “Sierra Leone – Under-five mortality rate”, Knoema, last seen 12/4/2021 https://knoema.com/atlas/Sierra-Leone/Child-mortality-rate.
• Kite, Suzanne (2020) “How to build anything ethically” in Indigenous Protocol and AI, Honolulu, pp. 75-84.
• Kossoff, Gideon (2019) “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place”, Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación,

What is Entrepreneurship through the Lens of Transition Design?

The current “wicked problem” within entrepreneurship is that it functions solely to put out fires created by systemic issues. Daniel Munoz notes, “we are designing within a problem-solving paradigm, where we do not see how we are creating new worlds when we design.” I can see this within my work that has been driven by the idea that Africa needed solutions yesterday and that I must play ‘catch-up’ without time to think about the broader implications of my work.

Transition design has utility in allowing me to step back from my entrepreneurial endeavors in Kono and consider steps to ensure that I stay true to the Kono people. Without analysis, my entrepreneurship will likely introduce fast solutions – western ways of being when contrary, I seek to preserve indigenous ways of being.

Leveraging transition design to improve my ethical intelligence as I engage in designing new interventions. Further research will unearth methodologies, but the Nuremberg Code is an excellent starting point. The Nuremberg Code is an essential test for new ideas, asking the following questions. Is the design or endeavor of benefit to society? Is it the only way? Do all actors consent? Is the risk proportional to the benefit? What harms are possible? How can these harms be mitigated? Only once these questions have been answered satisfactorily can I conclude that a business solution positively impacts a community.

A significant aspect of my research is the conversion of entrepreneurship to an academic design praxis. Embedding the theories of transition design more will prevent my business solutions from doing more harm than good, allowing me to understand the broader impact of my interventions beyond the contextual specificity that it has been created for.

References

• Cardoso, Daniel (2021) “Sculpting Spaces of Possibility: Brief History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence in Design”, in The Routledge Companion to Artificial Intelligence in Architecture, ed. by Imday As and Prithwish Basu, Routledge: London.
• Shuster, Evelyne (1997) “Fifty Years Later: The Significance of the Nuremberg Code” The New England Journal of Medicine, 337, pp. 1436-1440.

In Situ Utilization

In situ resource utilization (ISRU) coined by NASA to in their quest to explore Mars. To evolve into a space-faring civilization, humanity must sustain itself using only the resources it can acquire on its destination planet. I have extrapolated ISRU as a means for localities to sustain themselves from the resources “in place.” Specifically, I aim to apply ISRU to Africa localities so that indigenous people can produce everything they need to fulfill their needs without relying on imports from the West.

In practice, ISRU would entail the gathering, processing, and using natural resources by indigenous African people from their natural environment to fulfill their locally specific needs. Doing so would require obtaining resources in a sustainable manner and the ability to manufacture products that Africa is currently dependent on the West for.

ISRU would unshackle the continent from the exploitative chains it has been kept in since the Berlin Congo Conference, allowing Africa to forge better connections. New economic power would come with respect on the global stage, and Africa could create policy and partnerships on its “own” terms. Internally, Africa would be free to explore internal designs and policy for the common good, defined by Fagence as “convenient, efficient, compatible” solutions that protect “minority interests.”

More ISRU practices in African communities would transform Africa for the better and most of the outside world because an independent Africa would facilitate the collapse of extractivist industries. The rest of the world would reap the benefits of reduced air pollution and the diffusing of the tense battle between Chinese and American Imperialism for African resources.

As my Ph.D. research continues, I will continue to research new ways for small and meaningful interventions that some African localities can sustain themselves from their resources. Transforming the whole continent in this manner is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but aiding specific communities in their question for self-sustenance is a node to make a significant impact.

References

• Benaroya, Haym et al (2013) “Special Issue on In Situ Resource Utilization”, Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 26(1), pp. 1-4..
• Fagence, M. (2014) Citizen Participation in Planning, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Elsevier Science.

Small Meaningful Impacts

I began my academic journey overly optimistic. I had formed general ideas of the world’s “wicked problems” – poverty, natural resource exploitation, and others – and my quest starting my Ph.D. was to spend the next four years to come up with solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems. I hope to find a single solution to eliminate some of the problems I am grappling with. After learning the complexities of the problem spaces, I realize that I have four years to make a small meaningful impact in the problem space. The mindset flipped.

As my mind has matured through further academia, I have learned to find more realistic value elsewhere, namely in creating small meaningful impacts. Such designs would not change the world or solve the problem but could act as a node to change people’s lives in specific localities. These designs reform within pre-existing systems and do not carry the risk of societal collapse that revolutionary change may bring.

Hoping to revolutionize a system leads to designers becoming stuck in a “problem setting” mindset, obsessed with discovering “what is wrong and what needs fixing” over finding ways to fix the specific problems. Seeking smaller, more achievable impacts can grant designers with a “problem solving” mindset, benefiting from a much smaller aperture that allows them to capture the full complexity of the place.

Land reclamation projects in Sierra Leone are the perfect example of these small meaningful impacts, filling the dangerous and polluting pits left by mining and converting them for immediate agricultural use or to re-integrating them into nature. There is a substantial precedent of these projects operating successfully, with USAID alone supporting 662 such projects across Sierra Leone. NGOs such as RESOLVE have gone further than handing land back to owners in usable forms by using land reclamation projects to create areas of common land. Their cooperative projects with indigenous people have completed community rice farms positioned on reclaimed land and have helped thousands of Sierra Leoneans gain food security.

References

• “Land Reclamation Project”, Resolve, last seen 12/4/2021 https://www.resolve.ngo/land_reclamation_project.htm
• Schon, Donald A. (1982) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York, Basic Books Inc.

Thoughts on Technology and Ethics

I have experienced first-hand the corporate desire to create the impression of caring about their actions’ ethics while distancing themselves from anything that might challenge them to do business differently. “Bureaucratized expectations of professional behavior,” and they aim to “operationalize” ambiguous ethics exist solely to protect businesses from liability rather than making their practices any more ethical. Tech companies must start asking these questions intentionally before enacting decisions. What moral ethics drive this decision? Who wins and who loses in the process? And who has decided the standards we are applying?

An endemic failure to answer these questions has led to businesses “performing” rather than “doing” ethics. “Performing” ethics is expressed when tech companies attempt to “transform vagueness into precision through formalization,” allowing them to oversimplify the complex and make it marketable.

Tech companies practice this simplification every day that they fail to delve into their complex supply chains, which can take four years to understand. The scale of suffering and ecological collapse that occurs to sustain the extraction of raw materials and their conversion into finished goods would be unmarketable if Western consumers had the opportunity to understand the processes. But tech companies intentionally keep consumers in the dark to know only of a vague “other” in a distant land, and tech companies can create a sense of ethicality.

Design justice is desperately needed by the tech industry to be preserved while concluding their practices that exploit the environment and people. Further research is required to demystify these complex global supply chains to provide the transparency needed for questions of ethics to be asked of them. Where failures of ethics are found, design justice can be leveraged to convert these failures into humane practices.

Specifically, Suzanne Kite argues that “AI cannot be made ethically until its physical components are made ethically,” striking at the heart of consumer electronics that rely on the Earth’s resources and labor. She observes that reciprocity must exist at all levels of the supply chain for design justice to exist within them. Her indigenous inspired stress-tests, such as the Lakota idea that all ideas must preserve the land for “seven generations ahead,” could be transformative if applied to supply chains.

However, these ideas are only speculative, and we must acknowledge that tech supply chains are at the height of their vagueness. This raises a challenge to my professional background and interests, where I used AI, machine learning, and augmented reality to aid my design work. I cannot hide the role these technologies played in creating designs that benefited people’s lives, and I should not shun them in my future design work. I must weigh the positive social impacts of my designs for direct stakeholders against the negative social and ecological consequences for indirect stakeholders before using some aspects of technological solutions.

Reference

• Crawford, Kate (2021) Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
• Dove, Graham et al (2017) “UX Design Innovation: Challenges for Working with Machine Learning as a Design Material”, CHI ‘17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Hum
• Metcalf, Jacob et al (2019) “Owning Ethics: Corporate Logics, Silicon Valley, and the Institutionalization of Ethics”, Social Research: An International Quarterly, 86(2), pp. 449-476.

African Design and Development

Africa is seen in the West for its poverty by those who patronize it and its natural resources that cynics can extract. Western intervention is regarded as necessary to reconcile its troubles, with Africa receiving outside innovation and producing none of its own. De-colonialists have pushed back, developing a divergent perspective of Africa as a continent with rich ecosystems, insightful indigenous knowledge, and the resources that can sustain it. This anthology will focus on the role design plays in this context and technology as a case study. Finally, it will consider how African heritage can be preserved where new designs are introduced.

Design has always been integral in African culture, with archaeological discoveries of ancient artistic artifacts happening all over the continent. These include ornate soapstone carvings discovered in Kono. At an everyday level, traditional mud and wattle housing has proved effective enough for the local climate that rural Sierra Leonean housing design has changed little.

In recent times, African intellectuals have worked to create new African designs and raise the next generations of African designers. Ghanaian academic Lesley Lokko has begun an influential architecture school in Accra as part of this effort. The African Futures Institute will protect independent African knowledge and designs and “teach the global north how to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion in the heart of a built environment pedagogy.”

Design for Africa is more complex than teaching indigenous people design. Africa is a diverse continent formed of thousands of tribes and communities, and its lineage of epistemologies is complex. Ignoring this diversity would lead to designs inappropriate for some African communities being imposed upon them. The work of Pan-African scholars can help Africa to overcome the complexity by uniting the continent around intersectional benchmarks.

Achieving a level of intersectionality could be simpler than ambitious Pan-African projects if African communities are given the freedom to design for their contexts. Africans already utilized their localized specificity to appropriate and customize outside technology. The mobile phone has become a living artifact of the environment, choreographed for the environment, cultural, and economic conditions of the place. Tolu Odumosu’s chapter “Making Mobiles African” details the specific practices adopted for Nigeria’s localized specificity, such as “flashing.”

Appropriation of mobile phones illustrates what design for Africa is in contemporary times. It displays how an understanding of an African community’s complex structures and socio-anthropological factors – economics, materiality, culture, intelligence, citizenship, race, gender, sexuality, religion, media, and ecology – is required to create designs for that locality. The lack of understanding of this has led Western scholars to fail in unearthing the meaning of design in Africa at the detriment of African heritage.

