While some of the world enjoys the amenities, efficiency, and higher quality of life provided by design within a capitalist system of operation the rest of the world struggles to meet even their most basic needs. These areas, mostly within developing nations in the economic south are rarely considered recipients of design and largely neglected in the ethics of design. As we design our mass-produced, niche products for the economic north to be manufactured within the south, we also ship our waste, much of it toxic, to these same southern regions. It would be wrong to assume that such a result of capitalism playing itself out is purely the fault of the designer; it is largely accepted as a matter of pure consumer economics. Any user group requiring the cutting edge of design must pay for such, hence a lack of incentive for any design or manufacturing group to help those without the economic power.
Those without the means to satisfy their basic needs will inherently lack that economic power as time spent growing food, searching for water, or finding shelter is time not spent pursuing education or work. If the current system of production necessitated by a consumer base cannot provide for the developing world perhaps a designer free of such a system could. A designer could innovate using the materials, tools, and processes indigenous to struggling populations providing a self-sustainable and market-free development process. Instead of being the typical intermediary between user and the manufacturing process, the designer in these cases could take on the role of the educator, teaching his or her user group to manufacture their own products, based on the designer’s plan, with what they already have.
Development within the economic south has for the most part been a process of bringing international business into a poor nation to harvest natural resources or utilize a work force. This is seen to provide the nation with government funding and employment opportunities in exchange for which the international company may export its products at a price lower than it would have if it had remained in its country of origin. Paying a country for less than the value of commodities acquired is seen as morally acceptable because the people within these countries are considered impoverished and hence unable to meet their needs through monetary means, ignoring the actuality of any productive activity outside of the monetary economy. In much of the developing world indigenous populations providing for themselves find themselves robbed of their actual means of satisfying needs by the very forces of development intended to do so. Examples of such cases include environments so polluted by mining activity that indigenous populations can no longer grow food. Feminist writer Vandana Shiva draws a distinction between conceived poverty and real poverty which is brought about by what she calls “mal-development.”
A process of indigenous design could address problems unsolved by current mal-development by finding better methods to satisfy basic needs from within a population. This would not necessarily free an indigenous population from monetary impoverishment but would help to ensure survival in the face of radically changing social and natural environments.
I have never in my life seen the sky so blue. This is downtown Lhasa, Tibet. The buildings are build from straw and mud, and then painted. A lot like adobe. The colorful things on the rooftops are prayer flags. Tibetans write their prayers on these small pieces of cloth and put them up on the roofs. The wind then carries the prayers away.
.jpg)
