Joanna Boehnert and Josina Vink

As socially and ecologically progressive design practices and ideas gain traction and legitimacy, counterforces respond in ways that both delay progressive change and harm individual changemakers. The issue of appropriation emerged as a key topic when sharing experiences within an in-person fishbowl dialogue about legacies of oppression in systemic design at the RSD11 conference in Brighton (2022). Continuing this dialogue, the purpose of this follow-up workshop is to create a collective understanding of patterns of extractive relationships, represented by the concept of appropriation in systemic and ecosocial design. 

We are initiating a collaborative autoethnographic process to share perspectives of design researchers, practitioners, and activists working towards progressive change and transitions. This research process takes place both before and after the workshop and is used as a starting point for reflection on experiences of appropriation while generating strategies to navigate and counteract its harmful effects at the workshop. 

Appropriation occurs when ideas generated at the margins of dominant discourses are extracted and decontextualised from the communities that have nurtured these ideas and practices. In a design context, promising practices are rinsed of their transformative potential and used in ways that diminish or destroy the intended value, working against the efforts of the initiating community. Appropriation has the potential to delay or destroy progressive movements in design. It can also harm individuals working toward social and ecological change by undermining their work. Appropriation depreciates sustainability agendas with greenwashing, allowing climate change to further accelerate.  

One premise of the workshop is an understanding that appropriation is a social dynamic that happens in all communication processes between different communities. On one level, appropriation is a regular feature of design engagement and learning from diverse sources and cultural change. Appropriation can be a positive, neutral, or negative dynamic, depending on the type and quality of engagement. We draw on Gregory Bateson’s theories of logical categories of learning and communication and the double bind to theorise how these dynamics influence learning and social change. 

Appropriation can be understood as a defensive response to challenges to ontological assumptions in an effort to maintain power asymmetries. We might seek to navigate this terrain by demonstrating how our liberation is interdependent with those who seek to appropriate—or by building better boundaries to protect our ideas, practices, and livelihoods. 

KEYWORDS: appropriation; eco-social design; sustainability; justice, autoethnography, transitions, double bind, Bateson, ontologies, paradigms, learning  

RSD TOPIC(S): Learning & Education, Society & Culture, Socioecological Design

Venue: Oslo, Norway

Date: October 12–26, 2024