References

• Odumosu, Toluwalogo (2017) “Making Mobiles African”, in What do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?, ed. by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Raja, Amrita (2021) “Founding the Future: Lesley Lokko talks to AN about race, academia, and starting an architecture school in Ghana”, The Architect’s Newspaper, last seen 12/4/2021 https://www.archpaper.com/2021/01/lesley-lokko-talks-race-academia-and-starting-an-architecture-school-in-ghana

Research and Design Methods

Throughout my first semester at CMU, I have been introduced to many research methods that have utility in my work. This anthology details those that have been most influential in my work.

Methodologies

The structure of my research plans to follow Edmondson and McManus’ theoretical continuum of research: nascent, to intermediate, to mature. The continuum begins with exploratory and future-focused fieldwork that surfaces insights and opposition. In this nascent stage, the aim is to create “prepositions” for new research areas. These are then developed over multiple years to the mature stage, where the research is refined through repeated experimentation and observation. Continuing my first year of my Ph.D., my research methodologies fall into the nascent and exploratory category. These methodologies are detailed below.

Patchwork Ethnography

Creating an accurate ethnography of a locality from an outsider’s perspective is challenging. “A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography” reconciles this by suggesting the use of short-term “rigorous” but “fragmentary” field investigations alongside long-term commitments to understand further and create ethnographies for the community. Patchwork ethnography understands researchers’ limited time available in localities and forces them to commit to generating better understandings of the ethnographic characteristics of the place.

Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry discovers how broader structures have impacted people’s lived experiences within a locality. By recording these experiences, researchers can discover the nature of “wicked problems” within a community and better understand the designs that might be effective in that context.

Deep Listening

Deep listening is crucial for researchers working with indigenous communities because it prevents unconscious cultural biases and Western epistemologies from clouding the researcher’s judgment. By listening with openness and a willingness to learn, researchers can intentionally withhold all judgment and genuinely act as neutral observers.

“Entrepresearch”

In my first semester, I have also began to explore a new research methodology. My conceptualization of “Entrepresearch” has been inspired by Frederick Van Amstel’s “Perspective

Design.” “Entrepresearch” is an action-based design that combines academic design with entrepreneurship to develop alternative presents by delivering tangible solutions with an immediate impact tailored to the local context.

Collective Walking

Collective walking is the process of physically walking through significant places in a locality or within someone’s life. This practice varies in scale from walking through key performative sites, such as Selma Bridge, to walking through someone’s land. On the walk, the researcher is joined by individuals who exist within the space, allowing them to discover the role of the space in people’s lives before designing for it.

Cultural Probes

Using cultural probes gives indigenous people the ability to create a picture of their lives so that researchers can understand their socio-cultural experiences. They are invited to work with photography, diary writing, videography, radio, and others to document their experiences across various media, each giving them the opportunity to raise different perspectives.

Data Collection & Sensemaking

Composite Narrative

Once data has been collected, researchers may compare the experiences of many individuals within the same groups to identify critical similarities. These can be compiled into a single unifying narrative that can unearth shared motivations and ethnographies within a community.

Conclusion

These liberatory research methods and practices are perfect for assisting explorative designers, who may use them to discover “the most number of possible solutions or opportunities” possible. They will allow designers to create designs for countless new worlds that can dismantle pre-existing systems and design for transitions into the future.

References

• Choma, Joseph (2020) The Philosophy of Dumbness, San Francisco: ORO Editions.
• Edmondson, Amy C. and McManus, Stacy E. (2007) “Methodological Fit in Management Field Research”, Academy of Management Review, 32(4), pp. 1155-1179.
• Gökçe Günel et al (2020) “A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography” Fieldsights last seen 12/4/2021 https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-manifesto-for-patchwork-ethnography.

Extractivism and Modernity. Failed epistemologies for Africa

IIndigenous communities find it hard to break from Western epistemologies because modernity is everywhere. It displaces indigenous knowledge at all points of their lives, from the first time they learn “A is for apple.” Western education in indigenous communities amounts to the indoctrination of indigenous people into Western ways of being so that they believe Western capitalism is the only world available.

This hegemony of “westoxification” is a vital aspect of the Western epistemology, taking any attempts to create alternatives as fatally flawed “anti-modernism,” “anti-globalism,” and “anti-progressivism.”

Universal “westoxification” has trapped African localities within extractivist systems, resigning it to a position on “the dinner table, being eaten by superpowers.” Since the Berlin Congo Conference of 1884-1885, Africa has been regarded as little more than a resource bank to be robbed by superpowers to fuel their manufacturing industries. Ecosystems victimized by this theft buckle under the weight of extractivist damage, and indigenous people are economically coerced to toil and die in extractivist industries.

The latest boom in global commodities has provided new vigor for African extractivist industries, as the USA, China, and the EU compete for control. In this “new scramble for Africa,” extractive obesity has swelled to unprecedented heights, and Africa’s fragile ecosystems are struggling more than ever.

The “new scramble of Africa” has also further swelled the “ecological debt” owed by imperialist powers to Africa. “Ecological debt” sees Africa as the victim and the West as the beneficiary of extractive capitalism and reverses Africa’s debt crisis. It argues that Africa has paid its debts multiple times over in providing resources and the ecological damage that has come as a result, and therefore the West urgently must compensate the continent for the damage done.

Westoxification and the resultant entrenchment of extractivist industries in Africa have wrought untold ecological and social damage. The onus of reconciling this is twofold. Firstly, indigenous Africans must work to design alternative worlds to what the West has provided them, discovering ways to become independent of Western exploitation. More urgently, the West must recognize the damage it has brought to Africa through reparation. They must move away from coercive and insufficient aid and shift to paying the reparations they are obligated to provide.

References

• Deylami, Shirin S. (2011) “In the Face of the Machine: Westoxification, Cultural Globalization and the Making of an Alternative Global Modernity, Polity, 43(2), pp. 242-263.
• Greco, Elisa (2020) “Africa, Extractivism and the Crisis this of this Time”, Review of African Political Economy, 47(166), pp. 511-521.
• Warlenius, Rikard et al (2015) Ecological Debt: History, meaning, and relevance for environmental justice, EJOLT Report No. 18.

Digital Textiles and Reconciliation

An ignored aspect of all warzones is the actions of ordinary people to reconcile. Civil wars bring families and neighbors into violent conflict, so how do they learn to live alongside each other after the war? As a young child in Sierra Leone, every horror of the Civil War I witnessed preceded a heartfelt but ultimately unsuccessful attempt for reconciliation. Laura Cortés-Rico’s article on digital textiles and reconciliation adds to the reconciliation tools and provides an opportunity to reinvigorate the reconciliation attempts in Sierra Leone.

Reading Cortés-Rico’s article provides an opportunity for people like me in the reconciliation space. It focuses on textile craftspeople in Columbia, who use their talents to create physical objects to document and capture the conflict. Their work is inspirational and revealing of the role design can have in reconciliation efforts. It does seem far-fetched that creating physical or digital objects can reconcile tensions and even prevent conflict. Cortés-Rico tells us what the women of Choibá, Columbia told her was the main barrier to reconciliation: “Reconciliation is difficult because they [both the armed groups and the government] do not listen.” Difficulties with engagement from the militarily-minded are inevitable in reconciliation, but Cortés-Rico’s proposals still fill me with great hope. Her proposals help us to start asking how artifacts can be generated to foster a mutual understanding across violently opposed ideologies.

Inspired by Cortés-Rico, I came up with two activities that may have a role in Sierra Leonean reconciliation. In her article, Cortés-Rico describes the development of a “collective living lab” pushing for imaginative participatory design activities for people could engage in. She named hers after the Quechua term for meeting with others in the community to carry out collaborative work for social purposes. Having created the space, Cortés-Rico used “hackathon” and “make-a-thon” to inspire people from opposition social groups to cooperate in friendly competition.

These events could be perfect for the Sierra Leonean reconciliation because of how conflict emerges in the nation. The leading cause of instability is tribalism, whereby people live and work largely separately from people in other tribes. Separation prevents trust from arising and makes it too easy for people to dehumanize others. Cortés-Rico’s work has shown that imaginative participatory design activities perfectly deal with these issues. She found that participants opened up to each other through non-directive suggestions and displays of vulnerability. Individuals that had conflicted were able to show “confusion” and “care” to each other for the first time (Laura Cortés-Rico et al, 2020).

If imaginative participatory design activities are successful, a host of other opportunities for reconciliation will open up. If showing vulnerability and care works, what other activities will successfully engage people’s sense of care? And on a broader scale, what shared thinking and sensibilities can be unlocked through the process of making?

The other activity I came up with after reading Cortés-Rico’s article centers around the idea of “encountering.” She explains it with three key aspects: “the role of the body is fundamental, “one can encounter others through acknowledging her/his movements”, and “encountering takes time.”

The concept of “encountering” centers around Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s ideas of touch: “when bodies/things touch, they are also touched.” De la Bellacasa draws us to the vulnerability associated with touch. If we are directly touching another, we are risking our health to their potential for violence, and if we touch something they have made, we are putting trust in their craftsmanship.

An “encountering” based activity created by Cortés-Rico’s team that fulfilled these requirements was the “Put Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes” project. Participants from the textiles community would make the parts for shoes, and while doing so, think and record the “stories that are associated with the paths they have walked to move forward through the conflict.” Once completed, the materials are packed and sent to members of other communities, who then assemble the shoes and take a walk in them while listening to the recordings of the textile craftspeople’s war experiences.

The activity was time-consuming enough to be meaningful, while still being a tangible bodily experience that forced participants to think of the experiences of others. But, Cortés-Rico also reflects on what the activity can tell us about the process of reconciliation more generally. She notes that encounters for reconciliation are not limited to “static” physical encounters. As participants walked in the shoes made in cooperation with another person who used to be an enemy, speaking to each other through digital recordings, an encounter was made between two communities at a specific time. Yet the fact that participants did not need physical proximity to have a successful encounter makes this activity ideal for areas where travel is difficult.

Cortés-Rico’s exercise is an interesting one because it brings in two layers of touch. The most apparent form of touch is in the direct contact with the shoes, made in collaboration with the other community. But a more discreet yet still useful sense of touch is secured by the digital recordings. De la Bellacasa is well aware of the role technology can play in replacing touch with “technotouch” for the geographically separated: “technology is bringing the neglected sense of touch into the digital realm”. Of course, to listen is not to touch, but de la Bellacasa speaks of “touching visions” which can take the role of touch. Therefore, to hear can replace touch, so long as the sounds are touching enough.

While these activities will show themselves to be successful in the context of post-war reconciliation, they could also have a role to play in my research area: artisanal diamond mining communities in Sierra Leone and their consumers. “Encountering” between the consumer and the miner is currently impossible because people buy their diamonds from jewelry stores, that in turn, buy them from cutters in the West. When a consumer puts on their diamond ring, they are absurdly distanced from the miners.

