Anders Emilson Design in the Space Between Stories

Home , Kitchen sink realism

ANDERS EMILSON DISSERTATION: NEW MEDIA, PUBLIC SPHERES AND FORMS OF EXPRESSION ANDERS EMILSON DESIGN IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES

Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability – from responding to societal challenges to preparing for societal collapse DESIGN IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES MALMÖ 2015UNIVERSITY isbn 978-91-7104-633-8

MALMÖ UNIVERSITY 205 06 MALMÖ, SWEDEN WWW.MAH.SE

isbn 978-91-7104-633-8_omslag_tryck.indd Alla sidor 2015-07-30 13:42

DESIGN IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES Doctoral dissertation in Interaction Design Dissertation series: New Media, Public Spheres and Forms of Expression Faculty: Culture and Society Department: School of Arts and Communication Malmö University Information about time and place of public defence, and electronic version of dissertation: https://dspace.mah.se/handle/2043/19185 © Copyright Anders Emilson, 2015 Layout: Jonas Odhner Language editing: Janet Feenstra Print: Service Point Holmbergs, Malmö 2015 ISBN 978-91-7104-633-8 (print) ISBN 978-91-7104-634-5 (pdf) ANDERS EMILSON DESIGN IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES

Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability – from responding to societal challenges to preparing for societal collapse

Malmö University 2015

To my son, Igor

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 13 PART I: INTRODUCTION...... 17 A DARK ENTRY...... 19 Proposal ...... 32 A design transformationist mindset and approach...... 33 A design thing as an in-between space for contemplation .....34 Dark and soft design fiction...... 36 Research Project—My Journey to the Crises of Civilization...... 38 Research environment...... 39 Projects and cases...... 40 Interaction Design ...... 43 Participatory Design...... 46 Design space ...... 49 Politics, Democracy, and Power...... 49 Agonism ...... 50 Governance...... 50 Design things...... 52 Reframing Design ...... 54 Object of Study and a Tentative Theory of Change...... 56 Transformation and transition...... 57 Research Questions...... 60 Disposition...... 60 PART II: SITUATIONS...... 63 SITUATION ONE: SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN MALMÖ...... 64

7 SERIES LIST Made by you, based on a list of titles from the faculty office. Your own dissertation appears on the list – your series number is The Malmö Commission...... 65 allocated by the faculty office. The Area Programmes...... 66 No pagina. An Incubator Process in Four Phases...... 69 Phase One: The Idea of an Incubator Emerges...... 70 Move to the last page of the Phase Two: The Workshop Process at Medea...... 72 manuscript, facing the inside of Herrgårds Kvinnoförening...... 73 back cover. Barn i Stan...... 74 Miljonprocessen...... 75 Update coloured characters and Aluma...... 76 make them black. Gnistan and Kaninhotellet...... 76 Feed’us...... 77 A Mix of Perspectives, Frames, Competences, Practices, and Sectors...... 78 Revisiting the Workshops: Conversations about Possible Social Incubators...... 80 Workshop One: March 4, 2011...... 80 Workshop Two: March 18, 2011...... 87 Workshop Three: April 1, 2011...... 96 Four scenarios...... 97 Outcomes of the workshop...... 103 Conclusions from the Workshops...... 105 Phase Three: The Trade and Industry Process...... 108 Phase 4: Shrinking Democracy and an Incubator for “New Jobs and Innovation”...... 111 The Process of the Innovation Forum...... 118 The pre-study...... 119 Outcomes...... 120 Guiding principles of the Innovation forums...... 121 The organization of Innovation forums...... 122 SITUATION TWO: THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION ...... 125 PART III: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK...... 135 SUSTAINABILITY, COLLAPSE, AND RESILIENCE...... 136 Sustainability or Resilience?...... 137 COLLAPSE...... 141

8 Resilience...... 146 Community Resilience...... 152 Collaborative and Communicative Resilience...... 154 Critical Perspectives on Resilience...... 157 Transition...... 159 A Safe Operating Space— Planetary Boundaries and Social Targets...... 164 Shocks and Slides—Survival and Transformation...... 166 SOCIAL INNOVATION...... 168 The Social...... 168 Social Innovation, Social and Societal Entrepreneurship— New Arenas for Design...... 172 Why Social Innovation? Background and Context...... 174 A New Innovation Paradigm...... 178 Definitions...... 179 Difference Between Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation...... 183 The Hegemonic Battle Over a Name...... 184 Networks in Social Innovation...... 186 Complexity and Systemic Social Innovation ...... 189 Merging Social Innovation with Resilience...... 192 DESIGN...... 197 Design as We Know It—Some Basics...... 199 Design as Conversation with the Situation...... 203 From technical rationality to societal issues in the “swamp”..204 Reflection in action...... 208 Reflective conversation with the situation...... 209 Experiments in reflection in action...... 211 Schön as forerunner of design things and Adversarial Design...... 212 Contemporary Design Approaches Addressing Societal Challenges...... 215 Transformation Design and Service Design in the United Kingdom...... 215 Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (Italy)...... 217 Design and Politics ...... 220 Absence of the political in Design for Social Innovation...... 223 Sustainable HCI and Collapse Informatics...... 225

9 FRAMES AND VALUES...... 231 Frames...... 234 The Common Cause Reports...... 237 Putting frames into practice...... 244 Frames and Social Movements...... 246 Frames in Sustainability and Resilience Theory...... 249 Frames in Design Theory...... 253 Rhetorical frames, action frames, and metacultural frames.... 258 Policy controversies and frames...... 260 Design rationality and frames...... 262 Frames Applied in this Thesis...... 269 REFRAMING THE FUTURE WITH STORIES...... 272 Scenarios and Stories in Science...... 274 “The Great Transition”...... 279 The Dark Mountain Project...... 292 Design Fiction and Speculative Design...... 298 Design fiction...... 300 Speculative Design...... 303 Life practices in fictitious worlds...... 308 Dark and Soft Design Fiction...... 312 Visions and Utopias...... 316 PART IV: CLOSURE AND NEW BEGINNINGS ...... 323 WHAT’S GOING ON? IN THE CONVERSATION WITH THE SITUATION...... 324 Who? Framing Relation, Participation, and Ownership ...... 327 What? Framing Issues and Activity...... 331 Initial framing of issues and activities...... 331 Framing of issues and activity during the workshops...... 333 Framing of issues and activity during the trade and industry phase...... 334 How? Functions and Organization of the Incubator...... 335 Agonistic Design Thing, Governance Network and Powerful Strangers...... 339 Conventional Development or Great Transition?...... 341

10 Discussion...... 342 PROPOSAL—A DESIGN THING IN THE PROSPECT OF COLLAPSE ...... 345 Take a Breather...... 345 Functions of the Design Thing...... 347 The Transformationist and the Idiot...... 348 A Design Transformationist Approach...... 350 The Design Thing as an In-Between Space for Contemplation ...352 Big picture and long view...... 352 Democracy: participation, agonism, and power relations....354 The Role of Stories and Frames—Design Fictions...... 355 A CONVERSATION WITH THE FUTURE: A SPECULATIVE DESIGN THING ...... 358 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION...... 377 Democracy, Power, and Relations ...... 380 Practices, Activities, and Work...... 384 Arenas and Forums...... 385 Implications for Design and Future Research...... 386 Conclusion...... 392 SAMMANFATTNING...... 393 REFERENCES ...... 397

11 12 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Planet Earth for hosting us for so long. I understand that you are fed up with us now. Speaking for myself—but in the hope of being joined by others—I will do my best to limit the damage and clean up the mess before I leave. At the end of this journey I would like to express my utmost and deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Pelle Ehn and Bo Reimer, for their trust, support, and for bearing with me. Most of all, thank you for the off-duty exploration of drinks, food, and music for “survival thought.” I would also like to thank my closest colleagues, Anna Seravalli and Per-Anders Hillgren. Also, thanks to fellow Living Lab researchers, Erling Björgvinsson, Per Linde, and Elisabet M. Nilsson and to everyone at Medea, especially the back officers, Karolina Rosen- qvist and Richard Topgaard. Thanks to all my co-explorers out there: everyone at Herrgårds Kvinnoförening, everyone involved in Områdesprogrammen, Inno- vationsforum, and the incubator workshops. I would like to extend an additional thank you to Jila Moradi, Bjarne Stenquist, Annette Larsson, and Tommy Wegbratt. Thanks to everyone I worked with at K3 over the years—you are all great! An additional thank you goes to Mette Agger Eriksen, Erik Källoff, Kristina Regnell, Maria Hellström Reimer, and Ewa Sjöberg (you all have worked close to me and supported me at certain stages), Staffan Schmidt (for keeping me alive by putting me on a bike), Jonas Löwgren (for caring, reading, and encouraging comments), Micke Krona and Jakob Dittmar (for chatting, wrangling, and words of wisdom).

13 Thanks to my fellow PhD students at K3: Zeenath Hassan, Mads Høbye, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Kristina Lindström, Luca Simeone, Eric Snodgrass, and Åsa Ståhl. Thanks to everyone at Designfakulteten (The Design Faculty), especially Peter Ullmark, Bo Westerlund, Stefan Holmlid, Sara Il- stedt, Mats Rosengren, and Karin Blombergsson. Thanks to all fellow PhD students out there. Thanks to Laura Watts, whose course Writing Imaginaries, Making Futures, led to a breakthrough in my thesis work. Thanks to Thomas Binder for his comments at my 50% seminar and to Kenneth Hermele for a really constructive conversation at my 90% seminar and for showing me the direction to Ernst Wigforss and the concept of provisional utopias. Thanks to Janet Feenstra for language editing and to Jonas Odhner for layout.

This journey began with my brother, Johan, whose interest in design and architecture I embraced. Thanks Johan, for your inspiration, and for the visits to Gropiusstadt and the Bauhaus archive in Berlin. My next stop was a trainee post at the Swedish design magazine Form, where I learned to write as a journalist (sort of). Many thanks to Karin Ahlberg, Ulf Beckman, Lotta Jonson, Kerstin Wickman, and Susanne Helgeson. Ulf Beckman kindly recommended me to Carl Henrik Svenstedt, who then employed me as his assistant in the Shift Project in the early years of K3. Thanks Carl Henrik—that was a great time! Thanks to Håkan Edeholt, who brought me in to teach at his course in Design Theory. Thanks also to Ingrid Elam, who let me develop the course, Design for Sustainability, and to Ylva Gis- lén, Torvald Jacobsson, and Maria Hellström Reimer for their input when developing that course. Thanks to Oksana Mont and Carina Borgström Hansson for our collaborations over the years. Thanks to José Barbosa for joining me in exploring the (for me, new) concept of social innovation. Thanks to Marcus Jahnke and Otto von Busch for discussions and inspiration in my early explorations of sustainability and social innovation. Thanks to my colleagues at Urban Studies, with whom I have a shared interest in sustainability and social innovation, among others: Fredrik Björk, Ebba Lisberg-Jensen, Magnus Johansson, and Peter Parker.

14 Thanks to my parents, Gunnar and Kristina, for always supporting me. Thanks to all Emilsons out there, and thanks to Sofia for sharing Igor with me. Igor, you mean the most to me—thank you!

15 16 PART I: INTRODUCTION

17 18 A DARK ENTRY

Welcome to our hell, it is the best and only reality we can imagine, we’re sure you will like it too. (Andrew Simms 2013, 383)

Every culture has a Story of the People to give meaning to the world. Part conscious and part unconscious, it consists of a matrix of agreements, narratives, and symbols that tell us why we are here, where we are headed, what is important, and even what is real. I think we are entering a new phase in the dissolution of our Story of the People, and therefore, with some lag time, of the edifice of civilization built on top of it.

/…/

We do not have a new story yet. Each of us is aware of some of its threads, for example in most of the things we call alternative, holistic, or ecological today. Here and there we see patterns, designs, emerging parts of the fabric. But the new mythos has not yet emerged. We will abide for a time in the space between stories. (Charles Eisenstein 2013, my italics)

But there is a space between hope and despair, which it is necessary to inhabit. False expectations and foolish dreams lead to the very despair they claim to want to banish. And that despair is a rational reaction to much of what is going on in the world; sometimes it is necessary to embrace it. Between

197 the forced hope and gritted teeth of the activist worldview and the dark hopelessness of the apocalyptic narrative lies a space that is worth sitting in for a while. (Paul Kingsnorth 2014, my italics)

We are living in transformative times—in the space between stories. Weak signals are becoming stronger and more frequent. We seem to be approaching the end of the era we call industrial civilization. Soon, we may enter into something quite different. If this is the case, we will leave a stable period of progress and growth and enter into a long period of decline where many of our systems and support structures will grind to pieces and eventually collapse. From the perspective of how we are accustomed to living our lives and the narratives we live by, the future looks dark. How will this affect an optimistic, creative, and future-making discipline like design—a discipline that emerged out of the industrial revolution? What can design offer in the transition from industrial civilization to a new society where we can both survive and thrive? What is the role of design if not to design for the market economy? What possible futures will designers then propose? I cannot give any exhaustive answers to these questions, but we must start asking them. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the beginning of an inquiry into what the role of design could be in the prospect of a collapsing civilization. My initial research topic was Design for Social Innovation, and in a way, it still is. Social innovation is an approach to tackle societal challenges such as climate change, chronic disease, social exclusion, and aging populations when established approaches used by the market and governments have been insufficient. Social innovation is seen by many as a way to attain sustainability, and this has led to the emerging design research field, Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. In most definitions of sustainability, this field is said to consist of at least three aspects: the social, the ecologic, and the economic. These are interconnected and, as a consequence, to be able to address sustainability, one needs to take a holistic approach. Thus, for me to isolate and focus on the social aspect simply because my topic is social innovation would be misleading. Social innovation does not only concern so-called social problems, as in the relationships between humans, but also it concerns societal problems and

20 relations between the social world, the natural world, and the artificial world. In most cases, these societal problems can be tracked down to one source: resources. Our resources are both overused and unequally distributed. This is a simplification of something very complex, and I think that any attempt to solve societal challenges without departing into this insight will most likely be unsustainable in the long term. We think we solve problems, but what we actually do is just push them ahead of us. In this way, nothing changes. We just continue on the same trajectory and sustain the unsustainable. But what if we are unable to reach sustainability? Then we will enter an era of collapse, the opposite of sustainability. The prospect of collapse prompted me to look beyond sustainability and address the maybe “more important” (Stengers 2005, Michael 2012) matter of concern—the collapse of industrial civilization. How will addressing this most urgent and unpleasant issue affect how we perceive the world and address our challenges? How do we imagine the almost unimaginable—life in a collapsing world? Actually, we can simply look at certain other parts of the world, whether they contain ecosystems, economies, cities, or countries, which have already more or less collapsed (for example, bankrupt Detroit, Spanish ghost towns, or Sao Paulo without water) and imagine ourselves, the inhabitants of industrialized civilization, living there. A more pleasant task is to imagine the contours of a world where all humans and nonhumans both survive and thrive. The prospect of collapse has spurred some design researchers (Tomlinson et al. 2012a, 2012b) into exploring the role of design in this scenario. I subscribe to this expedition into the space between sustainability and collapse—“Fail we may, sail we must.” With the term ‘design,’ I mean an explorative conversation with the situation (Schön 1995), where a designer or a collective of designers explore a situation by changing it. The designer makes a move, for example, by changing the placement of a window on an architectural plan and then listens to the situation’s “back talk.” Then, the designer reflects and makes a new move. This reflective conversation continues until the designer likes the result. Design is a change practice, and to design is to change undesirable situations into desired ones (Simon 1994). To design is also to propose possible and alternative futures (e.g. Krippendorff 2006, Koskinen et al. 2011),

21 but what possible futures do designers explore? Today, a majority of designers, sometimes quite uncritically, explore the possibilities of new technology; for example, the research field of the Internet of Things (IoT) which builds on the estimation that, by 2020, there will be fifty billion devices connected to the Internet (Cisco 2015). The driving force behind this development is the foundation of industrial civilization: the belief in progress and growth.

