Design by means of anthropology towards participation practices: Designers and craftswomen making Things in Maranhão (BR)

Abstract

This paper aims to present and discuss hierarchical knowledge in participatory situations with two handicraft communities in the Brazilian northeast. Supported by the notion of correspondence [15,17,19], we critically debate power, representation, and the construction of artifacts to enable participatory design processes. We discuss disruption of the paradigms from which our tools and games are made, from a representational practice towards an ontological one, as Ingold also proposes [16]. In this way, we create our design tools and games committed to learning by experience with those skilled practitioners in a participatory approach. Collaborating with craftswomen who work with bobbin lace and looming with buriti palm, we designed things together by means of anthropology to understand their productive chains, theirs limits and to think about future possibilities.