So what will creating encounters between miners and consumers achieve, and what will it look like? ”Encountering” will open up a dialogue between the consumer and the miner as they learn to acknowledge the lives and movements of the other. It could also help develop new ways to tell the stories of diamonds digitally. Most optimistically, and only if a substantial proportion of consumers have encounters with artisanal miners, the industry may listen and engage.

“Encountering” is an elementary idea, creating the possibility for cultural artifacts to be used to tell a story, facilitating reconciliation. Could the simple shovel or shaker give artisanal miners a voice, meaning they will finally be listened to as victims of extractive capitalism? Artisinal miners can easily gain the tools to be heard; now, they need industry and the consumer audience to listen to them.

Mobile Phones and Appropriation

Africa is a space seen as behind the industrialized West; a continent whose problems must be solved through Western intervention. It is a framework that draws Africa as a recipient rather than a giver of technology and progress. And this appropriation of Western technology helps the continent to move up the developmental ladder. Theories of Decolonilaity challenge this implicit superiority of Western knowledge, and attempt to push back on Western design as the default design.

These ideas are powerful but are potentially misguided. They draw the thought and design of the Western world and the global south as separate, without any influence on each other. They completely ignore the potential that all Western technology is inspired, at least in part, by designers and thinkers in the global south. If an idea originated in Africa, separate from Hellenistic thought, and then was made mainstream in the West, would we remember its African origin?

In my doctoral research, I have worked extensively to unearth a lineage of thought back to African thinkers. Such work is needed to bring out and credit ideas with an African origin and will form a substantial aspect of the effort to decolonize design through understanding our contribution to western thought.

These ideas are relevant not only for technology with traceable origins in the global south but also for Western technology that non-Western communities have appropriated. The nature of this appropriation has allowed communities to travel a different technological path to the West. To take the communications industry as an example, Westerners popularized telegram and landline technology long before the cell phone became widespread. A different development path came in West Africa. The landline was never popularized, with only the wealthiest having access to a technology that quickly became obsolete. Instead, African communities used Western communications technology only when the cell phone became accessible because it could be appropriated to fit their needs.

The concept of appropriation is interesting because it goes much further than to suggest that communities in the global south borrow both the technologies and the usage patterns of Westerners. Instead, appropriation is the point at which an object ceases to be a commodity. The holder gains new ownership where they manipulate the object to function uniquely to their context (Silverstone and Hirsh, 1992). Only once this appropriation has occurred will the object become properly usable in that specific locality (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003, 12).

This “localized specificity” is not only about how we use our devices. When a business adapts the design of their product to fit into a locality without people having to appropriate it, they see incredible success in making sales to new communities. To take Coca-Cola as an example, they began their iconic Santa Claus adverts in the 1920s, which continue to this day. Having adopted a worldwide cultural icon to fit their brand, Coca-Cola adapted to several “localized specificities” accounting for part of their sensational success.

Few brands have harnessed “localized specificity” to such effect, and it is still a term that better fits the appropriation of technology. The rapid adoption of cell phones by African people is an incredible example of this appropriation. In my birth country Sierra Leone, the demand for a cell phone has flipped Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs, with people prioritizing them over access to food and shelter. It is a change necessitated by the limits of $1.25 per day that 60% of the people live on. Oluwalogo Odumosu’s study of this phenomenon is fascinating, giving us an understanding of the “cultural and epistemic processes” that explain the success of the cell phone in Africa.

Odumosu uses the case study of Nigeria, and many of his observations are similar to my own from Sierra Leone. When new technology comes to a new community, it must adapt to the “localized specificity” of the area. Implementations must be conscious of the “place”, its people, their heritage and cultural behaviors, politics and geography, and economic conditions.

How a community appropriates “technologically analogous” devices for their “localized specificity” alludes to unique “social histories” and “socio-cultural niches” (Ito, Matsuda, and Okabe 2005, 1). By investigating user behavior, a story emerges of not only a community’s relationship with technology but of the place and society in question.

To paint this picture, we need to understand the constitutive appropriation of technology in a specific context, or in my case, how Sierra Leoneans have reconfigured the meaning of their cell phones to match the economic conditions, cultural practices, and situational placeness in a given time. As Odumosu also noted, many of my relatives have 2-3 phones, each having different coverage, battery life, and credit at any given time.

A choreography of usage that I observed arose from using a different device depending on the criteria of usage required at a specific time, and significantly the economic context of Sierra Leone. The practice of flashing is a commonplace reflection of economic realities. If somebody uses a cell phone without credit or the economic ability to “top-up”, they will end the call as soon as a connection is made. Having seen a missed call, the recipient will call back, transferring the cost away from the initial caller.

With technology usage patterns being significantly different from the West, networks must be established and maintained differently. Practices such as flashing bring in a uniquely high strain on infrastructure without generating any additional revenue. Western engineers cannot understand these needs, and therefore new engineering cultures are developed by locals. With insiders maintaining the network, everything but the device itself are independent of Western design.

The African cell phone is a fascinating case study of constituted appropriation. It is an object that has been choreographed to fit different environmental and economic conditions. The object I observed in Sierra Leone existed as a part of a group of devices, each with a network that was usable in certain areas but not another, purchased based on the cost and availability at any time and used conditionally of the battery life available.

The fascinating insights of Odumosu of mobile phone usage in Africa, corroborating my observations in Sierra Leone, provoked me to think more about constitutive appropriation and its utility in the natural resources space. How could new technological interventions for the mining industry, such as manufacturing, AI, and VR, be appropriated “for”, “by”, and “of” the people’s cultural practices and their ecological needs? What about them will need to be specific to the Sierra Leonean context? And how then might that create unique natural resource empowerment opportunities?

These are questions that I will have to wrestle with over the coming years, where I will constantly redesign my interventions and theories. Flexibility and self-interrogation will be required to solve real Sierra Leonean problems as they evolve. Within this approach, the “constituted” technological appropriations for natural resource empowerment must still reflect the cultural materiality and topography of Sierra Leone. Like all nations, it has its own social, political, and infrastructural peculiarities, leading to “instrumentally dissimilar” results.

Pilot Study

Land Use & Stewardship: A Land Reclamation and Reconciliation Project

By Fas Lebbie

Introduction

My pilot study aims to investigate a deeper level of insight regarding the impacts of extractive mining amongst Sierra Leone’s Kono people. Specifically, I focus on artisanal diamond mining in Kono, Sierra Leone, and the social, economic, and ecological impacts of this activity.

Land Ownership & Stewardship

This study will be a place-based exploration, tackling the commodification of land that has allowed for the exploitation of Kono people and their natural resources. It will investigate how Kono people mitigate their resultant lack of access to land and how they create alternative livelihoods to artisanal mining?

In Situ Utilization

My investigation will probe current practices of In situ utilization in Kono, Sierra Leone. In situ utilization is the idea that localities can sustain themselves purely from the resources available “in place”. These projects aim to displace the need for diamond mining by offering alternative livelihoods. An example is the reclamation projects which convert abandoned mines in Kono into productive farmland, and an investigation into them will unearth the progress made in bringing land away from commodification and into community stewardship.

Entrepresearch

I will employ entrepresearch while investigating the issue of land & stewardship among the localities. Entrepresearch is an action-based research method I created inspired by Frederick Van Amstel’s “Prospective Design.” Van Amstel proposes that instead of seeking to design alternative presents, we should seek to create alternative presents. He bases this on the idea that while individual situations exist within wider systems, they are also entities within themselves that can be resolved independently.^[1] Entrepresearch therefore emerges from “Prospective Design” as a combination of academic design with entrepreneurial action to develop alternative presents by delivering solutions with an immediate impact tailored to the local context. While acknowledging that these solutions are nested within wider systems, entrepresearch aims to resolve individual pain points with an immediacy not yet possible in Transition Design.

^[1] Frederick van Amstel (2021)  “Designing Relations In Prospective Design,” Frederick Van Amstel, https://fredvanamstel.com/talks/designing-relations-in-prospective-design, [last accessed 02/08/2022]

Landscape

The extraction of diamonds in the Kono region of Sierra Leone has left the landscape pockmarked by abandoned mining pits that collect contaminated water and waste. They expose communities to health and safety risks from groundwater contamination, water-borne diseases, and drowning.^[2]

Figure 1 : Stagnant water and removal of vegetation shows the environmental damage of this mine.^[4]

^[2] “A Story Of Restoration And Reconciliation – RESOLVE”. RESOLVE, 2021, https://www.resolve.ngo/blog/A-Story-of-Restoration-and-Reconciliation.htm.
^[3] “Sierra Leone’s Diamond Industry must be Reformed” (2019) African Business, https://african.business/2019/05/economy/sierra-leones-diamond-industry/
[accessed 02/08/2021].
^[4] Cooper Inveen (2019) “Sierra Leone Community’s Suit against Diamond Miner shows Activist Trend,” Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leone-diamonds-idUSKCN1UW0QZ, [accessed 02/08/2022]

Figure 2: Miners at Work. ^[6]

Objectives

My pilot study aims to achieve two main objectives.

1. Unearth how the Kono people have actively challenged ownership structures and unearth opportunities to provoke further land stewardship. 
2. Partnering with Resolve in the Land reclamation & reconciliation project. Resolve is a West African NGO that aims to empower SMEs that can create alternative livelihoods to mining, and mitigate the ecological destruction that it causes.[1] Working alongside them will serve as a testing ground for my “entrepresearch” method. Engaging with participants will allow me to develop it as a research method. A three-phased approach will underlie the stress-testing of entrepresearch.
   1. Develop design experiments through the land reclamation of abandoned mines through community engagement workshops. Land reclamation is the transferring of lands degraded by mining into productive sites. Resolve favor transforming abandoned mines for agricultural and fish farming purposes.
   2. Working with participants and deploying liberatory research methods to engage in the project will “probe the potency” of entrepresearch modes of engagement.
   3. Access the results of the study and determine what worked and what failed. Repeat the successes while dissecting the failures to identify design methods and concepts that need to be in place to make relevant additions to the theory.

^[5] USAID (2010)  “Property Rights And Resource Governance Country Profile: Sierra Leone”. Resource Equity, 2021, https://resourceequity.org/record/1332-property-rights-and-resource-governance-country-profile-sierraleone/.
^[6] Cecilia Jamasmie (2018) “De Beers Launches Sierra Leone Based Pilot to Remove ‘Conflict Diamonds’ from the Market,” Mining.com, https://www.mining.com/de-beers-launches-sierra-leone-based-pilot-remove-conflict-diamonds-market/ [accessed 02/08/2022.]