The growth and convergence of processes, data, and things on the Internet will make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. This growth creates unprecedented opportunities for industries, businesses, and people. (Cisco 2015, my italics)

I think this kind of uncritical attitude is dangerous and may lead us to a world where we are stuck with infrastructures that are highly complex, vulnerable, and could ultimately contribute to societal breakdown. To avoid this, designers (and the rest of us) have to learn to navigate between the development paths of the future: those that will likely lead to sustainability and those that will likely lead to collapse. In this thesis, I explore two such paths: Great Transition and Conventional Development (Raskin et al. 2002) and what is needed to change from one path to another. Great Transition and Conventional Development are scenario storylines developed by the Global Scenario Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute. According to Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014), the Great Transition scenario may lead to a world within planetary boundaries (e.g., climate change, biodiversity) and social targets (e.g., hunger, inequity), that is, a world that is environmentally and socially sustainable. Alternatively, Conventional De- velopment (a term I will use in parallel with business as usual and current way of life) may lead to a world where we transgress many planetary boundaries and are unable to meet social targets which, in turn, could lead to environmental and societal collapse (see figure 1). I will consider the space between these stories—the space between sustainability and collapse—as a design space (Westerlund 2009) consisting of many possible futures to explore. How do designers and other changemakers position themselves in this space? Are

22 Figure 1. “Conventional Development and Great Transition scenario results” (Gerst, Raskin and Rockström 2014, 127). The inner- most circle defines the pre-industrial values of planetary boundaries and “ideal” social targets. The following bold circle defines “a safe operating space” (ibid., 124) within planetary boundaries and social targets. Green wedges show that we are within a safe operating space, whereas red wedges show that we have transgressed planetary boundaries and are unable to reach social targets. our design explorations and proposed possible futures in line with Conventional Development or Great Transition? If we have the will, how do we change paths from the one leading to collapse to the one leading to sustainability? The Conventional Development scenario builds upon the continuation of current industrialized civilization and its belief in technological progress, the market, and economic growth. This is a well-known narrative often described in mainstream media, discussed in political debates, and advocated by politicians and business interests. The Great Transition story is less well known but advocated by researchers and concerned citizens

23 who have begun developing alternative local communities accordingly. The message from these scenarios is simple and clear: shrink or suffer. In the exploration of the space between sustainability and collapse, I consider and discuss various approaches to these challenges. The first is more conservative and aims to sustain the current world and its societal organization by avoiding a collapse. This approach builds on the mitigation of causes and belongs to the sustainability camp. In the other approach, one has realized that we are unable to reach sustainability within the norms and organization of current society, and therefore, we need to transform into a new society. This approach builds on adaptive and transformational capacities and belongs to the resilience camp. In this thesis, the social is not limited to relations between humans but will include the relationships between humans and nonhumans (other species and artefacts) in actor-networks (Latour 2005a). In this thesis, a seabird with its stomach full of plastic will represent other species. Certainly, we have a long way to go before reaching the Cradle to Cradle (Braungart and McDonough 2002) principle of keeping technological and biological metabolisms separated. A scythe will represent an alternative view on artefacts. One can address these relationships from many perspectives, but I think questions of justice and equality are crucial. This relates to the local context of this thesis and the mission of the Commission for a Social- ly Sustainable Malmö (the Malmö Commission) to address health inequities and gaps in life expectancy among the different groups of society. The issue of inequity is also a departure point in one of the sources of the concept design for social innovation and sustainability. Manzini and Jégou (2003) address this issue when discussing the broken promise of what they call ‘product-based wellbeing.’

In fact if all the inhabitants of the planet really sought this type of well-being (as is their divine right, since that is what others do and what is daily promised to them), there would be a huge catastrophe. An ecological catastrophe if they were to succeed, since the planet would be unable to support 6–8 billion people approaching western levels of consumption. Or a social catastrophe if they did not, with 6–8 billion people aspiring to the

24 same standards, which only a few could reach. (Manzini and Jégou 2003, 40)

More recently, Hornborg (2014, 92) discussed our belief in technological progress and how it is based on the unjust use of resources and labor; therefore, technology “is ultimately a question for the social sciences, rather than engineering. For whom will it be possible to invest in solar energy or household robots?” Hornborg (2012) claims that environmental issues are issues regarding the fair distribution of resources. Our progress and welfare in the North has been possible because it was based on unequal exchange with the South. The justice aspect is also stressed in a discussion paper from Oxfam in which Kate Raworth (2012) brings forward the idea of a safe and just space for humanity where we can live a life based on social foundations and within planetary boundaries. It is not only our high-tech future that is unevenly distributed, but also our prospect for survival. How we choose to deal with this injustice will influence the design of any possible futures. During the past ten years we have seen a development within design where designers not only take on challenges regarding new products and services for the market, but also, to an ever-increasing degree, involve themselves in addressing what we can call ‘public and societal challenges’ (Manzini and Staszowski 2013, West- ley, Goeby and Robinson 2012, Bason 2010). These challenges call for new forms of problem solutions, which “may require radical, systemic shifts in deeply held values and beliefs, patterns of social behavior, and multi-level governance and management regimes” (Westley, Goeby and Robinson 2012, 3). In the search for new forms of problem solving, an emerging discussion and the exchange of ideas, experiences, and approaches between the disciplines of design, social innovation, and resilience are taking place. An example of these exchanges and the merging of these fields were to be found at Nesta’s Social Frontiers conference held in November, 2013. It is against this background that one should understand the explorations of this thesis.

I will discuss three sets of concepts: (a) design things and how (b) values and frames, and (c) stories and design fictions could be used

25 by a constellation of concerned citizens to explore possible futures. A design thing (Ehn 2008) is an assembly of human and nonhuman actors gathered to address an issue or an object of design, and can be seen to have a family resemblance with many new ideas for democratic platforms suggested by different actors, for example, in hybrid forums (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2011) or knowledge alliances (Stigendal and Östergren 2013). As well as needing alternative futures, we need new platforms, forums, or arenas where these futures can be explored and debated because as Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2011, 68) state, “the exploration of possible worlds, and the choice between them” are political choices which need to be debated. Consequently, designers will not make the future alone; other future makers will be needed. Therefore, I propose that participatory designers ally with social innovators, resilience thinkers, alternative economists, activists, change makers, and concerned citizens to explore how our values and frames (worldviews) influence both how we define a problem and which trajectories of inquiry we choose to explore in search of solutions. Our worldviews are built on stories, and therefore, I will also explore how different forms of design fiction make us aware of both existing and new perspectives as well as future paths to investigate. “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world” (Lakoff 2004, XV). To reframe a situation—to see the world from a new perspective in order to create a new worldview—will be a crucial function in the conversation with the situation. When we set a problem or frame a situation, we use the stories that people tell about the situation and the metaphors underlying these stories. Reframing our situation involves finding new frames, stories, and metaphors through which we can navigate our way into a future of scarcity rather than abundance. For example, what will it mean if “metacultural frames” (Schön and Rein 1994) like progress, expansion, and growth are replaced with decline and contraction? We know the first group is associated with positive things and the second group is more associated with something … dark. Or especially at first sight, but much research shows that words like simple, slow, and less are associated with well-being and sustainability and, as a consequence, could be considered guiding principles for the future. For example, according to conventional policy, we have to work

26 more and create more jobs to maintain our welfare and to create social inclusion. But according to new research (Coote 2015, Coote, Franklin and Simms 2011, Holmberg et al. 2011, Sanne 2012), we need to work less and share jobs for both living well and living sustainably. Also, according to our old worldview, words such as equal and common are less glamorous and positive than growth and progress, but they seem to hold values which are deeply rooted in people (see intrinsic and self-transcendence goals, and “bigger than self-problems,” Crompton 2010) and form the basis of many alternative theories of how to organize society. We can already see examples of a value and practice shift in the many models emerging today which are based on sharing rather than owning. The idea of commons is recurrent in discussions of current alternative economic models, as explored in the work of my colleague, Anna Seravalli (2014). My working hypothesis is that working with values and frames more deliberately in a design thing could be helpful in generating possible futures in which humans could live well in relation to each other, to the natural world, and to the artificial world. How to do this is what I want to explore, and as Charles Eisenstein requests in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, one clue is the need for new stories. “It is through stories that we weave reality,” state Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth (2009) who initiated The Dark Mountain Project to challenge the stories that underpin our civilization and to search for new ones. These stories and words could help us create new frames for phenomena such as post-carbon life, transition, and life within planetary boundaries and social targets. These frames have to be activated by the words, stories, metaphors, associations, images, and experiences that help us reframe how we understand and “know” the world and ourselves. A growing body of research (e.g., Raskin et al. 2002 and Crompton 2010) points to the importance of working with values and culture if society is going to be able to transform itself into sustainability and resilience. Also, values play a crucial role in whether or not a society will collapse. Diamond (2011, 433) states that, historically, civilizations on the brink of collapse have chosen the wrong path into the future because it is “painfully difficult to decide whether to abandon some of one’s core values when they seem to becoming incompatible with

27 survival.” Thus, we cannot only rely on changes in technology, the economy, or governance; we also require changes in people’s values and beliefs. Therefore, to a great extent, the transition into a new civilization becomes a cultural project. What can design offer in support of this cultural and values-driven movement? I think design approaches like scenarios, prototypes, and design fictions have a role in filling these frames with, not just words, but with imaginations and experiences of life in these new worlds. In this thesis, the concept of frames and frame reflection will also serve as a kind of “boundary concept” that other disciplines share. As a consequence, this thesis will be built on a cross reading of theory and practice from mainly (participatory) design, social innovation, and resilience. As we will see, threads and overlapping take place between these fields and a researcher like Frances Westley, for example, addresses the links between resilience, social innovation, and design. However, a warning must be issued regarding these fields; they all give the impression they are the solution to everything. In light of this, one must be aware of their weaknesses as well as developing their strengths and potential. Unger (2013) claims that we live under the “dictatorship of no alternative.” Others suggest that the lack of any real alternatives to neoliberalism and the market economy, which are both in line with Conventional Development, has us living in a post-political world where democratic agonistic struggle “over the content and direction of socioecological life” (Swyngedouw 2014, 31) has given way for consensus and governance (I further develop this discussion). At the same time, Bollier and Conaty (2015) state that a wide range of alternative movements exist which abide by concepts like commons, co-operatives, degrowth, social solidarity economy, peer-production, sharing and collaborative economy and transition towns. I consider these alternatives to be in line with the Great Transition scenario; however, these alternatives have not yet converged to a “movement of movements” (ibid.) strong enough to challenge neoliberalism and Conventional Development. Nevertheless, in these alternatives, or “real utopias” (Wright 2010), there exists a “hope beyond hope” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009) which contains pieces of possible futures for us to compose a world wherein we survive and thrive. Alternatives and alternative worldviews are what we need most.

28 Therefore, the most important actors in the collective “conversation with the situation” (Schön 1995) are those who are already imagining alternative ways of living or who are already living the alternatives. In this thesis, I turn to critical and alternative actors such as citizens living in transition towns or other communities trying to become resilient. I will also look into the use of stories coming from cultural actors like The Dark Mountain Project. What they have in common is that they look at the world from new perspectives—they reframe reality. Their experiences and stories are valuable contributions when we need to consider possible futures which are quite different from conventional development. These actors may be related to bottom-up social innovations created by what design researchers call “creative communities” (Meroni 2007, Jégou and Manizini 2008). More recently, Environmental Scientist Jeppe Dyrendom Graugaard (2014) has studied The Dark Mountain Pro- ject and looked into the role of narratives in “grassroots innovations” leading to “sustainability transitions.” He argues that:

Grassroots innovations are prospective sites of transformative sustainability visions and (counter-)narratives, and when alternative knowledge become embodied in new practices grassroots innovations become sources of socio-cultural transformation, creating new possibilities for living differently. In this way, grassroots innovations are potential sites of transition not just in material practices but in worldviews: sources of transformation in the experience and interpretation of reality which give rise to new ways of being and thinking. (Graugaard 2014, 35-36)

We need new perspectives, new frames. We need the “other,” as in “other forms of work” (Stigendal 2012, 34), an “other” economy (e.g., commons, sharing, and circular economy), or “another world is possible.” Not more of the same. To make the transition from industrial civilization to a new civilization where we live within planetary boundaries and social targets, we must also make a cultural transition. We need to see the world in a new way, and we have to construct a new story to live by. Here, dry facts and scenarios from scientists are not enough. Who can imagine what it is like to live within planetary and social boundaries from a pie chart? This is not

29 only a scientific and technical issue, but also a cultural issue where writers, artists, and designers need to contribute with new stories and imagination. I believe that design fiction could be generative in the collective conversation with the situation. What I will call dark and soft design fiction (to distinguish it from conventional, techno-centric design fiction) may be a way to explore the space between sustainability and collapse. I imagine dark and soft design fiction to be compositions of stories coming from science, culture, and areas of activism (i.e., people living in transition towns and grassroots innovators). We have learned from collapse theory that too much complexity will lead to collapse (Tainter 2006). A design fiction based on these insights could describe a way of living that is much more simple and slow rather than complex and accelerating, which is the case with most high-technology visions explored in contemporary design fiction. To bring a vision of a simpler life, with all its qualities, dilemmas, and challenges could be generative in reframing our situation and allow for the staking out of new trajectories of inquiry and action. Contemplating our future through a collapse scenario may also influence what aspects of technology we choose to live with. In a world where most global flows of resources and energy have broken down, will it be through a screen-based digital device and digital literacy that we get food on the table? Or is it with a scythe and hands-on knowledge about growing crops?

