Is design for social impact, by design, anchored in a first hypothesis?
“Our identities are relational and communicative; they are also constructed. Social constructionism is a view that argues the self is formed through our interactions with others and in relationship to social, cultural, and political contexts” (Allen, 2011).
By looking at history, we can see how cultural identities that seem to have existed forever are actually a construction of critical political and social times before. For some we can evidently see the evolution over time.
For instance, if we had to question — in Kenya, different communities have unique biases to beauty and attire. The style and foundation of which is clearly influenced by their environment and ways of life. The Maa, in this context- if times would allow me to consider clustering the Samburu and Maasai as, would be Cousins or Brother communities, have quite much in common. However, once I, and a few of my colleagues had to do a presentation in Samburu on a project we had earlier executed. The quest to impress, led us to extracting and even purchasing a stock image of a beautiful Maasai Girl for our front slide. On presentation day, we were meant to understand that the audience made an assumption that the presentation was not meant for them and that we had clearly made a mistake presenting the wrong slides. We later learnt that the Samburu Community has a bias to such colors and patterns that distinguish them from the Maasai Community. And the attachment to the pride of it made me think for a moment —
— How long ago was this practice defined? Who chose what colors are for which tribe? When do social constructs become a culture? if the two are different in context, does it mean that one is more intrinsic than the other? If so then, does it matter how we structure our incentives for behavior change when it comes to such practices?
For instance, if we defined complex community challenges, such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a negative cultural practice — CULTURE — yet we fail to question if they or part of it, at some points was just a social construct of a few — influenced by historical events/ politics/ egocentric leadership among many others. Would it make a difference, for how we design interventions to change such practices if we were to re-define the problem otherwise? — other than lazily calling FGM a bad cultural practice? If we were to question the definition of such problems, would we then need to re-define the interventions we design/ have designed for them?
The spirit of “constant iteration” then drives me to wonder, when do we start the process of iteration? could we have, over a long period of trying to solve for community problems, been stuck in a major Anchoring effect? Is there a possibility that some community interventions may not be working because designers classify them as a pre-conceived “problem” even before design?
So why is this important?
Design examines both extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of community actions, then defines how solutions can be crafted and implemented based on existing mental, socio-ecological, among other, models. If we have already classified the problem based on a pre-conceived criterion, then that also limits the possibilities of such solutions that emerge from our work as social impact designers. Even worse, the possibility that we introduce a competing intervention- one that perceptively introduces a new element in communities that resembles a new LAW. Culture in itself is a law and it is the nature of law to fight for its sovereignty — in such, to resist change when another law (policy) interferes with its power and existence