Background

As shown by Resolve, reclaiming the lands of abandoned mining pits and converting them for agricultural usage offers possible solutions to the problem of extractive and unregulated mining in Kono.  Reclamation of lands through agriculture creates alternative livelihoods and comes with a host of ecological benefits. Reclamation is already popular with Sierra Leonean communities. According to a study by Prince T. Mabey, 43% of Sierra Leonean communities in mined areas suggest reclamation as a means to mitigate the damage wrought by mining.^[8]

Figure 3 : Community rice farming on reclaimed site in Kono

Land reclamation projects in Sierra Leone in 2006, organized by USAID-Tiffany & Co. partnership, found that converting abandoned mines for agricultural uses could effectively mitigate land-based conflicts and was most effective if the land was productive immediately, giving no incentive for the land to be re-mined. Their findings were based on investigations in Kono and Kenema Districts.^[9]

Figure 4 : Land reclama^[10]

^[8] Mabey, p. 12.
^[9]  “Reclaiming the Land After Mining: Improving Environmental Management and Mitigating Land-Use Conflicts in Alluvial Diamond Fields in Sierra Leone,” Foundation for Environmental Security & Sustainability, 2007, https://www.loe.org/images/content/080201/Reclaiming.pdf, [accessed 02/08/2022]
^[10] “Land Reclamation Project,” Resolve, https://www.resolve.ngo/land_reclamation_project.htm, [02/14/2022].

Positionality

I will be conducting this pilot study in my hometown, returning to the Kono region with a complicated positionality of being somewhere between outsider and insider. Kono is an eastern district of Sierra Leone with a population of 500,000. It is known for its diamond wealth and its uniquely horrific experience in the civil war.

I was only four years old when the civil war exiled my family and me. An immigration lottery brought me to the USA, where I continue to obtain western education. An honest assessment of my adopted western epistemologies could result in subconscious misjudgments. Most likely, I will have to challenge my paternalistic instincts towards those still in Sierra Leone, raised by potential subconscious assumptions that my Western knowledge holds a higher position hierarchically than their indigneous knowledge. Unless challenged, these will cloud the insights raised by my collaboration with the Kono people.

In “Charity and Shame: Towards Reciprocity,” Cameron Parsell outlines how this tendency amongst Westerners intervening in subaltern communities to look down upon indigenous people can be challenged. He suggests that by breaking down “provider/recipient distinctions” then the conditions will be created for “reciprocity and interdependence.”^[11]

Methodology

My pilot study will be conducted through two primary investigations during a month-long field research period in Kono this summer.

Patchwork Ethnography

Both my investigations will be informed by patchwork ethnography. Introduced in 2020 in “A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography”, this refers to a combination of “rigorous” but inevitably “fragmentary” field investigations, with long-term commitments to understanding the locality, to create ethnographies.

Investigation 1:

My first investigation will be into the commodification of land in Kono, and the resultant shifts in indigenous people’s relationships with land. It will reflect on how Kono’s ethnographies and epistemologies affect their perspective of the problem space.

Narrative Inquiry

^[11] Parsell, Cameron and Clarke, Andrew (2020) “Charity and Shame: Towards Reciprocity.” Social Problems, 0, p. 3.

Narrative inquiry is the process of recording the lived experiences of a group of people, showing how structures have had an impact on their everyday life. I will deploy narrative inquiry by creating a questionnaire asking open prompts to discover Kono people’s relationship to the land they work in and if they see themselves as stewards of it. They will be invited to tell their own narrative of their connections with their land.

Cultural Probes

Cultural probes are used to generate a richer picture of people’s lives by allowing them to create media to document their socio-cultural experiences. It allows them to externalize their narratives, making their lived experiences tangible for outsiders. By inviting Kono people to make a diary recording the events of their lives and the desires that emerge from them, I will discover their thoughts on active land acquisitions by diamond firms, learning how the acquisitions have challenged their livelihoods.

Investigation 2

My other study will be conducted differently based on my encounters with individuals actively working on land reclamation projects. While in Kono, I will engage in the “collective doing” of reclaiming land, embedding myself alongside the manual laborers to create candid moments of reflection with them.

Deep Listening

During my candid conversations with land reclamation workers, I will deploy deep listening techniques, used to withhold all judgment while listening. By showing my willingness to learn from my co-workers, I will encourage them to open up about their ethnographies and their motivations for creating alternatives to mining.

Vignettes

I will translate the findings from my candid conversations and the insights raised by deep listening into detailed vignettes of all the reclamation workers I encounter.

Composite Narratives

Having gained these vignettes, I will be able to combine them into composite narratives: the process of using several individuals’ data to create a single narrative. My composite narratives will unearth the ethnographic facts and motivations behind reclamation workers for alternatives to mining.

Participants and Recruitment

My two different research methodologies will require two different sets of participants, fitting for my two investigations. Furthermore, the differing participants necessitate two different forms of recruitment and reciprocity.

Investigation 1:

My first investigation requires a representative cross-section of Kono society to gain a complete picture of Kono’s relationship to the land and their thoughts on its commodification. Participants will be selected through proportional quota sampling, which ensures that all demographic groups are included in the findings proportionally to their representation in society.

To accurately gather the correct number of participants from each age group, Sierra Leonean census data from the last 20 years will be leveraged. The 2015 census will primarily be used, revealing Kono’ gender, religious, age, and chiefdom demographics, as well as the ethnic dispersion across Sierra Leone.^[12]

With the scale of each demographic group in Kono accessed, I will engage with the local community to gather a representative group of participants.

Previous researchers have set an unacceptable precedent for exploiting Kono people and their data, which I hope to challenge. Offering financial incentives or assistance with their household tasks will ensure I maintain reciprocity with all participants, who will be protected by complete anonymity.

Investigation 2:

My investigation of land reclamations requires less formal sampling methods, and a sample of community workers affected by open mining pits will ensure that my investigation only covers those intimately involved in it. Convenience sampling methods are possible by recording candid conversations with the reclamation workers I am laboring alongside.

A less explicit form of reciprocity will be required for these Kono people, who are in most cases already involved in creating alternative livelihoods to mining. My assistance and leadership in reclamation projects will complete the reciprocal relationship. This will raise a potential power imbalance, and I run the risk of giving orders to a community who are in a better position than myself to determine their needs. To ensure that the power is held by indigenous people throughout the process, I will consult Power Analysis: A Practical

^[12] Weekes, Samuel Beresford and Bah, Silleh (2017) Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census: Thematic Report on Population Structure and Population Distribution. Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL).

Guide, asking myself relevant questions posed by Jethro Petitt in his “Transnational Economic Actors” section throughout the field work. These include will I “increase or reduce the policy autonomy and developmental space governments have to tackle poverty in ways which reflect agreed national priorities and needs?”: What can I do to reduce the conflict between my objectives and localities’?: And how will I position myself to prioritize all levels of local hierarchies?^[13]

Findings from my Investigations

The findings from both my investigations will center around the idea of “readiness” for two differing transitions, supplemented by insights into my research method of “entrepresearch”. 

Investigation 1:

The primary take-away from “Investigation 1” will be Kono people’s epistemologies towards their land, where I will learn the thought-processes behind their interactions with it. Participating alongside them in activities in the problem space of land commodification, will allow me to assess their “readiness” for a transition to land stewardship while simultaneously solving the problems of today..

“Readiness” expands upon transition design scholars’ conceptualization of “mindset and posture,” which proposes that “fundamental change” arises from “a shift in mindset or worldview that leads to different ways of interacting with others.” “Mindset and postures” underlies the fundamental appeal from transition design, that individuals “examine their own value system and take up more speculative and collaborative postures.”^[14] Cultural probes, revealing the tangible experience, desires, and mindsets of participants, will therefore reveal how speculatively and collaborative the Kono people are and therefore how “ready” they are for a transition.

Investigation 2:

Investigation 2 is less about assessing “readiness” as it is safe to assume that land reclamation workers actively contributing to a transition to alternative livelihoods are “ready” for them. Instead, investigation 2 will allow us to understand the ethnographic, demographic, and epistemological characteristics which underpin this “readiness” for a post-extractivist Kono.

Entrepresearch

^[13] Petitt, Jethro (2013) Power Analysis: A Practical Guide. Stockholm, Sweden, p. 27
^[14] Irwin, Terry and Vaughan, Laurene (2016) “Mapping Transition Design: A Workshop.” Climactic Post Normal Design Exhibition, p. 9

Discussion

I expect my pilot study to raise actionable insights with utility for those working in the land commodification and use and the lack of mining alternatives in the problem spaces. Furthermore, people working in the post-extractivist area more generally also stand to gain.

My assessment of “readiness” amongst Kono people should help related stakeholders create solutions towards alternative livelihood for communities from diamond mining and the ecological cost that precedes.

My pilot study will also be the point at which entrepresearch is introduced to the design world, hopefully inspiring other designers to take a more action-based approach.

Finally, I hope my pilot study will help unlock the agricultural potential of land currently occupied by abandoned mines.

References

• “A Story Of Restoration And Reconciliation – RESOLVE”. RESOLVE, 2021, https://www.resolve.ngo/blog/A-Story-of-Restoration-and-Reconciliation.htm.
• “Diamond Development Initiative- RESOLVE”. RESOLVE, 2021, https://www.resolve.ngo/ddi.htm.
•  “Reclaiming the Land After Mining: Improving Environmental Management and Mitigating Land-Use Conflicts in Alluvial Diamond Fields in Sierra Leone,” Foundation for Environmental Security & Sustainability, 2007, https://www.loe.org/images/content/080201/Reclaiming.pdf, [accessed 02/08/2022]
• Günel, Gökçe et al. (2020) “A Manifesto For Patchwork Ethnography”. Society For Cultural Anthropology, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-manifesto-for-patchwork-ethnography.
• “Improving Environmental Management And Mitigating Land-Use Conflicts In Alluvial Diamond Fields In Sierra Leone.”. 2007, https://www.loe.org/images/content/080201/Reclaiming.pdf. Accessed 20 Nov 2021.
• Inveen, Cooper (2019) “Sierra Leone Community’s Suit against Diamond Miner shows Activist Trend,” Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leone-diamonds-idUSKCN1UW0QZ, [accessed 02/08/2022]
• Irwin, Terry and Vaughan, Laurene (2016) “Mapping Transition Design: A Workshop.” Climactic Post Normal Design Exhibition, pp. 1-22.
• Jamasmie, Cecilia (2018) “De Beers Launches Sierra Leone Based Pilot to Remove ‘Conflict Diamonds’ from the Market,” Mining.com, https://www.mining.com/de-beers-launches-sierra-leone-based-pilot-remove-conflict-diamonds-market/ [accessed 02/08/2022.]
• “Land Reclamation Project,” Resolve, https://www.resolve.ngo/land_reclamation_project.htm, [02/14/2022].
• Mabey, Prince T. et al. “Environmental Impacts: Local Perspectives Of Selected Mining Edge Communities In Sierra Leone”. Sustainability, vol 12, no. 14, 2021, Accessed 18 Nov 2021.
• Njoh, A., Ananga, E., Anchang, J., Ayuk-Etang, E. and Akiwumi, F., 2016. “Africa’s Triple Heritage, Land Commodification and Women s Access to Land: Lessons from Cameroon, Kenya and Sierra Leone.” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 52(6), pp.760-779.
• Parsell, Cameron and Clarke, Andrew (2020) “Charity and Shame: Towards Reciprocity.” Social Problems, 0, pp. 1-17.
• Petitt, Jethro (2013) Power Analysis: A Practical Guide. Stockholm, Sweden.
• “Sierra Leone’s Diamond Industry must be Reformed” (2019) African Business, https://african.business/2019/05/economy/sierra-leones-diamond-industry/
• [accessed 02/08/2021].
• USAID, 2010. “Property Rights And Resource Governance Country Profile: Sierra Leone”. Resource Equity, 2021, https://resourceequity.org/record/1332-property-rights-and-resource-governance-country-profile-sierraleone/.
• van Amstel, Frederick. “Designing Relations In Prospective Design”. Frederick Van Amstel, 2021, https://fredvanamstel.com/talks/designing-relations-in-prospective-design.
• Weekes, Samuel Beresford and Bah, Silleh (2017) Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census: Thematic Report on Population Structure and Population Distribution. Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL).
• Wherton, Joseph. “Designing Assisted Living Technologies In The Wild’: Preliminary Experiences With Cultural Probe Methodology”. BMC Medical Research Methodology, vol 12, no. 188, 2012, Accessed 20 Nov 2021