The empirical material in this thesis concerns the experiences of setting up a design thing in Malmö and being involved in a pre-study which explored the possibilities of introducing design practice into public services in the form of so-called Innovation forums. The design thing was aimed at exploring what an incubator for social innovation could be. In both cases, we failed in the sense that the projects were either hijacked or shut down before the proposed ideas could be prototyped and implemented. This could be explained as both a lack of framing and understanding of the situation, a failed design conversation, and the dislike of powerful and conservative actors with agendas in line with Conventional Development. I draw upon these experiences when developing my proposal for how design could work in these dark times. One lesson learned from these

30 failed cases is the importance of a continuous process of inquiry by a constellation of heterogeneous actors, whether we call it a design thing or a knowledge alliance, to reach the long-term goal of reorga- nizing society in contrast to simply implementing a concrete project to fulfill a short-term goal. A project was designed and implemented according to Conventional Development, but a design thing that could address societal challenges over a longer period of time was not. It was stopped at the embryonic stage. This is the difference between a more conservative way of organizing change by addressing single issues and short-term effects and a more transformative way which addresses core challenges and systemic change over a longer periods of time and on many levels. In analyzing what happened in the incubator process, I view it as a “design conversation” in line with Schön’s meaning. This conversation was influenced by many aspects, which I will try to capture through the concepts of governance, agonism, frame, and generative metaphor. I follow three trajectories: who, what, and how. The first is about democracy and who is able to participate in the conversation and make his or her opinion heard; it is about power, positions, and relations. In this case, I will first use the frame concept to see how the participants framed participation. Later, I will discuss this framing in relation to the concepts of governance, agonism, and the term ‘powerful stranger.’ The second trajectory regards what issues we want to address, what kind of problems do we deal with, and what we consider designing and how do we decide that? In this case, I use the concept of frames and frame reflection. The third trajectory is closely related to the others and concerns how the incubator should be organized and function. Here, I will look at how the participants used a generative metaphor to reframe the incubator. I consider the incubator process to be a failure; however, according to many politicians, civil servants, and business leaders in the city, the outcome was a success (never mind the process). The outcome resulted in an organization that has created more jobs in the city, but there is a dark side to this success. This is the result of Conventional Development, a collaboration between market forces and policy, while the actors associated with Great Transition, civil society and ordinary citizens were excluded from the decision phase

31 of the process. This shows how hard the grip of Conventional De- velopment is on our way of addressing societal challenges. This firm grip of Conventional Development makes the prospect of collapse most plausible. From this perspective, this so-called success evokes fear rather than hope. But while I consider our experience of setting up a design thing a failure, that does not mean I do not see any potential in the concept; quite the contrary. We have just started to explore the concept. At the end of this thesis, I continue this exploration by staging a fictive design thing that addresses the prospect of collapse. In the proposal, I will depart from our experiences of the incubator process, but also complement those experiences with similar ones from resilience research (e.g., Bullock, Armitage and Mitchell 2012) and design (Schön and Rein 1994) where a constellation of actors perform collective inquiries of situations. These cases also demonstrate that certain heterogeneous and agonistic constellations are able to reach positive outcomes.

Proposal

The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us. (Hine and Kings- north 2009)

My contribution to design research is to point out the space between Conventional Development and Great Transition as a design space necessary to explore. My proposal for the exploration of this design space will consist of three parts:

• A design transformationist mindset and approach • A design thing addressing the prospect of societal collapse which will function as a space for contemplating the space between stories • The use of dark and soft design fiction to support a reframing of the world and to map out new trajectories of inquiry

32 A design transformationist mindset and approach If Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability is still an emerging, although rapidly expanding, field—to address the prospect of collapse is to operate in the utmost margins of design research and society at large. To take on this challenge means meeting resistance and scepticism. But as Blevis and Blevis (2010, 28) put it, “at least some if not many of us” need to consider this aspect of sustainability. Therefore, I think that designers willing to take on this challenge will need both a certain mindset and approach. I will call this a design transformationist mindset and approach. I have borrowed the term transformationist from Raskin et al. (2002) who describe three archetypal mindsets: evolutionists, catastrophists, and transformationists. Transformationists share the fears of catastrophists in that deepening social, economic, and environmental tensions will not be resolved by Conventional Develop- ment advocated by evolutionists which, in turn, will have dire consequences for the future of the world. Transformationsists face the dark sides of our future. They do not look away, nor do they turn to the rosy dreams and false hopes of technological development and economic growth. Neither do they give up or isolate themselves in protected enclaves for the strong and privileged like the catastrophists. Transformationists believe that global transition can be seized as an opportunity to forge a better civilization. In translating this mindset into a design approach, some of its characteristics could be described as follows:

• To acknowledge that beyond the societal challenges that we address today, other, much more complex and unpleasant challenges must also be approached. • To acknowledge that we may be unable to reach sustainability or resilience by working according to Conventional Development. • Working with the parallel strategy of both trying to avoid a collapse through mitigation and adaptation while, at the same time, exploring the alternatives needed in the Great Transition into a new society, into a world where we can both survive and thrive together with both artificial and natural nonhumans.

33 • Intentionally seek to overcome the separation between humans, artefacts, and nature. • Set up design things dedicated to exploring alternative lifeworlds for both humans and nonhumans. • Invite actors representing both our current world, but also possible future worlds of collapse and transition.

A design thing as an in-between space for contemplation A design thing addressing the prospect of collapse will have the following characteristics and functions:

• An in-between space • A space for gathering • A space for contemplation and exploration • A space for positioning and navigation • A space for reframing • A space for agonism

One of the proposals from the participants in the design thing exploring a social incubator, the empirical case in this thesis, was the notion of a “free zone” where one could liberate oneself from the conventions, habits, and constraints of one’s work or organization. In the “free zone,” one may also change roles with other actors with whom one collaborates. I would suggest that a design thing addressing societal collapse could function as such a free zone, but in an extended way. This design thing could function as a space in-between sustainability and collapse where one “stays for a while” (Kings- north 2014) and contemplates life according to different prospects. This could be a space for “uncivilising” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009) ourselves, reframing reality, creating new stories and imaginations, and mapping out new trajectories of inquiry. This could be a space for the contemplation and preparation of a “reservoir of alternatives” that are considered “threatening within the normal social space because they challenge habit and the flow of resources” (Westley, Goebey and Robinson 2012, 14). This space could be created by fictions, enactments, and various other design techniques like prototypes and mock-ups. Another way of imagining the in-between characteristic of the de-

34 sign thing is to imagine it situated in the no-man’s land that is the space between the two contrasting worlds of Great Transition and Conventional Development. The role of the thing will be to not only invite us, the inhabitants, of the current world, but also the inhabitants of these two possible future worlds to share their stories with us. What is it like to live in a collapsed world? What do you eat? What is it like to live in the world after the Great Transition? What do you teach the kids at school? Could this be a way to make future generations, of whom we so often speak about when discussing sustainability, present here and now? These stories from the future will be told through various kinds of design fiction. What happens to the conversation about an object of design (e.g., an incubator) or a matter of concern (e.g., work) when we place it in the different worlds or worldviews? In this way, the design thing offers a space where a constellation of actors can have a conversation with the situation about the object of design through the frames of a possible world or a speculative society. In the thing, the frames of a possible world could temporarily replace the frames of the current world. In this way, the thing could serve as a utopian space; a space “for speculation and critique in the interest of change” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 7). Another important role of the thing is to help the participants position themselves. Where in the space between stories are we now? Where do we want to go? The core question in the thing will therefore be: when we talk about the world or society, which world or society do we talk about? Do we talk about the current conventional world, a collapsed world, or a Great Transition world or even some other possible world? Are our projects, visions, and aspirations on the path of Conventional Development or Great Transition? What are the signs of collapse or resilience in our current world? Which paths or world do we want to work towards in the design thing? There is a temporal aspect to our challenges that also makes the notion of contemplation attractive. There is urgency in addressing the prospect of collapse; however, to turn to the quick fixes and low-hanging fruits of Conventional Development would probably be a mistake. It is not only a matter of contemplating in which world we want to live, but also we need to consider what it will take to get us there. Is it just to book a ticket on the Internet and jump on

35 a flight for a couple of hours and arrive fresh in a new world? Or is this a long and adventurous journey across continents—by foot? If there is no fuel in the airplanes, we better start walking. As this kind of design thing deliberately challenges business as usual and the hegemony of the already powerful, there will be frame conflicts. I will propose some strategies to deal with these frame and power dilemmas, such as the use of shadow networks (Bullock, Armitage and Mitchell 2012). These approaches need to be explored in real cases. It is time for design to contribute to the exploration of an other kind of civilization, where people live within planetary boundaries and social targets. For that, we need new stories and imaginations—design fiction.

Dark and soft design fiction As a complement to the dominating “hard” side of design fiction, with its focus on the artificial side of life and human interaction with new technology, I would like to propose a “soft” design fiction that reconnects with the organic side of life and humans as part of nature. Soft design fiction is also more concerned with speculative societies than with speculating about future technologies that are featured in conventional design fiction. Soft design fiction will be a part of fictional interventions in the design thing that I will call dark and soft design fiction. ‘Dark,’ because it faces the future without the rosy dreams and false hope of Conventional Development. The aim with dark and soft design fiction is to support our reframing of the world and the mapping out of new trajectories of inquiry. When proposing dark and soft design fiction, it may seem that I have come a long way from the projects and design experiments that I actually have been taking part of. But there is a certain moment when the need for bringing in other worlds and perspectives occurs for me. On the way home from a meeting that I and Per-Anders Hillgren had with a couple of immigrant women in Lindängen, one of Malmö’s outer city districts, I remember that I said something like “In the theories and scenarios described by New Economics Foundation, these women would not be out of a job and feeling that they are not part of society. Their skills would be a resource.” That is when I saw the need to bring these theories and worldviews to the table and begin to frame design situations from their perspective. To

36 be able to reach the Great Transition, we will need to make a great reframing of our world and everyday life within it. To propose the exploration of potentials in a new kind of design fiction in the great reframing is my contribution.

To summarize, in this thesis I will explore two conversations with situations in two design things—one real and one speculative. The real design thing concerns the experiences of the incubator workshops (the case) and the speculative design thing is a fictive exploration of a design thing addressing societal collapse (the proposal). The main task of the speculative design thing is to bring in new perspectives into the conversation with the situation to reframe our situation. This design thing could serve as a place where the space between stories is explored and transgressed. To design in the space between stories is to design in the space between two great narratives, one about a declining civilization and another about a possible and emerging civilization. It is also to design in the space where everyday stories are shared between people. The design of a future where we both survive and thrive must be based on another story. This story will tell a tale about living well within the limits of the planet. Finally, I am not against technology, innovation, progress, or “growth,” as long as they support life within planetary boundaries and social targets. What I want to make explicit is a deep concern about the state of the world, and the prospect of our survival in it. As repeated many times now, this involves reframing and shifts of words we use, like Latour’s shift from progress to progression:

[As] a subtle but radical transformation in the definition of what it means to progress, that is, to process forward and meet new prospects. Not as a war cry for an avant-garde to move even further and faster ahead, but rather as a warning, a call to attention, so as to stop going further in the same way as before toward the future. The nuance I want to outline is that between progress and progressive. It is as if we had to move from an idea of inevitable progress to one of tentative and precautionary progression. There is still a movement. Something is still going forward. (Latour 2010, 473)

37 I would like to make a similar shift in the view of design. My ambition is to go from a view of design as a practice that mainly serves industrial civilization to a view of design that, to a larger extent, takes part in the “collective adventure” (Latour 2010, 472) of searching for a new civilization, or a world worth living in. Yes, there is still the need for movement, but not in the name of progress or business as usual. This searching will not only lead to discoveries of something new, it could also lead to returning. As when Papanek (1995, 234) returned to the Inuit tribes of Alaska, “the best designers in the world” when it comes to survival. Or, like the radical architects, Superstudio, well known for their utopian urban visions, which researched primitive peasant economies in the far reaches of Italy (Lang and Menking 2003). This will not mean a “life without objects” (ibid.) but a reframing of our relation to both the artificial and natural side of life.

Research Project—My Journey to the Crises of Civilization

I will begin with two short conversations in stairs. You know the situation—you meet someone in the beginning, the middle, or the end of a staircase and start talking. The first conversation is at the original K3, the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University in 2008. I meet Pelle Ehn in the stair of one of the research studios and he asks me if I have any suggestions for themes for new design research. I reply: “Design for social innovation.” At the time, I was working as a teacher and responsible for the course Design for sustainability, which was very much inspired by the work of Ezio Manzini and François Jégou. In 2008, they released the research anthology Collaborative Services: Social Innovation and Design for Sustainability (Jégou and Manzini 2008). This became my entry into design for social innovation. Pelle and I subsequently wrote a research application that was turned down. Later, I got a commission from Design- fakulteten (The Swedish Faculty for Design Research and Research Education) to write a research overview (Emilson 2010), and in 2010, I become employed as PhD candidate with the topic Design for Social Innovation. The second conversation takes place in the entrance stair at the

38 building that temporarily housed K3 and the research environment, Medea, where, at the time (2011), I was a PhD student and teacher. I meet Bob Jacobson, former entrepreneur-in-residence at Medea, who asked me what I was doing that day and I replied: “I am teaching.” “What do you teach?” Bob asks. “Design for sustainability,” I reply. “It’s too late, now it is design for survival,” Bob replied. At that moment, I thought he was exaggerating. However, one year later, I caught up with him and had changed the focus of my thesis from sustainability to collapse.

Research environment I was employed as a PhD student in Interaction Design within the research environment of the Medea Collaborative Media Initiative at Malmö University. The idea with Medea was to explore the intersection between the two core disciplines at K3—Interaction Design and Media and Communication Studies. Another fundamental idea with Medea was to do co-production with organisations outside the university. That explains why we, for example, had a business developer as a member of the team. I spent two-thirds of my five years at Medea and the last third at K3—the mother ship—as Medea would temporarily vanish after a change of director and direction. Within Medea, I was part of one out of three Malmö Living Labs, a research team called Living Lab the Neighbourhood, which had begun to explore social innovation. The group consisted mainly of Senior Researcher Per-Anders Hillgren, who was also the leader of the lab, Professor Pelle Ehn, my PhD colleague Anna Seravalli, and myself. The other two living labs at Medea were Living Lab the Factory and Living Lab the Scene. Members of the wider living lab research team were Erling Björgvinsson, Per Linde, and Elisabet M. Nilsson. The Living Lab concept emerged as response to poor results from closed innovation environments. In contrast, living labs are open, user-driven, and situated in real-world environments. They build on collaborations between researchers, companies, and public and civic sectors. Today, around two hundred innovation milieus are defined as living labs in Europe (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2012). In the Malmö Living Labs, participants are seen as “active co-creators” (ibid. 131) and not simply as sources of information.

