Objects for Peaceful Disordering: Indigenous Designs and Practices of Protest

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat do a piece of plumbing pipe, some wire netting, some adhesive tape, two loops of nylon webbing and a karabiner have in common? Nothing, until they are assembled in a design. In turn, the object these components comprise comes into being only with the presence of human beings. These are the components of a device known as a ‘lock-on’; some sundry objects that you would find at a builders' merchant and some people's bodies – peace activists pursuing non-violent direct action. Peace activists use lock-ons to join themselves together by the arms to enhance the power of their passive resistance. This paper identifies a number of theoretical approaches to objects of this sort. It is intended to initiate a discussion of the lock-on as an example of an ‘indigenous’ design that has appeared without designers, evolving as part of the practice of peace protest (Langrish, 2004).The paper concentrates on the sense of ‘practice’ that is found in the sociological study of culture, tracing its use in the work of Bourdieu (1977) and others, summed up recently by Reckwitz (2002). Drawing as it does from a range of sources, including the social study of technology, ‘practice theory’ seems to have a good deal to offer a conception of design that seeks to influence the world positively beyond the point of sale. In common with other recent strands in design research such as participative design, which has grown out of the study of human-computer interaction, practice theory acknowledges that our relationships to objects are socially important. Together with cultural knowledge and embodied skill, objects form ‘compounds’ with people that evolve through time (Shove, 2006).This paper raises the possibility that the transforming power of designing may be enhanced if it is acknowledged that it is most powerful when it takes place in full articulation with practices. This principle is inscribed in the contemporary ‘user-oriented’ design process, but the lock-on is an extreme example of it because no professional designers are involved in its production and its social purpose is not commercial but political. Politically engaged design is often directed at issues of sustainability and work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These contexts for designing may be the closest in kind to that which has produced the lock-on.A ‘practice-orientated’ approach to design might be able to engage with the full relationship between things and the agents they imply, their bodies, their minds, the knowledge they have, the emotions they feel, the discourses they engage with. For this reason, it seems to be a useful framework through which to understand an object like the lock-on, which has emerged out of an identifiable practice. The nature of this practice may also be inspiring in itself, as in this example, which works against crimes such as weapons of mass destruction. The paper offers an initial analysis of the evolution and current use of the lock-on in UK non-violent direct action as an example of an indigenous design that is part of a practice. It indicates the potential for further research that would seek more fully to understand the history and development of the lock-on in order to test the applicability of practice theory and to seek insights for designing in other contexts.