Literature Review

Introduction

African countries are at the base of a pyramid that supplies industrial societies’ natural resources. Presently, Africa cannot satisfy its need for sustenance because it must fulfill the new demands from the technological commerce industry of the West, which continues to impact its environment, economic development, and socio-cultural fabric. Western modernity’s ideas of progress exponentially violate Africa’s local economies and geographical and environmental boundaries.

Transition Design calls for a “fundamental change” to more sustainable futures. This research applies the lens of Transition Design towards place-based solutions for Distributed Natural Resources Systems. I hypothesize that employing theories of Transition Design will aid in disentangling the paradox between Africa’s natural wealth and its relatively limited level of local economic growth.

This literature review attempts to diagnose the current challenges inflicted upon localities from resource extraction and the materiality of these resources to fulfill local and global needs. It then connects and synthesizes the opportunity gaps for place-based natural resource empowerment and experimental post-extractivist futures.

Natural Resource Extraction

Norman Girvan maps five historical stages of extractive imperialism that have built a system of control over land in Africa and have caused a complex interplay between political and economic factors at a national and international level. Firstly, in the “ age of conquest and colonization,” expeditions discovered new lands and initially colonized them. Following this, commercial capitalism commodified the resources on the colonialized land and created slavery. This new infrastructure grew with the First Industrial Revolution” to keep up with growing demand. Next, the “Second Industrial Revolution” created “monopoly capitalism,” creating “oligopsonistic” power. Finally, Girvan names the current system as “Global Finance Capitalism,” where direct colonial administration has been replaced by “the threat of financial blockage and trade sanctions.” Under “Global Finance Capitalism,” land control is coercive and invisible. This section considers the literature surrounding the development of this modern extractivist system in further detail.

Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry (2014) Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, Leidan, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 50-51.

Core and Periphery

The study of the extraction of natural resources from Africa has been led by the core and periphery model, developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. Emerging from the global south, it argued that economically strong nations at the core could dictate the terms of extraction with economically weak but resource-abundant nations at the periphery. Core-periphery is the base for colonialism and extractive capitalism, embedded within the Berlin Congo Conference, which “managed the ongoing process of colonization in Africa,” relegating the African natural environment to a “standing reserve”and provided for the core’s need for commodities and profit.

Transdisciplinary scholars agree that capitalism is a force that can change its shape and has done so to maintain the core-periphery structure despite the fall of formal colonization. Stephen Bunker and Paul Ciccantell observe that little has changed from an “intensification and expansion of material processes of production” through globalization. This globalization often takes the form of financial incentives given from the core to the periphery to keep them

Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry (2014) Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, Leidan, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 50-51.
Ibid, pp. 52-53.
Ibid, p. 54.
Ibid, p. 56.
Ibid, p. 58.
Wallerstein, Immanuel (2004) World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, pp. 11-12.
Craven, Matthew (2015) “Between Law and History: The Berlin Congo Conference Of 1884-1885 and the Logic of Free Trade”, London Review of International Law, 3(1), pp. 32; Heidegger, Martin (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Garland Publishing, p. 23.

in expansion of material processes of production” through globalization. This globalization often takes the form of financial incentives given from the core to the periphery to keep them in extractive capitalist systems, as Ramrattan and Szenberg observe in their study of Guyanan capitalism. As capitalism has expanded, the periphery has become more disposable, and colonial mindsets have strengthened. In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein establishes the current colonial mindset, arguing that it nurtures the belief that there is always somewhere else to go to and exploit once the current site of extraction has been exhausted.”

Land Relations’ Role in Extractivism

Necropolitics

Indigenous African scholars have experienced the death and destruction wrought by the neocolonial core first hand. One such scholar is the Cameroonian philosopher Joseph-Achille Mbembe who created “Necropolitics” to describe how “death worlds” have been created in wartime and extraction, with those within them becoming regarded as the “living dead.”

Mbembe applies Necropolitics to the African natural resources space by stating that war machines have developed around natural resource wealth leading to the civil wars that shook Africa in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He states, “the concentration of activities connected with the extraction of valuable resources around these enclaves has… turned these enclaves into privileged spaces of war and death.”

Sacrifice Zones

“Sacrifice Zones” is the extension of Necropolitics outside of wartime, defined as “places that, to the extractors, somehow do not count and therefore can be poisoned, drained or otherwise destroyed.” They are the places where the environmental damage caused by Western consumerism is concentrated and are often located in Africa. Many scholars have used “Sacrifice Zones”

Bunker, Stephen G. and Ciccantell, Paul S. (2005) Globalization and the Race for Resources, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, p. 6.
Ramrattan, Lall and Szenberg, Michael (2010) “Colonial Dependency, Core-Periphery, and Capitalism: A Case Study of the Guyana Economy”, The Journal of Developing Areas, 44(1), p. 51.
Klein, Naomi (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 169.
Mbembe, Achile (2003) “Necropolitics”, Public Culture, 15(1). pp. 39-40
Ibid, p. 33.

to define specific localities and frame the suffering and activism of those within them. Lerner and Brown have unearthed the disproportionate impact of toxic waste on certain localities in the US, and Katia Valenzuela-Fuentes has investigated patterns of environmental activism within Chile’s “Sacrifice Zones.” My indigenous Kono District, Sierra Leone, has also become a sacrifice zone, with violence deployed against the Kono people to maintain the diamond trade. This had been observed by Prince T. Mabey, describing the two people were “shot dead by police in violent clashes over land at a mine in Kono with locals from surrounding villages.”

However, Rob Nixon’s intervention has been most significant, further populating the “Sacrifice Zones” space by creating the concept of “slow violence.” He describes neo-colonial violence in “Sacrifice Zones” as “a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.” The core has the privilege to ignore this violence that it generates and does so for the moral defense of consumerism. This violence is widespread across the global south, with indigenous people becoming victims. Morgensen recognizes the intentionality of this position when he states, “many of the extraction zones that we see today are placed near indigenous communities.”

Ecological Destruction

As described by Downey, Bonds, and Clark in “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environment Degradation,” Unequal Exchange Theory argues that “because of their position in the world system hierarchy, core nations are able to take advantage” of the peripheries labor and natural resources while “exporting many environmentally degrading activities to the periphery.” This explains the rise of ecological damage connected to neocolonial extraction, “Sacrifice Zones,” and Necropolitics, with the exact disconnected mechanism propagating

Lerner, Steve and Brown, Phil (2010) Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.; Valenzuela-Fuentes.
Mabey, Prince T. et al (2020) “Environmental impacts: Local perspectives of selected mining edge communities in Sierra Leone”, Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(14), p. 8.
Nixon, Rob (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, p. 2.
Morgensen, Scott (2011) Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (First Peoples: New Directions Indigenous), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 16.
Downey, Liam et al (2010), “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environment Degradation”, Organ Environ, 23(4), p. 417.

environmental destruction alongside human destruction. Downey, Bonds, and Clark’s work on “war machines” activity within ecologies have developed this space. They have shown that the literal mechanism of extraction is not the only node for environmental damage within “Sacrifice Zones.” To take Downey, Bonds, and Clark’s “Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation” as an example, Mbembe’s “war machines” create further environmental havoc before resources are extracted. The primary mechanism that causes “war machines” to cause ecological collapse is the violence used in the process of switching land use for extraction. To open a mine in Africa, scores of individuals living through ecoliterate means like small farming are forced from their land. Downey, Bonds, and Clark refer to the example of Rio Tinto’s Murowa diamond mine in Zimbabwe, which led to the forceful relocation of 1,000 indigenous people.

The Materiality of Natural Resources

Once resources have been extracted, they must be manufactured into finished products. Kate Crawford’s “Anatomy of AI” establishes the periodic table to a digital map, describing the multiple processes of extraction, transportation, assembling, consumption, and abandoning that detail the creation and usage of technological products. This section examines the processes whereby extracted resources are refined for everyday consumer products and how they are retired when they become obsolete.

Technological Commerce

The “Golden Spike” was the name Forbes journalist John Steel gave to the internet when it became a “superhighway” of information. Investors flocked to the latest innovations in the technology and data sectors, with punters predicting a crash to come following this substantial boom in consumer technology. However, the collapse never came with consumer technological goods forming most of our material culture in the global north.

Downey, Liam et al, pp. 417-445.
Downey, Bonds, and Clark, p. 435.
Crawford, Kate (2019) “Anatomy of an AI System”, Virtual Creativity, 9(1), p.
117. Chong, P. Peter and DeVris, Peter (2005) “The Information Superhighway: The Golden Spike of the 21st Century”, International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2(3), p. 224.

Consumerism

Scholars agree that the final years of the 1980s saw the coming of consumerism, a force that altered our usage and consumption of products. As the Eastern Bloc fell, the consumerism created in the US and dispersed within its sphere of influence was able to gain a global reception. Peter Sterns describes the “embourgeoisement” of the global working class because of their newfound commitment to this consumerism.