39 Living Lab the Neighbourhood had been working with participatory design mainly in districts in Malmö marked by social exclusion. From the beginning, this work departs from the application of new media and IT, but would increasingly move towards public services and the relationships between citizens, associations, small companies, and the municipality. Our work was based on building long-term relationships and using prototyping as a way to evoke and explore possibilities and dilemmas. Our activities were based on three core methodological ideas:

• to set up collaborative design processes where diverse stakeholders with complementary skills work side by side, and where mutual respect and learning is supported • to build long-term relationships and trust with stakeholders • to perform early prototyping where possibilities are explored in real-life contexts, but where potential dilemmas also are highlighted.

The Living Labs researchers Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren (2010) had, over the years, developed concepts crucial to this thesis: infrastructuring and design things. As participatory design is based upon democratic principles, they had also brought in the concept of agonism (Mouffe 2000a, b) and Hillgren brought in the concept governance from political theory. For me, it became natural to attach myself to both the methodological and theoretical framework of the group. In the following text, I will introduce Interaction Design and Participatory Design as well as the concepts of governance and agonism—all elements in the research environment that I depart from in this thesis.

Projects and cases As a PhD student or researcher, you are expected to have a well- defined project. The problem for me was that I never actually had one. Even when I was part of a research environment or part of a research group, I was never involved in a research project which was required to be finished on a specific date, where we would answer a specific question and use certain kinds of methods. I was more or less left to my own interests and see what opportunities to explore

40 these would emerge. This experience has been both that of privilege and pain. Also, as I do not have a background as a designer, but more of a mix of cultural studies and journalism; therefore, it was not easy to find what role I should have in the group. Should I start acting as a designer and setting up design experiments? Or should I keep doing what I have always been doing, which is explore new contexts for design? It turned out to be the latter. With that stated, I have not only been sitting on the sidelines reading books and reports, but also I have been actively involved in project work both in the studio and in the field. In the beginning, I joined Per-Anders Hillgren in his work with Herrgårds Kvinnoförening (see Hillgren, Seravalli and Emilson 2011, Emilson, Hillgren and Seravalli 2014). This work, in which Anna Seravalli was also involved, continued during the first three years and involved many meetings and also various design experiments and prototypes. In this initial phase of my research, my interest was in “designing networks” (Jégou and Manzini 2008) or how design could support constellations of actors with complementary skills, knowledge, and perspectives in exploring various societal challenges. These actors where both bottom-up and top-down, and the title of the first presentation of my research was “Designing with the Bees and the Trees,” influenced by Mulgan (2007). These interests are still with me in the conclusion, but in another terminology. During my research, I found the concept of frames to be in line with what I initially, and more casually, discussed as perspectives and worldviews. In the same way, what I initially discussed as a constellation of actors, I will discuss as design things and Living Labs. In the spring of 2011, we, (Ehn, Emilson, Hillgren and Seravalli) were commissioned by the City of Malmö to run a series of three workshops to explore what an incubator for social innovation could be (Ehn et al. 2011, Emilson and Hillgren 2014). This will be the main case in this thesis. In connection with this, I became part of a pre-study run by the City of Malmö which explored the idea of Innovation forums, which are small, design-based innovation teams which could support civil servants in meeting citizens and developing their ideas about social change (see Larsson 2012). None of these projects can be considered traditional academic research projects with predefined research questions; in these projects, we acted

41 more as consultants, although we set up the projects according to our methodology and theoretical background. We also used these projects to reflect on the processes and the outcomes. Both these projects had quite unhappy ends; the incubator process was more or less hijacked by a powerful actor, and the Innovation forum project was put in the trash by a senior civil servant, much due to personal dislike. Regarding the incubator process, we were commissioned to conduct some follow-up workshops, but we never managed to do that because it was difficult to mobilize mainly the civil servants, as the original purpose with the incubator was lost. But the needs that both the incubator and the Innovation forums addressed were still there, and discussions regarding both these projects kept recurring during those years. In 2014, the Swedish National Forum for Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship, where Per-Anders Hillgren is a part-time researcher, along with Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap (the Centre for Public Entrepreneurship), arranged a workshop around the issue of “Design som frirum” (Design as Free Zone), which clearly addressed the same issues as the incubator workshops three years earlier. One can say that both the incubator project and the Innovation forum projects deal with social, or public, innovation as a way to reach (social) sustainability in Malmö. In a parallel process, but without much interchange, the Commission for a Socially Sustai- nable Malmö also researched this issue. Neither of these address the issue of collapse, nor the notion of transition, so how did I end up where I am? Why didn’t I limit myself to simply studying how design could support social and public innovation in the context of Malmö? One reason is that when both projects I was involved in were stopped at a highly explorative phase with no opportunity to create constellations of citizens, companies, and civil servants, and with no opportunity to perform any design experiments, I no longer had the opportunity to explore any of my initial ideas. We tried to set up design processes many times, but did not get any further. Another reason has to do with how I interpret social innovation as system change. When you start to look at our societal systems and the challenges ahead of us, the notion of collapse is unavoidable. I would argue that if you have not considered the possibility that we will fail to reach sustainability, you live in denial.

42 In this thesis, I often refer to the international Transition Towns movement, where concerned citizens address peak oil and climate change and work according to permaculture principles. This movement is also present in Sweden under the label omställning (see om- ställning.net and demokratisk-omstallning.org). Was there not a local initiative that I could have joined? Actually not, although there are spread groups that work in line with this movement in Malmö. The folk high school Glokala Folkhögskolan can be seen as a local center which advocates these ideas, and I had discussions with them about collaboration, but they did not lead to anything. But later, at the end of my project, I was connected to people in Lindängen who run a small forest garden according to permaculture principles. The- se were the right people! However, by then it was too late to set up a project and do experiments. Hopefully, I can reconnect with them when I have completed this text and can start putting some of the ideas of this thesis into practice. My journey to the theme of a civilization in crises and on the brink to collapse can be seen as a circular movement. For me, this started with an interest in Design for Sustainability that led me to Design for Social Innovation as a way to reach sustainability. Our projects have dealt more with social sustainability than environmental sustainability, but I do not think they can ever be fully separated. As we will see, a question of unemployment is not simply a matter of creating more jobs, but ultimately about how we organize society and distribute resources. Today, I am more or less back where I started, but this time with a more worrying aspect of sustainability—the prospect of collapse.

Interaction Design I am working towards a PhD in Interaction Design and will now position myself in relation to this field. Interaction Design established itself in the mid 1990s as a more design-oriented subdiscipline of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). Löwgren and Stolterman (2007, 2) define Interaction Design as “the shaping of use-oriented qualities of a digital artifact for one or more clients.” In short, interaction design is design of digital artefacts. But Löwgren and Stolterman also state that all design is part of “the largest design project of them all – the joint design of the world as a place for human life” (ibid.,

43 12). Further, they claim that a designer has the “power to change and influence the development of society, which implies significant responsibility” (ibid., 13.). It is this interrelationship between design and society and how designers influence the development of society and the conditions for not only human life, but also nonhuman life, that I aim to explore in this thesis. Through discussing our prospect of surviving and thriving, I aim to contribute to the discussion about design’s changing role which, in the long run, can influence designers to make wise decisions about what kinds of artefacts to develop and which ways of life to support; for example, whether or not we should design artefacts in line with Conventio- nal Development or Great Transition. I will do this by discussing a necessary reorganization of society and our way of living and how that may influence the design of the artefacts we choose to live with, not how design of artefacts may influence society. In this way, my research may be seen as contrary to most design research that departs from artefacts. I will also distance myself from the kind of anthropocentric view that is expressed in Löwgren and Stolterman’s introduction. ”We live in an artificial world” (ibid., 1), our world is produced by humans, and the ”world as a place for human life” (ibid., 12). This is how most of us see, or frame, our life in the world today, as a relationship between humans and artefacts, with no relationship with the natural world at all. But our artificial world is totally dependent on the natural world, of its energy and physical resources. This isolation in our artificial world has also made it possible to avoid the consequences of our actions, for example, that our dear artefacts end up in the stomachs of seabirds. Of course, this human-centeredness is not limited to Interaction Design but is a component of all design and human action. However, factions within design do address this issue, and in this thesis, I will relate to the disciplines of Sustainable CHI, Sustainable Interaction Design (Blevis 2007) and Collapse Informatics (Tomlinson et al. 2012a). Considering the next steps for sustainable HCI, Silberman et al. (2014) state that sustainability issues are larger in scale, time span, and complexity than the scale and scope that traditional HCI design addresses. Therefore, HCI needs to reach out and collaborate with other disciplines. The historical HCI focus on introducing technological novelty may also be

44 contrary to sustainability goals and, therefore, sustainable HCI has increasingly explored designs that do not ”produce technological novelty,” but rather focus on appropriation, maintenance, repair, or “technology non-use” (ibid., 67). Further, they state that a challenge for HCI researchers is to contemplate how to use both old and new technologies to reach sustainability goals and to consider “the long- term social, economic, political, and ecological processes that might influence the adoption, use, and effects of particular technologies and practices” (ibid., 68). Thus, I will not limit myself to digital artefacts, but rather, I will claim that departing from technology-specific disciplines when discussing societal development limits the scope of perspectives and possibilities that are necessary to include. I develop this further when discussing Sustainable Interaction Design and also how interaction designers use design fiction. Recently, several initiatives within the HCI and Interaction Design communities have aimed beyond the focus on digital artefacts. For example, Pierce et al. (2013, 20:3) depart from practice as the primary unit for analysis and intervention as a way “to look beyond isolated interactions between humans and computers.” Also, the recognition of the design practice Project H with the IxD Future Voice Award 2013 is a sign of how Interßaction Design seeks to become something more than designing for a specific technology. Project H is the practice of Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller, both trained architects who, between 2010 and 2011, moved their studio to Berti County, the poorest county in North Carolina, USA, with the aim of supporting the community in meeting their challenges. They reinvented high school shop class and, with the students, designed and built among other things, a local farmers market. In response to more conservative voices within the interaction design community who questioned this reward to a non-interaction design practice, Marc Rettig (2013) replied that “rather than focusing on physical or digital products, or defining ourselves by the fact that we serve this or that business or institution, our focus is on the way we affect people’s conversations, relationships, identity, power, and the patterns of daily life or in Matt and Emily’s terms, the way our work affects humanity, health, habitat and happiness.” It is to this development within Interaction Design that I hope to contribute to with my thesis.

45 Participatory Design Interaction Design and Participatory Design are closely related and have in common a focus on digital artefacts. Participatory Design has its roots in the 1970s, when computer systems first entered into the workplaces of Scandinavia. This was the starting point for what became the Scandinavian Participatory Design tradition. Participa- tory design is also rooted in the “democratic design” of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus school. But the idealism of participatory design is something different than the idealism of designers and architects who consider themselves to be experts in how people should live and what products they should consume. Instead of designing for people, designers within the Participatory Design tradition involve the people concerned and design with them, starting from their own experiences and desires. Participatory Design originates from the social, political, and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s when people “demanded an increased say in the decisions that affected many different aspects of their lives” (Robertson and Simonsen 2013, 3). Influenced by these movements, designers began to claim, “if we are to design the futures we wish to live, then those whose futures are affected must actively participate in the design process” (ibid., 5). Robertson and Simonsen define Participatory Design as:

a process of investigating, understanding, reflecting upon, establishing, developing, and supporting mutual learning between multiple participants in collective ‘reflection-in-action.’ The participants typically undertake two roles of users and designers where the designers strive to learn the realities of the users’ situation while the users strive to articulate their desired aims and learn appropriate technological means to obtain them. (ibid., 2 my italics)

Mutual learning between the participants in a collective design process is considered a cornerstone of Participatory Design (Kensing and Greenbaum 2013). According to Robertson and Simonsen (2013), the two roles of users and designers reflect two fundamental aspects of participatory design. First, it enables those who will use a future technology to have a voice in its design without needing to speak the

46 technological language of professional designers or engineers: “This is achieved through interactions with prototypes, mock-ups and other tools that can represent developing systems and future practices” (ibid., 2), and second: “people who are not professional technology designers may not be able to define what they want from a design process, without knowing what is possible” (ibid., my italics). The difference between this description of participatory design and the one that I aim to develop in this thesis is that it will not limit itself to possible technological futures, but rather the process of mutual learning will concern the more holistic issue of possible societies or lifeworlds. Also, the prototypes and mock-ups used to represent possible technological futures will be complemented with design fictions aimed at representing life in these possible or speculative societies. The most crucial difference in the version of participatory design that I will propose is that it, to a higher degree, also considers which technological futures and future societies are not possible anymore according to planetary boundaries and social targets. The political rationale behind participatory design to ensure that the voices of marginalized groups and communities are heard may also change when the matter of concern is not a new technology, but rather a possible society. The marginalized group is then perhaps not considered as weaker or as possible victims of technological progress, but rather as a “purposefully marginalised group” (Tomlinson et al. 2013, 24:14) who, through their critique of the mainstream and experimenting with alternatives, carry the “buds” of future practices. In this way, it is the marginalized group who can inform the others about what is possible in a future society. In this thesis, I consider my unit of analysis and intervention to be the practice of everyday life rather than that of technological artefacts. Practice has been an important element in Participatory Design since its early days in the 1980s. Ehn (1993) describes how in the UTOPIA-project working with requirement specifications and systems descriptions based on interviews gave poor results in the design process. However, when designers and graphic workers began to explore the practice and skill of the workers through “design-by-doing methods and descriptions such as mockups and work organization games” (ibid, 62), they were more successful. In this case, they shifted from descriptions as representations of reali-

47 ty to action or practice as alternative representation of reality in the design process. Ehn (ibid, 63) writes that practice, as a social construction of reality, is a strong candidate for replacing the “picture theory” of reality:

Through practice, we produce the world, both the world of objects and our knowledge about this world. Practice is both action and reflection. But practice is also a social activity; it is produced in cooperation with others. However, this production of the world and the understanding of it take place in an already existing world. The world is also a product of former practice. Hence, as part of practice, knowledge has to be understood socially–as producing or reproducing social processes and structures as well as being the product of them. (Enh 1993, 63)

Democratic processes and the equalizing of power relations are basics in Participatory Design. Consequently, Robertson, and Wagner (2013) bring up the issue of ethics in Participatory Design. They write that ethics has to do with questions about how to live a good life and what kind of society could make this possible. They quote Wittgenstein who believed that ethics is about inquiry into what is valuable, or really important, in the meaning of life or what makes life worth living (ibid, 66). Robertson and Wagner bring up the strong link between Participatory Design and civil society as both commit to “challenge power relationships and transform patterns of exclusion and social justice” (ibid., 68). They claim that advocates of civil society “argue from a strong moral basis, referring to values such as autonomy, democratic self-realisation, self-organisation and solidarity” (ibid.) As we will see, civil society, or the third sector, will have an important role in this thesis, both in the incubator case, but also as one of the most important actors driving the transition toward a more sustainable society. At the same time, I will bring up the need to go beyond human-centeredness in both the design and social change processes and to strive for a “different mode of humanity” (Gibson-Graham 2014) or an “uncivilised” (Hine and Kings- north 2009) perspective that reconnects us with nature and other species. When Robertson and Wagner (2013, 68) discuss ethics and the importance of recognizing “the humanity of the other” and to

48 see oneself in the place of the other, the “other” is still limited to other humans. They state that the other needs to be defined on its own terms and not in relation to dominant values and that this “di- alogical relation with others is at the heart of Participatory Design” (ibid.). Here, I think the dialogue with “others” needs to be extended to both other species, like the seabird with its stomach full of plastic, but also other nonhuman actors, like “conflict minerals” (Ayres 2012). A design thing addressing societal collapse can no longer avoid discussing inconvenient issues like, for example, ecocide—the extinction of other species—or human suffering in the chase for conflict minerals to use in our digital devices.

Design space In this thesis, I will consider the space between Conventional De- velopment and Great Transition, or the space between collapse and sustainability, as a design space. Bo Westerlund (2009, 35) defines ‘design space’ as “all the possible design solutions that would work; that prospective users and other stakeholders would find meaningful.” Even if Westerlund’s design explorations concern artefacts and I discuss challenges on a societal scale, I find the concept useful. Westerlund describes how initially, “the process can be described as exploratory, when one is uncertain about the design space. Here one wants to be surprised by the explorations. Later on in the process when one’s knowledge has increased, the work tends to be more experimental; one is expecting to have one’s assumptions confirmed or rejected” (ibid).

Politics, Democracy, and Power

Issues regarding politics, democracy, and power have always been at the center of participatory design. When I joined the Living Labs, Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren were exploring the concepts of agonism, governance, and design things, which I will use in this thesis and introduce now. Another concept that has been crucial in the Living Labs is infrastructuring (Björgvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren 2010), the building of long-term working relationships and the matching of actors with complementary experiences, perspectives, and resources.

49 Agonism Agonism is a concept that Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren (2010, 2012a) introduced when discussing democracy in their papers about design things. Agonism has also been used by DiSalvo (2010, 2012) when discussing what he calls adversarial design. The concept is brought forward by Political Scientist Chantal Mouffe (2000a, b) as a way to approach political hegemony, where marginal actors often are left outside political coalitions that build on consensus. Agonism is best understood in relation to antagonism, which is the struggle between enemies, while agonism is the struggle between adversaries. An adversary is “somebody whose ideas we combat but whose right to defend those ideas we do not put into question” (Mouffe 2000a, 15). For Mouffe, “agonistic struggle” is at the core of a vibrant democracy. Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren (2010, 48) build on Mouffe’s ideas and write:

The goal of democratic politics is to empower a multiplicity of voices in the struggle of hegemony and at the same time find constitutions that help transform antagonism into agonism, from conflict between enemies to constructive controversies among adversaries who have opposing matters of concern but also accept other views as legitimate. These are activities that are usually full of passion, imagination and engagement. As such, they are more like creative innovations than rational decision-making processes. (Ibid.)

Governance Per-Anders Hillgren introduced the concept of governance to our research group. Governance can be seen both as an analytical framework and as a phenomenon. The concept stresses that a significant part of politics not only takes place within the formal governmental institutions, but also in partnership with non-governmental actors (Pierre and Peters 2000). Rod Rhodes (1997) argues that governance is mainly performed through informal, self-organized networks stretching between the public and private sectors. When politics is formed in such informal networks, the boundaries between public and private become blurred and from this follows a blurring of responsibilities and accountability (Stoker 2000). Another issue that

50 is highly relevant from a Participatory Design perspective: if political power is exercized through informal networks, some will always be excluded from these networks (Stoker 2000), which was what happened in the later stages of the incubator process, as we will see. In a book chapter (Emilson and Hillgren 2014) where we analyzed the incubator process, we turned to Political Scientist Tove Dannestam to better understand the role of governance networks in the local context. In her dissertation, she examines the political landscape in Malmö and reveals that a significant part of the political processes in the city are exercized through informal networks including important key representatives from trade and industry and leading civil servants and politicians. According to Dannestam (2009), decisions and consensus are often settled in the corridors before they enter into more public political forums. Two important implications arise from this. The first is that it provides the people in these networks with the “ability to act” and makes them vigorous and efficient. For example, the former city planning director states, “In the city of Malmö you can get things done” (Dannestam 2009, 189). However, as Dannestam suggests, this has implications regarding democracy: “On one side you have efficiency and the ability to act, on the other side you have the democratic aspects of planning which tends to be a slow process” (ibid.). The second consequence of governance is that issues that in traditional government were characterized by political conflict are now described as neutral development in everyone’s interest. This consensus between a limited network of actors is considered problematic from a democratic perspective by many researchers. Swyngedouw (2005) brings up the tension between the possibilities of increased democratization through participatory governance on one hand, and the fact that these governance networks are often led by “coalitions of economic, socio-cultural or political élites” (Swyngedouw 2005, 1999) on the other. He states that governance has:

Undoubtedly given a greater voice and power to some organisations (of a particular kind—i.e. those who accept playing according to the rules set from within the leading élite networks). However, it has also consolidated and enhanced the power of groups associated with the drive toward marketisation and has

51 diminished the participatory status of groups associated with social democratic or anti-privatisation strategies. (ibid., 2003)

Also Stigendal (2011, 31) argues that this exclusiveness raises questions regarding democracy because governance often involves trade and industry, but not “the third sector or representatives of people with low participation in elections.” Stigendal believes that a return to traditional hierarchical government is not the solution; instead, more actors and stakeholders should be able to participate in these networks—a sort of “governance with all” (Stigendal 2012b). I will return to these concepts when discussing what happened in the incubator process.

Design things The concept of design thing was first brought forward by Pelle Ehn (2008, Binder et al. 2011) and later developed by Ehn, Björgvinsson, and Hillgren (2010, 2012). Ehn was inspired by Latour’s (2005b) ideas about socio-material assemblies, or collectives, of humans and nonhumans. Latour also returned to the etymology of the Eng- lish word “thing” which originally meant an assembly. In ancient Nordic and Germanic societies, a thing was a governing assembly, ritual, or a place where “disputes were solved and political decisions made” (Ehn 2008, 92). To stage a design thing is to align human and nonhuman resources (artefacts, information, and design devices such as sketches and prototypes) to move the object of design forward and to “support the emergence, translation, and performance of this object” (Binder et al. 2011, 157). But before developing on my colleagues’ ideas of a design thing, I will go back to Latour’s reasoning regarding the thing. Latour (2005b) approaches things by discussing assemblies (who is represented), and issues (what is discussed). But, not without playing with words and instead of, or synonymously, using the word ‘issue,’ he uses the word ‘object.’ He states that each “object,” for example, “the pollution of the river near your home” and “the breaking down of Greenland’s glaciers,” (ibid., 4) generate different patterns of “emotions and disruptions, of disagreements and agreements” and “gathers around itself a different assembly of relevant parties” (ibid., 5). But, while political science has been focused on

52 the assemblies, “when it comes down to what is at issue, namely the object of concern that brings them together, not a word is uttered” (ibid., 6). With what he calls “object-oriented democracy,” Latour aims to overcome this separation between assembly and issues. “The first question draws a sort of place, sometimes a circle, a meeting, a council; the second question brings into this newly created locus a topic, a concern, an issue, a topos. But the two have to be taken together: Who is concerned? What is to be considered?” (ibid.). So, the task is not only to assemble the relevant actors, but also to “represent to the eyes and ears of those assembled” what is the issue, or what Latour aptly calls “the object of worry” (ibid., 8). Here, a new challenge appears: how to debate the “proof” of what is our issue or object of worry when undisputable facts have become rare. Latour believes that for too long, objects have been wrongly portrayed as matters-of-fact when they are much more “interesting, variegated, uncertain, complicated, far reaching, heterogeneous, risky, historical, local, material and networky” (ibid., 11). Instead of ‘matters-of-fact,’ he proposes that we use ‘matters-of-concern’ to compare assertions with one another. This also calls for a new type of public arena where actors who previously leaned on “facts” (Latour exemplifies with Colin Powell, whose “facts” regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were all lies) had to prove their assertions (and frames!) against others’ assertions. It is, as a response to the shortcomings of matters-of-fact, that Latour introduces the notion of the thing as a place to gather and debate matters-of-concern. One driving force for my colleagues in their development of the concept of design things was the ambition to go beyond the traditional design project with a clear brief, and well-defined stakeholders and timelines. Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren (2012b, 104) state that the shortcomings of design projects “are well known and many: a top-down perspective hindering adaptation to changing conditions, the hierarchical structure adverting ‘legitimate’ participation, the rigidity of specifications.” Instead of a project with a start and end, a design thing should be considered as a process that involves both setting the pre-conditions for a design process and opening up for new design things where future users and stakeholders can discuss new matters of concern according to changed conditions and re-design the outcome of previous design things. Another aspect of

53 the design thing is to make the objects of design and matters of concern public through workshops, exhibitions, and public debates, as well as different types of media such as blogs or videos. Here, I would suggest that a design thing is seen as a complement to the lab, field, and showroom (Koskinen et al. 2011) and functions as a space for addressing other “more important” issues. With design things, Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren (2010, 49) address the recurrent challenge for Participatory Design of how to provide for “alternative perspectives on participation and on democratization.” With design things, they propose a way of organizing innovation which is less technocratic and more democratic and “where differences and controversies are allowed to exist, dilemmas are raised and possibilities explored” (ibid. 49-50). They conclude that with this view on innovation, the role of the design researcher becomes:

one of infrastructuring agonistic public spaces mainly by facilitating the building of arenas consisting of heterogeneous participants, legitimizing those marginalized, maintaining network constellations, and leaving behind repertoires of how to organize socio-materially when conducting innovative transformations. (ibid., 50)

In this thesis, I aim to contribute to this exploration of a democratic innovation arena by exploring two design things in two different situations, one real and one speculative, and the conversation with the situation that took place in them. They can be seen as two different ways of addressing our societal challenges and two different ways of working with Design for Social Innovation. The first design thing (the incubator process) is based on a belief in Design for Social Inn- ovation as a way to sustain the existing organization of society. The second (speculative) design thing addresses the prospect of collapse and the need to work with Design for Social Innovation as a way to transform and reorganize society.

Reframing Design

My first attempt at reframing design builds on the focus on practice

54 in participatory design (e.g. Ehn 1993) and the recent shift from focusing on individuals and their interactions with artefacts to focusing on everyday practice, meaning shared activities and routines, introduced by Pierce et al. (2013). I will consider my unit of analysis and intervention to be the practice of everyday life. I will relate the notion of practice to activity and work. “Understanding practices situate competences, materials, and meanings in the geographic, his- toric, cultural, political and technical contexts in which they take place” (Wackary et al. 2013, 23:2). This more-holistic departure from the context, or the big picture, is more interesting for me than departing from isolated situations where individuals interact with artefacts. As Pierce et al. (2013, 20:3) write, interaction with (digital) technology is “just one important element in the configuration of practices.” This “decentring of humans and computers at certain stages in the analysis” in the practice based approach “allows us new means to investigate the dynamics of (un)sustainability” (ibid.). Which leads to the next shift. My second attempt at reframing design was influenced by The Dark Mountain Manifesto where Dougald Hine and Paul Kings- north (2009) call for uncivilized art which attempts to stand outside the “human bubble” and puncture our self-importance. I will aim for a shift from human-centered design to human and nonhuman-centered design. This relates to recent design research (e.g., Ulv Lenskjold and Jönsson 2013) where nonhumans are no longer limited to artefacts, but where other species, like animals, are included in design processes as actors. Also, Fry (2009, 47) argues that the “common good” has to be extended beyond the human and that “commonality has to span the human and nonhuman, the natural and the artificial, the animate and inanimate for the they are all inter-relationally intertwined.” This also relates to what Gibson- Graham (2014) calls a “different mode of humanity” which actively seeks to connect with more than just humans. This mode of humanity recognizes a kinship with nonhumans as “material configura- tions” (ibid., 40). “We are all just different collections of the same stuff – bacteria, heavy metals, atoms, matter-energy – not separate kinds of being susceptible to ranking” (ibid.). Graugaard (2014) also argues for the need to overcome both the separation between humans and nature and the view of nature as a resource for human

55 exploitation and domination, and to strive for a view based more on connectivity and relationality between “human and more-than-human worlds” (ibid., 32). Could this reframing lead to the emergence of a design science that is no longer a science of the artificial, but rather a science of lifeworlds—the composition of lifeworlds where quality survival for both humans and nonhumans is possible?

Object of Study and a Tentative Theory of Change

My object of study is design practice. I carry through my study both as research through design and research for design. These terms are usually attributed to Christopher Frayling (1993) but as my use of the terms is not entirely in line with his definitions, I will describe what I mean by these concepts. With research through design, I mean reflecting on design experiments and processes. In my case, this means reflecting on the experiences of setting up a design thing (the incubator workshops). With research for design, I mean developing new knowledge or ideas that could influence design research and practice. Here, through studies of literature, I have searched for concepts that can be helpful in developing new approaches for setting up a design thing in the prospect of collapse. I depart from the notion that design practice is a change practice, but what will this practice change? Rather than changes regarding artefacts, services, or infrastructures, I will discuss a change of direction, a change of development trajectory for society as a whole which, in turn, will affect both our everyday practices and the artefacts we use. This leads to my tentative theory of change and the concepts of resilience, adaptation, transformation, and transition. To be able to meet the challenges ahead of us in an adequate way, we need change that creates real improvements in people’s lives and our prospects for survival. I believe we have to go from relieving symptoms and fixing flaws in the existing system to creating entirely new systems. To discuss what kind of change is needed, I use the concepts of resilience, adaptability, transformation, and transition. Resilience and adaptability are to do with the capacity of an existing socio-ecological system to tackle crises or shocks. According to Walker et al. (2004 no page), resilience “is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and reorganize while undergoing change so

56 as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.” Adaptability is the capacity for social actors, mainly humans, in a system to influence resilience. Transformability, in contrast, is the capacity to create a fundamentally new system, or as Walker et al. (2004, my italics) put it, “the capacity to create untried beginnings from which to evolve a new way of living when existing ecological, economic, or social structures become untenable.” Here we see two approaches to change on a macro-societal level. One is stick to the economic, technological, and social systems we have and make changes, at best radical ones, within these systems and hope that this will be enough to reach resilience and sustainability. This is the kind of change strategies that currently dominate. The other approach is based on the insight that changes within existing systems will not be enough and that, instead, we need to develop entirely new economic, technical, and social systems. Deli- berate transformation involves innovation and “breaking down the resilience of the old and building the resilience of the new” (Folke et al. 2010, no page). I believe this kind of transformational change is what is needed.