Kate Crawford develops this sense of consumerist culture into the personal technology space when she begins her “Anatomy of an AI System” webpage with a narrative of how devices like Amazon Echo have brought technology into all aspects of our lives, removing our need to interact with anything physically. Doing something with the ‘touch of a button was once the metric of ease, but we can now control everything in our homes with mere voice.

Supply Chain & Consumerism

In “Anatomy of AI”, Kate Crawford outlines the exact consequences of our technological consumerism: “each small moment of convenience – be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song – requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data.” shows how the profit motive is still the primary motivation for technology companies by analyzing their unsustainable and untraceable supply chains. She describes the fractal systems of multiple layers of contractors and subcontractors that technology companies use, making establishing the origins of natural resources impossible.

Martin, Ann Smart (1993) “Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework” Winterthur Portfolio. p. 141.
Sterns, Peter (2006) Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire, New York: Routledge, p. 140.
Crawford, Kate (2018) “Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources”, Anatomy of AI, last seen 12/01/2021, p.1.
Crawford (2018) p. 2.

Phillips has promised to work to make its supply chain “conflict-free” but will struggle to reconcile their “tens of thousands of different suppliers, each of which provides different components for their manufacturing process.”

Scholars have long argued that business must redefine its understanding of value, to prioritize ecological sustainability and the welfare of people. Businesses must create supply chains for purposes other than just remaining competitive, and they must consider “sustainable value” as a confluence of “environmental value,” “social value,” and “economic value.” A proper understanding of the ethical implications of resource extraction requires an even more thorough investigation on supply chains of technology firms to be redesigned according to sustainability and the wellbeing of localities. As Suzanne Kite has it in “How to build anything ethically?, “’AI cannot be made ethically until its physical components are made ethically.” This idea strikes right at the heart of the technological commerce industry, whose architectural parts depend on earth’s resources.

Throwaway Consumerism

The consumption required to sustain our thirst for technological products has only been furthered by their throwaway nature, whereby we dispose of last year’s device to replace it with the latest model. Transition designer Jonathan Chapman has observed this trend and fought back against the morality that has allowed us for mass-retirement of functional devices. In an op-ed published in The Guardian, Chapman questions, “by what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so rapidly turn into meaningless junk?” Chapman rightly draws our attention to how a loss of respect for the materiality of our possessions has caused a weakening of artifacts in our material culture, with each device becoming irrelevant in our imaginations as quickly as they come into them.

Ibid, p.11.
Comin, Lidiane Cássia et al (2020) “Sustainable business models: a literature review”, Benchmarking, Emerald Group Holdings Ltd., 27(7), p. 2029.
Kite, Suzanne (2020) “How to Build Anything” in Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence, Honolulu, p. 76.
Chapman, Jonathan (2021) “Today it’s cool, tomorrow it’s junk. We have to act against our throwaway culture”, The Guardian, last seen 12/01//2021, .

Planned Obsolescence

The concept “planned obsolescence” was created in 1986 by Jeremy Bulow. He defined it as “the production of goods with uneconomically short useful lives so that customers will have to make repeat purchases.”

This imagined economic concept has come to reality, with Daniel Keeble describing a “culture of planned obsolescence in technology companies.” He attributes much of this culture to the rise of Apple and their development of iPhones with irreplaceable batteries. With a lifespan of just 300-500 charges, the user expects to replace their device when the battery soon begins to fail.

Retirement

It is not just the extraction of natural resources used in technological products whose damage is hidden by complex supply chains, but also the retirement and disposal of these products that damage ecosystems and harm people’s welfare in localities. Once resources are extracted from Africa, they are exported to be converted into finished products in the West. At the end of their initial lives, they are resold to be refurbished, usually back to their origin in the global south. This has been the case since the consumer electronics boom when 700,000 phones resold in the USA returned to the global south. Thus, the cycle is complete, with the raw materials exiting Africa and being sold back to it in the form of finished products at the end of their life cycles.

Bulow, Jeremy (1986) “An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 101(4), p. 729.
Keeble, Dan (2013) The Culture of Planned Obsolescence in Technology Companies, Oulu University of Applied Sciences.
Ibid, pp. 30-31.
Most, Eric (2003) Calling All Cell Phones: Collection, Reuse, and Recycling Programs in the US, New York: INFORM Inc, p. 11.

The impact of re-importing obsolete technological devices is rarely understood, and in 2013 representatives from the Ghanaian government conducted a study into the health and ecological implications of recycling operations in the nation. Akormedi, Asampong, and Fobil found that workers at Ghanaian e-waste dumps were “exposed to frequent burns, cuts, and inhalation of highly contaminated fumes.” Once processed, many natural resources found in the recycled devices were discarded. They then flowed back into water systems, causing pollution once more.

Place-Based Resource Empowerment

There is a stunning disparity between Africa’s natural resource wealth and the poor welfare of its local communities. The unequal exchange caused Africa to be gutted of its natural resources without receiving fair economic compensation is visible across the entire continent. For example, Niger exports 3000 tonnes of uranium to France to power much of the French infrastructure, but 70% of Niger’s population is without electricity.

Erik Reinert created “welfare colonialism” when discussing the “compensation” the global north provides nations it extracts from in the form of aid. They argue that aid may have started “as a mechanism to provide help to develop new nations,” but keep African leaders operating within the bondage of aid at the detriment of people and ecosystems existing under them.

Fractal Ontological Approaches

Having established the current problem with place-based resource empowerment in Africa, this section will examine the opportunities for fractal ontological approaches. Scholars of fractal ontology understand the world to be built from systems where “interconnectedness” is viewable as “the repetition of a naturally occurring complex pattern. Therefore, if let be, human systems will develop into complex and successful webs with people in localities able to leverage their “selfhood” to self-actualize their versions of success.

Akormedi, Matthew et al (2013) “Working Conditions and Environmental Exposures among Electronic Waste Workers in Ghana”, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health p. 1.
Grégoire, Emmanuel (2011) “Niger: A State Rich in Uranium”, Hérodote, 142(3), p. 221; Bhandari, Ramchandra et al (2021) “Sustainability Assessment of Electricity Generation in Niger Using a Weighted Multi-Criteria Decision Approach”, Sustainability, 385(13) p. 3
Reinert, Erik S. (2006) “Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’” Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics, 3. p. 1.
Alemazung, Joy Asongazoh (2010) Post-Colonial Colonialism: An Analysis of International Factors and Actors Marring African Socio-Economic and Political Development, The Journal of Pan African Studies, 3(10), pp. 62-72. pp. 62, 71.

Indigenous Sovereignty

Fractal ontologies can provide place-based approaches to natural resources, and the following section applies them to indigenous sovereignty, whereby local communities can become liberated from global capitalist systems. “Indigenous sovereignty,” emerged from the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples after a “renaissance” of indigeneity occurring since the 1970s. It formalized indigenous self-government and determination ideas, allowing them to create their “inner worlds.”

Indigenous sovereignty breaks away from Western hegemony because it reframes indigenous people from unconsenting “minorities” within the global capitalist and extractivist system to communities with “state-building capacity and sovereign dignity.” In the next section, we will explore the threads of land stewardship, in situ utilization, and localized specificity within the lens of indigenous sovereignty.

Land Stewardship

Scholars have used land stewardship as an alternative to land ownership. Stewardship is the responsible controlling of land by inhabitants who may become empowered by it without damaging the local ecology.

Bourget, Chelsea (2020) LIVING TREES AND NETWORKS: AN EXPLORATION OF FRACTAL ONTOLOGY AND DIGITAL ARCHIVING OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE, University of Guelph. p. ii.
Jaques, William S. (2013) Fractal Ontology and Anarchic Selfhood: Multiplicitious Becomings, McMaster University. p. 6.
Wiessner, Siegfried (2008) “Indigenous Sovereignty: A Reassessment in Light of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 41. p. 1141.
Short, Damien (2006) “Review: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Democratic Project: Stephen Curry”, Contemporary Political Theory, 5, p. 108.

The South African Journal of Science has published insightful articles detailing land stewardship in South Africa, finding it to be a “balancing act between stewards’ use of natural resources… and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem.” The South African team has found that successfully negotiating this balance helped achieve sustainability goals without being detrimental to the welfare of local people.

Stewardship is built off of the concept of “receiving,” not “taking” from the land, whereby those using land for its natural resources exist in a reciprocal relationship with it. It is an extension of Armin Falk and Urs Fischbacher’s “theory of reciprocity,” arguing that “bilateral interactions” are more productive than “competitive markets.” They advocate for the equal benefit of both parties in a relationship without being forced into it.

Kite also discusses this reciprocity at great length through her observations of Lakota land stewardship: “the Lakota viewpoint is that we always look seven generations ahead.” This is a vital concept for land stewardship, as it reminds us that land is not ours to own; we look after it for the next generation.

In Situ Utilization

Land stewardship also allows people in localities to leverage land for their sustenance. In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) was created by NASA in 2016 to solve logistical problems with their Mars program. It speculated how astronauts could survive on other planets by suggesting that research is conducted into surviving from the resources already at the landing site.

Cockburn, Jessica et al (2019) “The meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa”, South African Journal of Science, 115(5-6).; Barendse, Jaco (2016) “A broader view of stewardship to achieve conservation and sustainability goals in South Africa”, South African Journal of Science, 112(5-6).
Falk, Armin and Fischenbacher, Urs (2006) “A Theory of Reciprocity”, Games and Economic Behavior, 54, pp. 293-315. p. 1.
Kite, p. 79.

This theory offers a path to indigenous sovereignty because it can liberate communities from relying on Western aid by reducing the burden of imports from outside of their community. Many scholars have investigated current efforts in Africa to produce necessities that they currently have to import. These include electrical energy in Declan Murray’s study of Kenya’s off-grid solar market and upcycling in Daniel Karin Rosner and others’ work on DIY practices in Uganda.

The debt crisis of the 20th Century, which Coulibaly argues was partially reconciled by the Multilateral Debt Relieve Initiative in the 1990s, has returned binding Africa to American and Chinese imperialism. As of 2017, Sub-Saharan African nations had a median debt ratio of 53% of GDP. John Loxley has observed this debt is “totally unmanageable” and has led to “recurring economic crises, which Africa can only escape through more foreign aid and borrowing.” The potentiality of success of in situ utilization could go further than self-sustenance by creating a surplus for the paying of these debts, liberating the continent from imperialism

Localized Specificity

Scholars have used localized specificity to define how designs and their usage must follow the context of the locality for which they are created. Terry Irwin’s definition of transition design shows the extent to which transition designers must consider it in all their work. She states Transition Design “looks for emergent possibilities within the problem context” rather than “imposing preplanned and resolved solutions.” Likewise, communities can utilize localized specificity to make their own decisions on which resources can be utilized.