Transformation and transition In this text, I will use the terms transformation and transition recurrently. With transformation and transition, I will most often refer to big structural shifts on a systemic level, the change of development path, and the creation of something entirely new. This way of using these words is mirrored in the titles of the reports “Great Transition” (Raskin et al. 2002) and “The Great Transition” (Spratt et al. 2010) which both deal with our situation today, but had a precursor in Karl Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation” which was written during World War Two and published in 1944. It begins like this: “Nineteenth-century civilization has collapsed. This book is concerned with the political and economic origins of this event, as well as with the great transformation which it ushered in” (Polanyi 2001, 3). According to transition management theory (Fisher-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009), persistent societal problems require transitions; that is, fundamental changes in structure (physical and economic infrastructure, and institutions), culture (values, norms, and per-

57 spective), and practice (production routines, behavior, and ways of handling). Fisher-Kowalski and Rotmans (2009, no page) argues that in transition management, change occurs through the confrontation between a “niche” (individual technologies, practices, and actors outside a regime) and a “regime” (a specific societal system with its own culture and practices). Radical innovations are developed in niches and a “niche regime” develops which “attacks” the incumbent regime “which ultimately is transformed into a new regime” (ibid.). I will also use the terms in the meaning of transformational change that will lead to a transition. Here, I refer to The Oxford English Dictionary which defines transformation as the “action of transforming” (2015a) and transition as a ”passing or passage from one condition, action, or (rarely) place, to another; change” (2015b). This way of reasoning can be found in Raskin et al. (2002, 10) who write that people with a transformationist worldview “believe that global transition can be seized as an opportunity to forge a better civilization” or with Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014, 123) who write that transformative social-cultural and technological changes “set the necessary conditions for a transition to a resilient global future.”

To be able to change the development path from Conventio- nal Development to Great Transition, we will also need to work with other drivers and actors of change. From the research I have done (e.g. Raskin et al. 2002, Crompton 2010), I suggest that to work with transformative change, working with proximate drivers such as changes in the economy, technology, or governance will not be enough. Instead, we need to work with ultimate drivers like changes in values and needs, knowledge and understanding, power structures, and culture (Raskin et al. 2002). I claim that to work with ultimate drivers will include working with frames and to identify which worldviews are associated with different development paths. The actors driving this change will be less of the current dominating ones from business and policy and more actors from civil society and engaged citizens who are “animated by a new suite of values that emphasizes quality of life, human solidarity and environmental sustainability” (ibid, 53). What is

58 needed is a strong global social movement that could both inform new policy, businesses, and technology development. In this thesis, I argue that the international Transition Towns movement can be seen as one sign of the emergence of such a global social movement; however, other and more actors will be needed. As previously stated, Bollier and Conaty (2015) state that a wide range of alternative movements exist, but these have not yet merged into a “movement of movements.” A crucial part in this tentative theory of change is the role of visions and stories which can support us in the choices we have to make to change the development path. We need visions of this future society and stories about what it is like to live there. To be able to create these visions and stories, we need to identify the worldviews, frames, and values that are associated with this possible future and that could help us get there. We cannot choose to live in another world if there is nothing in that world that attracts us. The last part of this notion of change is a space (or arena) where this change can be put into action. I will call this space a design thing and at the end of the thesis, I discuss this space in relation to related ideas such as hybrid forums, knowledge alliances, and shadow networks. This is not a space for consensus and the creation of blueprints; it is a space for agonism, exploration, and experimentation—a space that merges vision, debate, and cautious trial and error. In summary, the logic of this tentative theory of change goes like this: to reach a world where we can survive and thrive, we need to change development path. To make this change, we need to identify the worldviews (frames), values, and beliefs that are associated with this new world, and we need to create visions of what it is like to live in it. These visions need to be connected with a social movement that is attracted by these visions and that could start the transition from a collapsing world into a world where we could survive and thrive. For designers, this tentative theory of change means that focusing on artefacts is not enough. It is also necessary to create an awareness of the role of ultimate drivers of change and how those affect our choices of artefacts and systems to live with.

59 Research Questions

In this thesis, I propose that designers should not only address societal challenges with the belief that we can solve them and end up in a world that is both sustainable and resilient, but also that designers must consider what it means to fail and address the prospect of societal collapse. Which world will we end up in then? And what can we do to avoid both a collapse and prepare ourselves for living in a world of societal breakdown?

Research questions: How can designers address the prospect that we may fail in reaching sustainability and enter a period of collapse?

What design approaches can designers work with to address the prospect of collapse?

Disposition

The thesis is organized in the following way: in Part II, I depart from two situations and examples of conversation with the situation. The first situation and conversation is that which we had in the incubator process, which is an example of addressing societal challenges according to the norms and structures of how society is organized today. The second situation and conversation has not yet happened, but it is a conversation that we cannot postpone any longer. This conversation addresses the prospect of a collapsing civilization and the need to reframe reality and change core values to be able to reorganize society to become resilient. Then in Part III, I will introduce a general theoretical framework containing the concepts that I will use in this thesis and which will become the foundation for my tentative theory of change. In Part IV, I will make an analysis of the incubator process, and propose a design thing that I think could help us address the prospect of collapse. Quotations from texts originally written in Swedish have been translated by me.

60 61 62 PART II: SITUATIONS

637 SITUATION ONE: SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN MALMÖ

In this chapter, quotations from Swedish texts, and participants in workshops and from interviews have been translated from Swedish into English by the author.

The initial theme for the “larger societal conversation with the situation” (Schön 1995, 346) is, in this thesis, the issue of how to reach social, economic, and ecological sustainability in Malmö—the third most-populated city in Sweden with three hundred thousand inhabitants. In the last fifteen years, Malmö has gone through a mainly positive transformation in which narratives have played a crucial role. In the search for a new identity to replace the old image of Malmö as an industrial, heavy-manufacturing city, central and powerful actors turned to notions of a future society that were based on “knowledge production” and “green,” meaning, economically and environmentally sustainable. One way to realize this transformation from industrial city to environmentally sustainable “knowledge industry” city was investment in the infrastructure such as starting the university, building the bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen and the “sustainable” city district Västra Hamnen (Western Harbor). This is the city for the creative class working in knowledge-intensive businesses like media and communication, design, information and communication technology (ICT), and clean tech. This development is mirrored in some of the organizations located in or around the Western

64 Harbor that should support these business fields, such as the incubator MINC, Media Evolution City, Clean Tech City, Sustainable Business Hub, Institute for Sustainable Urban Development and, of course, the strong presence of Malmö University and the new local headquarters for the Swedish public television company, SVT. But one important part of this new identity and the success story of sustainable Malmö was missing—the social part—and the people not in the creative class. In contrast to the success story of Malmö as an environmentally sustainable knowledge city, the social story of Malmö is more about child poverty, social inequity, unemployment, segregation, riots, failing schools, and crime. This situation was not new. During the past 15–20 years, politicians and civil servants have tried to tackle these social challenges with special programmes, but the situation has remained more or less unchanged. Consequently, on March 3, 2010, the Malmö City Executive Board decided to develop the social aspect of sustainability with the objective that all citizens in Malmö should be included and integrated in society and have access to welfare. The background to this decision was inequities regarding health and welfare between various population groups and different areas in the city. “The inequities in average life expectancy between the city districts of Malmö is 5.4 years for men and 4.6 years for women” (Stigendal and Östergren 2013, 40). The politicians’ decision led to the initi- ation of two projects: The Commission for a Socially Sustainable Malmö (the Malmö Commission) and the Area Programmes for a Socially Sustainable Malmö (the Area Programmes).

The Malmö Commission

The initiative for the Malmö Commission came from the Social Democrat Politician and municipal commissioner for social issues, Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh. On May 5, 2010, the Malmö City Exe- cutive Board decided to appoint the Commission for a Socially Sus- tainable Malmö. According to Stigendal and Östergren (2013), the politically independent commission should analyze the causes for the growing health inequity in the population and develop scientifically based strategies to reduce these inequities. Another reason for appointing the Commission was the ambition in Malmö to work

65 towards sustainable development from all perspectives and to create a greater awareness of, and focus on, the social dimension of sustainability. “This involves considering social initiatives and consequences in the same way as ecologic and economic” (Stigendal and Öst- ergren 2013, 9). The Commission should also prioritize three focus areas: the situation for children and youth, democracy and influence in society, and social and economic conditions. Three central aspects should influence the Commission’s work: facts, research and science; everyday life in Malmö; and new approaches, innovative modes of working, and forward-looking strategies.

The Area Programmes

One of the main drivers in developing the Area Programmes was journalist and writer, Bjarne Stenquist, who has worked as a consultant in the field of Social Transformation and as a research associate at the British think tank, Demos. Important to this story is the fact that Stenquist was an outsider to the municipal organization who saw the need for new ways of thinking and working. According to Stenquist, the origins of the Area Programmes can be tracked back to 2006 when a group of Master’s students from K3 at Malmö University launched the idea of area-based work in the project, Turning Seved. The idea was picked up by City District Director Anders Malmquist, who argued that an area programme should be started in Seved. In May 2009, Stenquist wrote an article in the local newspaper, Sydsvenskan, wherein he expressed his frustration regarding the in- efficiency of the municipality’s efforts in tackling the city’s social challenges. Stenquist departed from a document, dated May 22, 2003, in which the mayor at the time, Ilmar Reepalu, launched the city’s latest programme for reaching social, ecologic, and economic sustainability, Välfärd för alla (Welfare for All). In the document, Reepalu states that despite previous efforts from both the city and the government at a cost of 1.9 billion Swedish kronor between 1996 and 2002, Malmö continues to have a higher unemployment rate, rate of social allowance, and percentage of students leaving ninth grade with incomplete certificates than the rest of Sweden. Six years later, Stenquist states that the situation was more or less the

66 same at the closure of the Welfare for All programme. He writes:

There is something disconsolate about this. From where should the new initiatives come? Welfare for All shows that there is a crying need to widen the conversation about our city’s future. If the political system is stuck, one has to be, to an increasing degree, able to trust the citizens and give them the tools to create a new future. If before, one did things to and for people, to be successful, now one has to do things with people. How shall the creativity and hope for the future that exists in Herrgården and Rosengård be given space and channelled towards realization? The City of Malmö has said it will prioritize the creation of meeting places, arenas for conversations. These are needed now more than ever. But where are they? Is the political system ready to give up the power and control that is necessary to allow these meeting places make a real difference? (Stenquist 2009)

In this quote, Stenquist brings up many issues that are fundamental to this thesis:

• Who takes initiatives? Who has the new ideas? • The need of a wider conversation (with the situation) regarding the future of the city • To put trust in the creativity of the citizens • Participation—to do things with people • The need for meeting places and arenas for conversations • The issue of power and control in the political system

In his conclusion, Stenquist pointed to the fact that in comparison with large-scale physical infrastructure projects like the university and the Western Harbor area, Welfare for All was conducted in the background with minor attention. If Malmö wanted to increase everybody’s participation, it had to be visible, like a “Turning Torso of participation and integration” (Stenquist 2009). Stenquist’s critique and his new ideas caught the attention of City Director Inger Nilsson who commissioned Stenquist to write a report on how to progress with social sustainability in Malmö. In his report, he recommended developing an area-based approach and

67 included references to Turning Seved among other things. In April 2010, Stenquist was hired as a senior advisor for social sustainability and social innovation at the City Office where he led a group of eight civil servants who developed the concept of the Area Pro- grammes. In September 2010, the Malmö City executive board decided to initiate the Area Programmes for a Socially Sustainable Malmö. The decision was based on a formal document prepared and written by Stenquist, who would be responsible for leading the Area Programmes during its first two years. In the decision document, Stenquist (2010) outlined many of the ideas that would become central in the discussions and reasoning regarding the Area Programmes, the Social incubator, and Innova- tion forums during the following years. First, the Area Programmes for a Socially Sustainable Malmö aims at the creation of a from “all aspects” (ibid. 1) sustainable city. Second, the local context is important and the Area Programmes should start out from the specific situation—the concrete challenges, needs, and dynamics—in four areas of Malmö: Herrgården, Holma-Kroksbäck, Lindängen, and Seved; later, the area Segevång was added. The objective of being area-specific was based on learning from former efforts and programmes where the same ideas and methods were applied in the whole city. Third, resources and actors from the whole city should be mobilized, e.g., citizens, trade and industry, associations, Malmö University and other educational institutions, government authorities, etc., to work in a co-creative process to generate and realize solutions for the sustainable city with a focus on social problems. Fourth, focus should be on a “testing and experimental” (ibid.) way of working where different models are tried out, and those that work out well will be scaled up: “The ambition is to do the way of working innovatively in these areas so interesting that a range of parties in society with competence and resources will join the change process” (ibid.). The ambition is also to change the image of these areas from “problem areas” to “innovation areas” (ibid.). In summary, keywords in regards to the Area Programmes that will have a crucial role in this thesis are:

• Sustainability in all aspects • Local context

68 • Mobilizing actors across disciplines and sectors • Co-creation process • Experimental way of working

The Area Programmes should also link investments in the physical milieu and infrastructure with social investments in people’s knowledge and capabilities: the physical “skeleton” is complemented with social “muscles” (ibid.2). Interestingly, the notion of Innovation forums has already been mentioned in this document: “One of many suitable working methods is to establish a number of ‘Innovation forums’, where actors with various types of competence gather to, from different points of departure, tackle the problems in the areas and realizing their possibilities” (ibid.). Stenquist further writes of an increasing demand regarding methods for participation in change processes that concern people’s living situations. The knowledge that exists within the municipality needs to be developed, and here he exemplifies with the competence that exists at the university (the research center Medea and The Department of Urban Studies) and also in organizations like Media Evolution. The concept of social innovation is also mentioned in the document, defined as “new ideas to reach social goals” (ibid., 6) and that the Area Programmes could be viewed as platforms to connect various actors to generate and realize social innovations. Finally, some areas that the Area Program- mes should focus on are mentioned: work and economic growth; security, participation and democracy; living conditions for children and youth; integration and a decreased social gap; and culture and leisure. I will now describe two ideas aimed at creating a structure for the Area Programmes practice: the idea of an Incubator for Social Innovation and the idea of Innovation forums. I have been involved in processes for both of these ideas.