Linne, Diane l. et al (2017) “Overview of NASA Technology Development for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)”, 68th International Astronautical Congress, p. 1.
Rosner, Daniella Karin et al (2013), “Reclaiming Repair: Maintenance and Mending as Methods for Design”, Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems.; Murray, Declan (2018) Fixing development Breakdown, repair and disposal in Kenya’s off-grid solar market, University of Edinburgh.
Coulibaly, Brahima S. et al (2019) “Is sub-Saharan Africa facing another systemic sovereign debt crisis?”, African Growth Initiative, pp. 1-2.
Loxley, John (2003) “Imperialism & Economic Reform in Africa: What’s New About the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)?”, Review of African Political Economy, 95, p. 119.

An essential aspect of localized specificity is the constituted appropriation of technology in Africa. Horst, Miller, and Toluwagu have researched how mobile phones are appropriated differently within specific contexts in Africa. With technology accessible to most Africans, appropriating it to their localized specificity separates them from the evaporation of place-based cultures.

Connecting the Local to the Global

Disentangling the paradox on an international level is a separate process from disentangling the paradox on a local level, and doing so can provide indigenous people with Universal Needs that they cannot achieve within their locality. Manfred Max-Neef’s Universal Needs motivated all people, and they provided for these needs in ways specific to their context. They are subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, idleness, creation, identity, and freedom. Just one of Max-Neef’s universal needs is tangibly necessary for survival and can be provided by indigenous sovereignty: subsistence.

In his article “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place,” Gideon Kossoff argues that the other nine universal needs require global connectedness to achieve in contemporary times, and the following section will propose the theories of Cosmopolitan Localism as a node to be leveraged to connect indigenous people to the global.

Cosmopolitan Localism Towards Distributed Natural Resource Systems

Irwin, Terry (2015) “Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research”, Design and Culture, 7(2), p. 237.
Toluwalogu, p. 138; Horst, Heather and Miller, Daniel (2005) “From Kinship to Link-up: Cell Phones and Social Networking in Jamaica.”, Current Anthropology, 46(5), pp. 755-778.
Max-Neef, Manfred (1991) Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and Further Reflections, Apex Press, 1. p. 27.

Gideon Kossoff defines Cosmopolitan Localism as “the theory and practice of inter-regional and planet-wide networking between place-based communities who share knowledge, technology, and resources.” These place-based communities are self-organized but are “nested in more extensive and looser global networks.”

Coined by Wolfgang Sachs, Cosmopolitan Localism combines Kantian cosmopolitanism with organist and anarchist thinking. This sub-section traces the lineage of Cosmopolitan Localism and draws attention to contemporary literature and emergent threads within it.

Origin and Evolution of Cosmopolitan Localism

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism was created by enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant on considering encounters between cultures. He observed a transnational world where “a violation of laws in one part of the world is felt everywhere.” He imagined a world where this “universal community” would live under a single “cosmopolitan law.”

Radical Holists

Kantian cosmopolitanism later came into conflict with the radical holists. They emerged from the classical anarchist tradition of Bakunin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin, preferring “self-organization” over a technocratic global overseer. From this tradition developed the organists who applied anarchist self-organization to modern society. They believed that globalization had “hollowed out” and “atomized” society, proposing that a more “organistic” society was the path to “ecotopia.”

Kossoff, Gideon (2019) “Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place”, Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, p. 52.
Ibid, p. 58.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1997) “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism”, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 5(1), pp. 1-25. p. 1.
Fuchs, Christian (2002) “Concepts of Social Self-Organisation” RESEARCH PAPER INTAS PROJECT “HUMAN STRATEGIES IN COMPLEXITY, 4. p. 22.
Buber, Martin PATHS IN UTOPIA. p. 17, Bookchin, Murray TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY. p. 81.

Sachs concluded the synthesizing of the seemingly contradictory ideas of Kant and the radical holists by creating Cosmopolitan Localism. He challenged the Kantian globalism that had provoked “cultural evaporation,” arguing for a global “mutual collective” to, most notably, deal with environmental issues.

Evolutionary Discourses for Cosmopolitan Localism

Ecological sociologist Gideon Kossoff has used Cosmopolitan Localism as an expansion on Max-Neef’s ten universal needs for contemporary times, recognizing that consumption alone “ignores non-material and intangible needs that are essential for high-quality lifestyles.” In our interconnected world, universal needs such as “creation,” “identity,” and “understanding” cannot be fulfilled without connecting to other communities through mutualistic relationships.

Scholars of Cosmopolitan Localism have explored the mechanisms that could allow mutualist systems to function in this way. In this space, Manzini created the “Small, Local, Open, Connected” (SLOC) framework, proposing that designs for cosmopolitan localism should work on an individual scale while fulfilling the needs of the wider local community and ecology. Furthermore, they should be “Open” to appropriation for a specific community’s needs and facilitate connections with the broader world.

Kossoff has been more specific, creating “synergistic satisfiers,” referring to projects, activities, and products that simultaneously fulfill multiple needs . Kossoff proposes these be exported to other communities where they are successful as a form of connection and for other communities to appropriate them for their unique context.

Sachs, Wolfgang (2009) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. xvii.
Kossoff, p. 59.
Manzini, Ezio “Resilient Systems and Cosmopolitan Localism – The Merging Scenario of the Small, Local, Open and Connected Space” in Economy of Sufficency: Essays on Wealth in Diversity, Enjoyable Limits and Creating Commons, ed. By Uwe Schneidewind et al, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, pp. 70-81, p. 162.
Kossoff, p. 59.

Some scholars have approached Cosmopolitan Localism from its roots, rather than developing supplementary ideas. Although Cosmopolitan Localist systems would not have “a single leader, scholars have criticized the Kantian root of Cosmopolitan Localism that displays imperialistic structures. Mignolo leads the charge, sustained by scholars such as Gerard Delanty, to develop cosmopolitanism “not through a global democracy, but through considering the implications of encounters between people.”

Mignolo is concerned that Eurocentrism has become so entrenched in political epistemologies worldwide that communities in the global south will struggle to shift the influence of European hegemony. He questions how communities can self-actualize their needs when they have become so reliant on European ideas. He questions the capability for the oppressed to become independent through a model that the oppressor has created.

Emergent Threads Towards Cosmopolitan Localism

This section will explore questions like what counts as design? What counts as entrepreneurship and innovation across a dynamic “VUCA” Africa through the lens of Cosmopolitan Localism. VUCA refers to “Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity” and describes the multilayered complexity of the contemporary world.

Nested Entrepreneurship

Africa’s young population has an entrepreneurial spirit through a need to be creative to survive high rates of unemployment and systemic failures. Acs and Adusei have noted the role of entrepreneurship to “impact on job creation and poverty alleviation” by propelling Africa to be a global hub of innovation.

Mignolo, Walter (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press. p. 23.
Delanty, Gerald (2009) The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 59.
Mignolo, p. 23.
Mack, Oliver et al (2016) Managing in a VUCA World, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, p. v.

Exploring the cultural characteristics of African entrepreneurs will develop my understanding of the relationality between culture and entrepreneurship, helping me answer the broader question, what is entrepreneurship through the lens of transition design?

This “Cultural Entrepreneurship” can be enacted through the creation of small and meaningful enterprises embedded in the fabric of the “place” and is a theory that delivers sustainability-driven mutualism between social actors that self-actualize in line with Max-Neef’s argument that systems must “represent the needs and interests of heterogeneous people.” “Cultural Entrepreneurship” solutions will generate benefits in balance with the environment and the economy.

Within the framework of place-based entrepreneurship, “Cultural Entrepreneurship” will propose the establishment of nested and self-organizing webs of entrepreneurial endeavors, based on Folke Gunther and Carl Folke’s conceptualization of living systems. These would have great utility in applying examples of Kossoff’s “synergistic satisfiers” to more contexts and could be deployed through action-based research. Establishing models for “Cultural Entrepreneurship” networks will guide my future research.

Indigenous African Scholarship

The need for African scholarship to influence the new theories of Cosmopolitan Localism as it relates to Africa becomes crucial to mitigate the Kantian influence on Cosmopolitan Localism that Mignolo raised. Doing so will be challenging because much African scholarship and many

Dana, Leo-Paul (2018) “Introduction to African Entrepreneurship”, in African Entrepreneurship: Challenges and Opportunities for Doing Business, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 2.
Max-Neef, Manfred (2006) Real Life Economic, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, p. 198.
Gunther, Folke and Folke, Carl ( ) “Characteristics of Nested Living Systems”, Journal of Biological Systems, 1(3), p. 257.
Kossoff, p. 59.

artifacts of the past have been lost. Furthermore, Africa is not a singularity but a pluralistic continent with tribal diversity and the “highest levels of human genetic diversity in the world.” It is necessary to avoid assuming that an indigenous scholar’s work is relevant for Africa. However, Pan African scholars such as Pixley Seme’s work on the in situ regeneration of Africa and Dani W. Nabudere’s work on the African renaissance and challenge to globalization can guide our path towards Cosmopolitan Localist systems that can empower African communities. Furthermore, following the examples of Kumba Femusu Solleh’s investigation of the ancient Damby Tradition in Kono and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart depicting pre-colonial life in Nigeria can help search for an African past.

Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Cosmopolitan Localism

The modern human world is cohabitation with 8.7 million different species, all of which are important non-human actors in our ecosystems. A Cosmopolitan Localist world for Africa must be Ecocentric and Anthropocentric to consider the needs and positionality of these non-human actors within fragile systems. This is a substantial and thus far untouched research area.

Geo-Futurism: Experimenting with Speculative Post Extractivism

This final section investigates post-extractivism of non-renewable resources and positions Geo-Futurism as an alternative transition pathway. It begins with the literature of post-extractivism and then observes three key threads for Geo-Futurism: land, environment, and the people.

Post Extractivism of Non-Renewable Resources

Reed, Floyd and Tishkoff, Sarah A (2006) “African human diversity, origins and migrations”, Current Opinion in Genetics and Development, 16, p. 597.
Seme, Pixley, (1906), “The Regeneration of Africa”, Journal of the Royal African Society, pp. 1-7.; Nabudere, Dani W (2001) “The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization”, African Journal of Political Science, 6(2), pp. 11-28.
Solleh, Kumba Femusu (2011), The Damby Tradition of the Kono People of Sierra Leone West Africa, AuthorHouse.; Achebe, Chinua (1958) Things Fall Apart, London: William Heinemann Ltd.
Strain, Daniel (2011) “8.7 Million: A New Estimate for All the Complex Species on Earth”, Science, 333, p. 1083.

Post-extractivism was created in 2013 by Eduardo Gudynas. Scholars who advance his conceptualization take extractivism as the main force to challenge when creating “alternatives to development” They have identified the fallacy of “growth-oriented extractivism” as “based on a model that is highly destructive of ecosystems and communities.” Some extraction may occur from renewable resources, as with time, these regenerate. However, all extraction of non-renewable resources causes ecological destruction.

Degrowth economies offer a transition towards post-extractivism. Degrowth scholars such as Serge LaTouche and Giorgos Kallis believe that the most consumptive and “developed” economies must go through a period of “economic contradiction or downscaling” to bring their consumption in line with the rest of the world. Degrowth continues after the initial period of economic contradiction, with Serge LaTouche’s “a-growthism” referring to the permanent planned absence of growth within an economy.

Geo-Futurism

The current extractivist system reduces “life into objects for the use of others.” It leverages “non-reciprocal dominance-based relationship on the earth” to take from the earth without care for preserving it. The sizable monetary profits obtained by Western capitalists from this extraction come at a sizable cost to the natural capital of the place that the resources are extracted from, destroying indigenous life support systems.

Gudynas, E, (2011), “Transitions to post-extractivism: directions, options, areas of action”, Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America, Permanent Working Group on Latin America, pp. 165-188. p.198.
Escobar, Arturo (2015) “Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation”, Sustainability Science, 10(3), p p. 456
LaTouch, Serge (2004) “Why Less Should be so much more: Degrowth Economics”, Le Monde Diplomatique, pp. 1-5. p. 1; Kallis, Giorgios (2011) “In Defence of Degrowth”, Ecological Economics, 70, 873-880.
LaTouche, p. 1.
Klein, p. 169.

Within the framework of post-extractivism of non-renewable resources, Geo-Futurism proposes the polar opposite of this non-reciprocal relationship with nature and indigenous people. It is a speculative theory that balances culture, place, environment, and people. Below, I explore the aspects of land, environment, and people through the lens of Geo-futurism.

Land

In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein ties extractivism specifically to ownership structures, believing that taking from the land is “the opposite of stewardship.” Instead of this land commodification that has allowed resources to be extracted from indigenous people’s land on an industrial scale, Klein suggests that people become stewards of it as their ancestors were.

Land restoration and reclamation practice could become a key node towards a post- extractivist world. Restoration of land is the “process of recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed, returning it to its original state.” Reclamation is a more pragmatic alternative to restoration where mining pits are integrated with the surrounding ecosystem and community to meet the specific needs of the people. Both land restoration and land reclamation ultimately create an alternative land use to extraction and reduce the prevalence of sacrifice zones in communities..

Environment and Biodiversity

The current extractivist system has turned living ecosystems into natural resources. Mining create enormous environmental damage both on the land and its biodiversity. Mineworkers occupy settlements surrounding the mine and require housing, fuel, and food. This has led to the “exploitation of wood and the degrading of forest vegetation,” which has destabilized the water cycle through “increased run-off” and “severe flooding.”

These processes of extractivism amount to “Ecocide,” defined as “the deliberate or negligent violation of key state and human rights” based on the causing of “lasting ecological damage.” A post- extractivist society allows communities to regulate their natural environment and the bodies around them, preventing external capitalists from controlling land and damaging it. This would enable the reversal of policies of “Ecocide.”

Ibid, p. 169.
Ibid, p. 407.
Mabey, p. 12.
Mabey, p. 9.

Exploitation of Labor: Depersonalization and Dehumanization of People

The relentless accumulation of resources through the exploitation of labor is the quintessential characteristic of extractive capitalism. This extractive obesity and resource accumulation are required for the over-production embedded within the logic of capital. Harris-White has observed the contradictory nature of “accumulation and profit” and the “distribution of wages,” resulting in a crisis of overproduction and underconsumption. However, with labor existing as a cost to outsourcing, extractivists are free to make labor as cheap as possible.

Neocolonialism has brought poverty to Africa, and allowing their natural resources to be extracted is the only way for many communities to survive. As Marc Choyt remarks, the attitude of the neocolonialists is “the natives are going to be saved… but to do this, they must first give up their farmland, clean water, and intact traditional communities.”

Conclusion

This literature review traces the historical context of resource extraction and these resources’ materiality to sustain our current technological commerce age. We explored further place-based alternatives to extractivism and map leveraged points through a cosmopolitan lens to connect the local to the global economy. Finally, we explored experimental post-extractive futures through the lens of Geo-futurism.

Gray, Mark Allan (1996) “The International Crime of Ecocide”, Michigan Journal of International Law, 26(2), 6949-7006.
Harriss-White, Barbara (2005) “Poverty and Capitalism”, QEH Working Paper Series, 5, p.8
Choyt, Marc (2020) “Jewelry, Neocolonialism, and Strange Fruit”, Reflective Jewelry, last seen 12/02/2021 .

Building on the theories of cosmopolitan localism, this research will aim to deliver new epistemologies for distributed natural resource systems. This will require thinking critically beyond any modern binaries that we unconsciously operate by understanding national and international structures that affect Africa and its resources. Potential explorations may include research on structures like the socio-economics, ecology, business, socio-cultural, and socio-anthropological factors that influence the African society.

Further Reading

Further potential explorations will look at what new sacrifice zones are emerging and who has the power to dictate where sacrifice zones fall?. It will focus on new precedent cases of extraction without sacrifice zones and models of a post extractivism world. Expanding upon this literature requires the application of a uniquely transnational and Pan-African lens to the problem space. Further reading of indigenous and Pan African scholars is required to complete this shift away from western modernity, which is too closely linked to the commodification of natural resources at the expense of the subaltern.

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Neocolonialism, Labour, and Resources. New Realities of Extractive Obesity.

By: Fas Lebbie

I still remember clinging with all my strength to my mother’s chest as she ran from my village in Yengema, Sierra Leone. I watched the town recede into the distance through the dust my mother kicked up behind us. When the rebels’ trucks pulled in, we were still close enough to hear the screech of tires and the gunshots ringing out through the air. My escape with my mom prevented the chilling potential of being forced to join the thousands of child soldiers populating the ranks of the rebel armies. Fleeing my village was the first stage of my exodus from Africa, forced out by conflicts over natural resources, specifically diamonds.

Unfettered extraction of resources relies upon the destabilization of African localities that become sacrifice zones. In the name of “progress,” surviving within the global economic system requires ecological and social compromise, leaving African communities with the existential threat of collapse. The fallacy of progress is sold in through modernity by the global north to the global south. The desire for scale originating during the industrial revolution continues now in the age of technological commerce, driving most transnational mega-corporations in the practice of extractive obesity that has resulted in the exploitation of natural resources and labor.

Formal colonialism, which ceremonially began with the Berlin Congo Conference of 1884, has ended, but neocolonial fractal supply chains of exploitation continue to gut Africa of its mineral wealth to support the needs of industrial societies.

As artisans at the bottom of fractal supply chains, diamond miners work in inhumane conditions pursuing diamonds and receiving a fraction of the value. Mines pose an immediate risk to miners’ lives and the health of local communities. While the Kamituga gold mine in South Congo was in operation, it released cyanide and mercury into the surrounding ecosystem until operations stopped in 2020, when the mine collapse killed 50 miners.

Natural resources are refined, processed, and turned into everyday materials. When some of these materials reach the end of their lives, they return to regions of Africa that bring the second cycle of ecological damage. Colossal e-dumps scar much of the West African landscape, with 85% of the dumped products being exported from West Africa originally. The scale of this waste disposal in Africa is frightening, with Ghana producing 38,000 tons of e-waste but receiving 18,300-60,000 million tons every year.

The natural resource and labor exploitation of supply chains and e-waste dumping have been justified by the quest for profits reinforced by perceptions of the colonized as “othered” based on racial origin. Transnational companies have defined the African population as sacrificial zones whose lives are less important than profits within this framework. It has been 137 years since the Berlin Congo Conference where the sharing of African resources without Africans’ consent ceremonially began, and Africa is still “at the dinner table being eaten by the superpowers.”

Extractive capitalism shows no signs of disappearing because our lives have been choreographed around technological consumption. Natural resources are now fundamental for our needs.

Tech firms continue the practice of extractive obesity by treating us as “operators” to generate data for “service as product” in the technological commerce industry. The extraction of data from users originates from the tech boom of the early 2000s. The new “information superhighway” allowed unprecedented quantities of data to be processed that could be sold to advertisers or leveraged to improve services. Human practices became “internal natural resources” for infinite extraction, dehumanizing us in our interactions with devices. Our devices are “disembodied listening agents” that listen to every word we say, logging every interaction and using them to improve the algorithms in a constantly developing device.

Once gathered, manufacturers use our data without our consent that has systemic ramifications. Humans, a startup based in London, has developed job interview technology to “spot the emotional expressions of prospective candidates and match them with personality traits.” Companies can discount candidates who unknowingly display the “wrong” emotions.

Whether in the global south or north, transnational extractivist corporations rely on the exploitation through depersonalization of those laboring within them. In the global south, racially prejudiced depersonalization of those in sacrifice zones justifies natural resource extraction. Depersonalization for data extraction affects all of us. The treatment of us as “operators” of technology positions us as laborers within data extractivist systems. Tech companies aim to maximize our labor by designing products that we become addicted to. Addiction has made data extraction a sacrifice zone in its own right, with investigations revealing TikTok addiction as the 3rd most prevalent suicide stressor amongst young people worldwide.

Thankfully, firms are mitigating uncontrolled natural resource extraction on a planetary and individual basis. Diamond industry enterprises such as Lucara diamonds work closely with local communities to ensure profit sharing and minimize ecological harm. They keep mines open only as long as needed and fund projects that tackle food scarcity. In Botswana, 80% of profits from diamond sales are reinvested into the local economy. Closer to home, Affectiva has leveraged deep learning to build the world’s largest database of human emotions. It holds ten million facial expressions from 87 nationalities. Initially used for advertisers, the database is now used in the automotive and education industries to detect when drivers lose concentration. These companies have reframed resources to be community-owned assets used to benefit the people.

Imagining a world without extraction is challenging because human needs are intrinsically dependent on using resources; however, we can meet the imperatives of dismantling exploitative capitalist systems by delivering sustainable resource utilization solutions.

Extractivism manifests differently in every context. Whether it is a Sierra Leonean “half shovel” child miner or the average American TikTok user who opens the app eight times a day, we see the core facets of exploitation manifesting through the displacement of place and self as sacrifice zones. Extractive capitalism drives profits at the expense of the “earth and the body.” The ramification “unlink” us from the planet and our well-being. Radically transforming pre-existing systems without destabilizing necessary extraction is a challenge for all as we march through the 21st Century.

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