An Incubator Process in Four Phases

Looking back at the incubator process, it can be divided in four phases. Phase one: the preparatory phase where the ideas of an incubator emerged and the conditions for the workshops were set. Phase two: a series of three design workshops at Medea/Malmö University

69 led by Living Lab the Neighbourhood. Phase three: the preparation and writing of a decision document for the politicians that took place at the municipality’s Trade and Industry Agency. Phase four: the application to the European Union’s Structural Funds written by Uppstart Malmö and the implementation of the incubator as Tillväxt Malmö.

Phase One: The Idea of an Incubator Emerges

Initiated by Bjarne Stenquist, the discussions regarding an incubator for social innovation started within the municipality in the autumn 2010. The idea of the incubator was discussed in parallel with, and connected to, the idea of Innovation forums, Stenquist told me when I interviewed him in 2012:

When I was thinking about how the Area Programmes could be developed I introduced the idea of an incubator for social innovation. It was based much on inspiration from Denokinn and the Social Innovation Park (in Bilbao). (Stenquist 2012)

The conversations at the municipality involved Stenquist and seni- or civil servants from the City Office and the Trade and Industry Agency. A discussion arose about the establishment of a “Research, Development and Demonstration” council, which would include the building of Innovation forums. Stenquist wanted to involve Medea and the living labs in these discussions as he wished to turn the city’s research and development work towards a more design oriented work. Therefore, in October 2010, he approached Pelle Ehn, coordinator of Malmö Living Labs, with an invitation to involve us in this work. This was the starting point for our formal involvement in the processes regarding both the Incubator and the Innovation forums. Although, in the beginning, the invitation concerned the Innovation forums, the focus would soon be on the Incubator. In December 2010, the discussions led to the suggestion that Stenquist and a consultant should lead a six-month-long pre-study on the idea of an Incubator for social innovation. The pre-study should include a study trip to Bilbao and visits to Denokinn and Social Innovation Park. After a delegation from Malmö returned

70 from Bilbao, we were invited to pitch our ideas regarding a process for exploring the concept of a incubator for social innovation to a group responsible for trade and industry and economic growth which consisted of department managers from the City Office and the Trade and Industry Agency. Also invited to this pitch was Uppstart Malmö, an new organization that connected investors with local companies, Lars Jannick Johansen, a Danish consultant focusing on social entrepreneurship and social economy, a location consultant company, and Swedish Television. Swedish Television was invited because there was an idea about a TV series and a competition to create public awareness and increase participation in the work of the Area Programmes and the incubator. This meeting led to a commission for Medea to run a series of three workshops to explore what an incubator for social innovation could be. But before going into the workshop process, I will briefly review the input from Lars Jannick Johansen. This is important because both the incubator process and the Innovation forums process would be affected by lack of knowledge and understanding from politicians and central civil servants regarding important concepts like social entrepreneurship and social innovation. But there has not been any lack of access to information or people with knowledge about these concepts if one wanted to learn more. Initially, Lars Jannick Johansen provided this input through a memorandum to Stenquist in January, 2011. Before starting his own strategic advisory company, The Social Capital Fund, Jannick Johansen had been the director of the Danish think tank, Mandag Morgen where, among other things, he worked with issues regarding welfare entrepreneurship and innovation, served as development director for Index: Design to Improve Life (the world’s biggest design prize) and board member of The Danish Centre for Social Economy. In his recommendations, Jannick Johansen talks less about a traditional incubator focused on input, and more about a coherent infrastructure, a system of actors and initiatives with various perspectives for social innovation to reach systemic impact. I would argue that the reports from the incubator and Innovation forum processes both sketch the contours and elements of such a network and infrastructure for social innovation. At the end of 2010, the conversations and situation at the City Office changed. Stenquist had to focus on leading the Area Program-

71 mes and the responsibility for the incubator process was handed over to a senior civil servant at the Trade and Industry Agency. At this time, the idea of Uppstart Malmö—a group of local entrepreneurs and investors who wanted to tackle social exclusion by supporting local companies in growing and employing more people—was presented to the working group at the City Office. A local entrepreneur and philanthropist, and a former politician who had become a social entrepreneur, initiated Uppstart Malmö. This initiative was welcomed within the municipality, as they needed this kind of engagement from the business sector. Stenquist also supported it.

Phase Two: The Workshop Process at Medea

Medea and Living Lab the Neighbourhood (Pelle Ehn, Anders Emil- son, Per-Anders Hillgren, and Anna Seravalli) got the commission to conduct three design workshops to elaborate on how the incubator could be structured as well as how its main features and support functions should be designed to be able to support new initiatives in the city. We saw this as an opportunity to work with the design approaches that Ehn and Hillgren had been exploring and developing for a long time, but now in a new context and scale. Before, they had applied Participatory Design in workplaces, then moved into working with associations and small companies in neighbourhoods, and now approaching the scale of the city and the interaction between citizens and the municipality. We thought that the concept of “infrastructuring” (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010) would be appropriate to mobilize diverse stakeholders and competences that could participate in the co-design process. We also wanted to emphasize the democratic aspect that always has been at the core of Participatory Design. The question of who should have a say in this process and to bring in weaker voices from the margins was crucial. Although this specific case started with the pitch meeting at the City Office when Hillgren and I discussed a potential collaboration around the incubator with a group of municipality directors, some crucial design work was conducted long before that which made it easier for us to mobilize relevant competences and stakeholders into the workshop process. As described earlier, our basic strategy when we engage in

72 design research is to go beyond the well-defined design project, with pre-defined stakeholders, timelines, and project goals. However, in this case, we aimed for a process of “infrastructuring,” focusing on building long-term relationships with diverse stakeholders who possess complementary competences. In this process, we elaborate on how new opportunities for design interventions emerge, depending on matchmaking between the different stakeholders’ interests and resources (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010). Ha- ving had this infrastructuring process going on for some years before the incubator discussion started meant that we, in different ways, had been engaged with various NGOs, social innovators, small companies, and civil servants in the city. This involvement helped us get a sense of their capabilities, as well as building mutual trust. All these actors made up a network of potential participants in various design processes. When choosing who to invite to the workshops, our strategy was to start with some local initiatives consisting of associations or small companies that could act as potential social innovators and users of services that the future incubator could provide. Below follows short descriptions of each initiative. These descriptions build on the report “Inkubatorn finns därute!” (The Incubator is Out There!) (Ehn et al. 2011) and includes some reflections from the workshops.

Herrgårds Kvinnoförening Herrgårds Kvinnoförening (HKF), is a women’s association which started in 2000 and consists of immigrant women mainly from Af- ghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Bosnia. Herrgårds refer to the city district Herrgården in Malmö, which is also part of the Area Programmes. HKF have more than three hundred members and a core group of about eight women. Their activities include textile craft and cooking as well as public arrangements concerning health and security. With the support of Living Lab the Neighbourhood, HKF have been exploring whether or not they could turn some of their activities into services and create a cooperative business. They have begun to offer catering services on a small scale and tried to provide services to lone refugee children who have come to Sweden from the women’s home countries. The activities of HKF are valuable for the personal development

73 of the women, for facilitating cultural integration, and for providing responses to many tough social issues. But the values that they create are hard to quantify within existing measures, and as a consequence, it is hard to develop their activities to a more professional level. The case of HKF makes explicit issues regarding how value is created and measured in social innovation: how can these values become concrete and tangible? Other issues involve how they can create trust with actors such as the municipality or businesses that could help them develop their activities or give them access to a safe place to experiment with various possibilities. In their case, it also becomes evident that social innovation may take time to develop. As I write this, HKF is still struggling in shared localities in Herrgården.

Barn i Stan Barn i Stan (Children in the City) was a project in the Malmö district of Seved, also part of the Area Programmes, that was initiated and run by the Somali association Hidde Iyo Dhaqan between 2008 and 2011. Hidde Iyo Dhaqan have around two hundred and fifty members and their activities focus on children and youth. One of their goals is to support the integration of Somali immigrants into Swedish society. One of their activities is to use storytelling and urban gardening to create contact between immigrant children and Swedish seniors so that they can improve the local environment together. Through connecting people, they have improved the sense of security and trust in the area. The initiative has provided the children with new role models and created a safe space where the children can be themselves away from the troublemakers in the area. This safe zone can successively be expanded, for example, through the urban gardens, so that the inhabitants can take back the area from the troublemakers. The project has also led to increased contact between the inhabitants and homeowners that, in turn, has led to an increase in property and apartment values. The project has been considered very successful. But one challenge mentioned during the workshops was how, when the project was finished, they could fund future activities and how similar initiatives can be sustainable from a long-term perspective. The success of Barn i Stan raises questions about possibilities to develop and grow: how

74 can similar initiatives and social innovation be scaled up and spread without losing fundamental qualities? Which models could be used? What role can the creators of the project have in spreading knowledge and ideas? Can they act as coaches and share their experiences? Today, the project is run by a social company called Odla i Stan (Grow in the City) which has economic support by Tillväxt Malmö. Neither Hidde Iyo Dhaqan, nor their project leader is involved any longer, but would Odla i Stan have existed at all without their pioneering work? At the end of 2014, Hidde Iyo Dhaqan and their project leader launched a new project regarding bee and insect keeping where “individuals with impairment develop a new labor market and children develop new pedagogical methods and materials.” This project addresses sustainability from all aspects and shows the importance of civil society as initiators of projects which can later grow and spread. Therefore, it is remarkable that support to the third sector and projects in an initial stage will disappear from the functions of the social incubator in its implemented form as Tillväxt Malmö. I will come back to this in the analysis.

Miljonprocessen Miljonprocessen was, at the time, a newly started collaboration between the youth organization Rörelsen Gatans Röst och Ansikte, RGRA, (The Voice and Face of the Street) and the interaction design company, Do-Fi. Miljonprocessen fosters the potential among the inhabitants of the “miljonprogramområden” (areas named after a housing programme in the 1960s and 1970s aimed at building one million apartments) and arranges events where they combine pedagogy and intercultural competence with innovative technical solutions, all with the aim of giving youth new ways of expressing themselves. For many years, RGRA have been engaging youth in global and national issues such as human rights and identity. They work mainly with youth living in suburbs or “miljonprogram- områden” to create more tools for participation where one, in accordance with tradition or because of social circumstances, does not engage in society’s democratic or formal processes. RGRA have much intercultural competence and mix thematic pedagogy with social work, hip-hop, media, dance, groups of boys and girls, etc., to be able to engage the youth and let them channel their thoughts and

75 feelings to the rest of society. Do-Fi has many years of experience in working with engaging technology in urban spaces through the mobile technology or the web. Some examples of their work include public sound systems that can be controled with a mobile phone or digital graffiti walls and tools for the visually impaired. Miljonprocessen was one of the initiatives that came the closest to using the support of a traditional incubator. The combination of intercultural competence and technical solutions showed much potential for engaging young people in issues of democracy. At the same time, many social innovators are vulnerable and have their ideas stolen. Therefore, these initiatives were in need of safe spaces where they could feel secure and a sense of trust when implementing their ideas. Miljonprocessen no longer exists.

Aluma Aluma was a monthly street magazine sold by the homeless. The sellers bought the magazines for twenty kronor and then sold them for forty kronor, keeping the difference. The initiative had many advantages; for example, it provided individuals who were both homeless and unemployed with an income so that they, in the long term, would be able to get a home of their own. The seller took responsibility, which increased the person’s self-esteem and it would give them access to a social network of other sellers whereby they could support each other. The homeless person also was able to have contact with the public as the magazine worked as a conversation starter. In this way, the public’s view of homelessness was changed, and vice versa. Further, it can be argued that having access to an income decreases criminality, vandalism, and drug abuse. Aluma shut down its organization in 2012.

Gnistan and Kaninhotellet Gnistan (The Spark) is an after-school recreation center that contains a “rabbit hotel” (Kaninhotellet) where kids can engage in keeping animals and learning about sustainability. The aim is to provide a space for kids so that the parents can take evening classes. The kids in the area live in small apartments and do not have the opportunity to have pets at home. Instead, they can come to Kaninhotellet and

76 play and take care of the animals. The rabbits also created social conditions for being together and the kids share responsibilities and work. Through Kaninhotellet, the kids learn about sustainability as they grow their own carrots and salad in a garden. The droppings from the cages are used as fertilizer and the newborn baby rabbits are sold to pet shops. Other activities that are arranged by Gnistan are help with homework, dance courses, table tennis, and parents groups. Gnistan also provides a link to studies and the labor market. In this way, it supports integration in the area. The activities were started by a resident in the area who saw the need for recreation activities in the evening so that parents could go to evening courses and learn Swedish. After a period of voluntary work and study circles, they received support by the State Inheritance Fund, MKB and the municipality. Today, the activities have turned in a permanent public service within the municipality.

Feed’us Feed’us was a newly started association in the area of Seved, Malmö, that consisted of youth with experiences of life on the street who wanted to help other youths caught in a circle of crime, drugs, and vandalism. Feed’us wanted to show other youths that they are able to reach a brighter future and to do something positive with their lives. The idea of Feed’us was to take care of things that are considered to be worthless in Sweden, like old bikes, computers, and furniture which are thrown away in containers or put out on the street; the youths would renovate them and send them to countries were there is a need for such things. Through creating a meeting place where youth could meet and renovate old things, they accom- plished something valuable together and contributed to society. At the time, they had thirty members from the ages of ten to twenty- five, and the board consisted of six persons. They had also a large network of young people in Malmö and, as the members had experiences of the life on the street, they could reach out to youth that the authorities had difficulties reaching. Feed’us aimed at not only creating social change in Malmö, but also in developing countries. Feed’us had great potential but needed support to develop. Today, Feed’us no longer exists.

77 A Mix of Perspectives, Frames, Competences, Practices, and Sectors

All these stakeholders have been taking initiatives and, in different ways, struggled to achieve social change in their local environments. Therefore, we decided to set up a significant part of the workshop process around their everyday practices, capabilities, and needs. As a complement, we also recruited fellow research colleagues from Urban Studies, people from organizations supporting social entre- preneurial initiatives, and traditional business developers as well as civil servants representing various municipal departments. We had worked with some of these civil servants before, and Stenquist provided us with the names of important municipal directors who we also invited. Stenquist also stressed the importance of inviting one of the founders of Uppstart Malmö, which we did. All together, the workshop participants consisted of around forty actors who represented a huge resource of complementary competences and perspectives. As the idea of crossing disciplines, competences, and sectors is important here, I will give a short description and categorization of the participants. However, it is important for me to stress that many participants had double or triple identities and operated in the borderlands between categorizations and not all were always present at the workshops. During the workshops, Stenquist would act as initiator of the inquiry of what a social incubator could be, and the civil servant now responsible for the incubator process joined him. Meanwhile, from the municipality, civil servants from the Environmental Department, the administration of Södra Innerstaden, and the coordinators from each Area Programme complemented them. The third sector was represented by these organizations: Coom- panion (advisors of cooperative businesses), the Swedish Red Cross, Skåne Stadsmission (Skane City Mission), Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap (advising public entrepreneurs), Glokala Folkhög- skolan (a folk high school and strong actor regarding social innovation and entrepreneurship in Malmö. Glokala Folkhögskolan may also be seen as a center for discussion and activities regarding transition in Malmö because a more formal organization did not exist at that time).

78 Representatives of social enterprises were Yalla Trappan (who provide work for immigrant women in three commercial branches: café and catering, cleaning and conference service, and sewing and design) and Righteous Fashion (a sustainable fashion company). Working more in the borderland between the third and private sector were: Rhefab Management (consulting in the borderland of trade and industry, third sector, and academia), DoDream (then a start up platform for connecting ideas with economic resources and development skills), Selfmade (an incubator for people with ideas whether commercial, nonprofit, or cultural), Artcom (idea and concept development consultant), the Hunger Project (organization fighting poverty through developing micro-entrepreneurship). Closer to trade and industry were the business developers from Medea/Malmö University and Media Evolution (a cluster of media companies and organizations). The closest representative to the local trade and industry was the representative of Uppstart Malmö who took part for no more than fifteen minutes. Representing academia was the Living Lab team: Pelle Ehn, Per-Anders Hillgren, Anna Seravalli, and Anders Emilson. Collea- gues from Urban Studies at Malmö University and the then newly started Forum for Social Innovation Sweden complemented us. Before the first workshop, the six invited initiatives were asked to prepare a presentation about themselves based on the following questions:

• What is the core of your activity, and what can you offer society? • What possibilities have you discovered during your work? • What kind of difficulties have you come across? How did you solve them? • How is your network set up? • What is your vision, and where do you want to be in five years time? • What kind of support do you need?

79 Figure 2. The participants of the design thing gather in the first workshop. Revisiting the Workshops: Conversations about Possible Social Incubators

The quotes from the workshops are based on a video recording and translated by me. All participants are anonymous except Stenquist who is a main character and has given his permission.

Workshop One: March 4, 2011 The aim of the first workshop was to do a mapping of social innovation in Malmö based on presentations from the six invited initiatives. The workshop started with some words from Stenquist on the background to, and purpose of, the workshops, and why an incubator is even needed. Stenquist began by stating that if you are an entrepreneur within technology or new media then many support

80 structures like Malmö Incubator (MINC) and investors are available; however, places where entrepreneurs with a “perspective on societal challenges” can turn to for support are hard to find. No structure currently exists that can take care of, encourage, develop, and put in the right context people’s ideas. Furthermore, the lack of meeting places is a challenge for the many and different actors that address great societal challenges in areas such as jobs, health, security, and education. Stenquist asked, “Where can we gather different actors and generate ideas and test which ideas work and then put them into action, scale them, and spread them?” These processes exist within trade and industry for developing new products, but not for the societal challenges that Malmö faces. Stenquist then said that there was now a dialogue within the municipality about how to create a support structure for societal challenges, and this has lead to the idea of an incubator for social innovation. Currently, an internal working group exists which needs to be complemented by external actors. “One of the most important actors in the initial work is Uppstart Malmö,” said Stenquist, and he continued:

Now one begins to focus on the entrepreneurship in these vulnerable areas. One can say that what Uppstart Malmö does is to create a kind of rudimentary incubator and there is a discussion going on about how to create a larger and more sustainable structure where the city’s resources are also included. But, this structure and this whole concept cannot be created if only a few in the city sit down and try to come up with good ideas. We must open up the process and involve many actors.

Stenquist said that the workshops are a way to widen the discussions and get many more viewpoints and ideas. He said this mirrors a core aspect of social innovation to do things with people and not for them: “solutions must come from the people.” This should also be a primary principle for how the incubator should work. After Stenquist’s speech, Pelle Ehn continued the introduction of the workshops by stating that Medea’s commission from the City of Malmö was to widen the discussion of what an incubator could be, but also to make it more concrete. Then he introduced the purpose of the first workshop—to explore the different initiatives in the city

81 that could be the driving force behind an incubator, but also what an incubator could offer to support these kinds of initiatives in developing and growing. Ehn ends his introduction and brief descriptions of the following workshops with stating that we, “hope that maybe, as time goes by, this could take the shape of a more public discussion on what an social incubator in Malmö could be.” Following on Ehn’s introduction, Per-Anders Hillgren presented the programme for the first workshop and how we should work. After this, one of the local coordinators for the Area Programmes asked about the purpose of the workshops. She did not understand the link between the presentation of the six local initiatives and the next step that should be generating ideas about how the incubator could be organized and function. Hillgren replied that the experiences from the local initiatives, along with other international examples, will become “design material” to work with. This generated a new question from another coordinator of the Area Programmes who asked what “design material” means. The reply from Hillgren was, “It simply means all possibilities these actors have seen, problems they have experienced, everything that could be relevant in trying to create a new incubator.” Questions like these show that these kinds of processes are not easy and, even before we had started, the workshop held a kind of “back talk” regarding the understanding of the language and way designers work. Interestingly, both these civil servants had been working with us before; therefore, the questions could be interpreted not only as a lack of understanding, but also as more as an expression of mistrust and unease with a situation that they may find challenging to their own practice and position. In the first workshop, the six initiatives made presentations of themselves and their various experiences and issues. Thereafter, the gathered participants divided into smaller groups and started mapping and discussing the challenges and opportunities of the cases presented. They tried to identify issues that the future incubator would be able to deal with. In this process, they used a modified version of the “business model canvas,” a kind of hybrid between business modelling and a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). The first initiative was Gnistan and Kaninhotellet, which were presented by their founder. She told us that she had been working

82 as a child minder at a preschool but had also been doing voluntary work, and she developed the idea about Gnistan after work. Even if the activities of Gnistan were aimed at children, the main target was the parents. She wanted to get the parents “out of their homes, the unemployment shall decrease, dependency on social welfare shall decrease, more should reach the labour market.” With this aim, Gnistan was founded in 1999 in cooperation with Unga Örnar an association working for children’s rights which was the head of the project. In 2003, the municipality took over the project, and in 2007, Kaninhotellet was developed together with pedagogy for eco- cycle processes. In 2002, they received an environmental prize, and in 2010, the whole city district of Augustenborg received a prize for solidarity and democracy which was “confirmation that we were doing something valuable.” When addressing the questions we had sent her, the founder brought up the subject of “real enthusiasts.” She continued, “Real enthusiasts can not be alone all the time; they burn out, and one has to have more people.” This subject would recur during the workshops. Among the difficulties during the years, she mentioned working a lot with stand-in personnel. Among the solutions, she mentioned her network consisted of people from the Unemployment Agency, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, and Malmö University, “I can’t live without my network.” Regarding the future, she mentioned working with sustainable development: “If you live in Augustenborg, you can’t work with anything else” to get more people into work and to increase grades in schools. Her dream is to have a Gnistan and Kaninhotell in every housing area of Malmö. Next to present themselves was Feed’us. They wanted to address youth on the street who are stuck in a vicious circle and help them to become role models. “It’s only us that can reach these youths, we are youths ourselves. The municipality and the police can’t reach them”, one representative told. Most crime is committed by youths, “and we were a part of them.” That is one reason why Feed’us think that those who have “authority and power” should support them. It all started when an old man approached them on the street. He said, “I have seen you doing stuff and I think you should change the path you are on because I have been there myself.” They began to respect the old man’s suggestions and befriended him: “He was a bit like a

83 granddad to us.” “He said that we should go to the municipality. There has to be someone there that can help us to recycle stuff.” But they thought that if they went to the municipality, it would be trouble, “We and the authorities, we’re like enemies.” The old man saw that they did not act upon his suggestion and said, “Then I will not talk to you again.” They thought it would be a shame to break their contact with “granddad” for such a small thing, so they went to the municipality and were surprised by the support they got. They were given a supervisor and “she guided us onto a much better path.” Regarding the future, they want to take other youths to developing countries in order for them to realize how good they have it here. Following Feed’us was Miljonprocessen. They began to talk about the youth organization, RGRA, which is one of Malmö’s most lively youth movements: “Our brand is very strong in both Malmö and in the rest of Sweden. We have, in principle, been able to change a lot of discourses through that, the view of youth, of pedagogy, and the view of alternative social work. The difficulties are that we feel that it is very nice be representatives, but the power, in the form of money, seldom comes into our hands. It goes to others. Some- times our activities are copied but without realizing that this kind of activity has to live freely, and then cooperate with civil society, the public, and trade and industry.” They said that change cannot be institutionalized, it needs to be free and the best meeting places are informal and spontaneous. They also told us about Do-Fi and that their interactive installations had been appreciated by youths. The installations could be a way to bring in money to the initiative. After that, they told us about their joint project and that Miljonpro- cessen works as a “streetlab” where youth can develop their ideas and meet with civil servants and people from trade and industry. Miljon- processen aims toward an active citizenship. Herrgårds Kvinnoförening was next. The representative said that by working with the university, they had been able to create new contacts and present themselves. “We had an internal network, but not an external one. Today we have that.” She said that one thing that makes it difficult to develop the organization is that the women they work with have different kinds of problems and backgrounds and are not one homogeneous target group with one type of pro-

84 blem. She also explained how a well known furniture company, who needed ideas regarding patterns and colours, had contacted them. Then they thought that they would get support, but it did not go well: “They just came, took photos, and left.” Their vision is to have five years of funding in order for the women to educate themselves and improve their self-esteem. Aluma was presented by one of the staff who explained, “The large profit from Aluma for the sellers is not the money, that comes second, but rather the community with other homeless, that they become a collective; it is easier to pursue an issue then, like saying, ‘We need this.’ But also this comes by way of contact with the public.” She also meant that they save a lot of money for society as the sellers do not commit crimes, and they use less drugs. She also told us about how they had been helped by the tax authorities and what all the initiatives at the workshops had in common was that they did not fit into pre-established pigeonholes. Barn i Stan was presented by their project leader. He stated that their main activity was to change public space and that they had created an evident change in a housing area. “Seved is well known all the way to Fox News. But I can tell you that these “dead dangerous” youths will approach you in the summertime and ask … “Can I taste a strawberry?” When it comes to needs, he feels that they need people who are free and that have a salary to work with the project over longer periods of time. “If you are someone who works in economy or recruitment, think that it takes at least four years, prefera- bly six years, for there to be any outcome.” They also wanted to be trusted to deliver results and that what they do works: “One does not have to prove everything to the point of absurdity.” After the presentations of the initiatives, the participants worked with mapping their challenges and opportunities while the initiatives circulated between the groups. The day ended with a summary of the discussions from each group. Per-Anders Hillgren began by stating that all the initiatives had in common the risk of “falling between categories,” as they all simultaneously create different types of values and are difficult to categorize. They had also discussed attitudes; that one must dare to fail. Moreover, the need to find a sense of security was a common attribute, so the actors could dare to fail or dare to offer their ideas

85 without having them stolen. They also discussed time: Herrgårds Kvinnoförening had been working for eleven years to become what they are today, not because they are ineffective, but because it takes time to build self-esteem and self-confidence. There are no quick fixes. Another question regarding time was how to get rid of time- limited projects, and how to create long-term sustainability that is not based on project means. The group also discussed the concept Social Return On Invest- ment (SROI) as a tool to show how these actors save society money. “Because these women come a little bit closer to society, these youth commit less crime, and these homeless people do not drink as much.” But these small actors do not have the knowledge or resources to do this kind of analysis. They need help with learning new economic models. Pelle Ehn reported the next group’s discussion. They had also discussed SROI and how one proves what kind of value one produces. The value may not be social or economic, but rather, education. They also discussed dignity for those who run an activity. “Not only value for someone else, for the customer, for the kids, but also for those who run the activity themselves.” They discussed the relation between “real enthusiast” and civil servants: “What happens when the good civil servant meets the “real enthusiast” and they compete over the same area?” They also discussed that instead of growing and spreading an initiative, sometimes it is reasonable that an initiative becomes a societal institution, like in the case of Gnistan (historically, this could be compared with the association Mjölkdroppen (The Milk Drip) which later became public childcare centers). “What do such models look like, wherein one goes from something driven by real enthusiasts to becoming something that is a legitimate part of public administration?” They also discussed trust, and how one can access the system if one does not know the codes and language. In such cases, it is important to document well and be able to show what one has achieved. I presented the third group’s discussion. Under the topic of critical issues we had discussed questions like trust, structures—where do the odd ideas fit in?—and as with the other groups, issues regarding socio-economic values and the need of support with handling new models like SROI. As threats, we discussed the risk of getting ideas

86 stolen and lack of trust between different actors. There is also a need of reducing vulnerability and isolation, plus the risk that associations and third sector actors may lose their critical and alternative roles if they should operate more like a business or a public service. Further, there is a risk for too much dependency on single individuals, either as “real enthusiasts” that risk burnout or when you meet the right person when you seek advice or help from the municipality. When discussing value creation, we talked mostly about “soft” values such as community, sense of security, self-esteem, and development of competences. We also talked about value-based work and solutions to tough problems. Regarding possibilities, there is a need to reclaim the initiative and responsibility as citizens to develop new solutions and drive new activities. It is also important to not lose the role for creating public opinion when working in a more mainstream way.

Workshop Two: March 18, 2011 In the second workshop, the participants continued working with the experiences and challenges that emerged during the first workshop, but were now focused on identifying the different support functions of the incubator. The participants were divided into three groups, seated around a table, and then discussed two of the initiatives. The design material on the table consisted of cardboard signs with short descriptions of each initiative and quotes of values created by the initiative identified at the previous workshop. On other cardboard signs, there were quotes with different dilemmas, also identified at the previous workshop. On the table were also post-it notes on which the participants could write the resources needed on the green ones and different ideas on the yellow ones. The groups were instructed to discuss ideas and the resources needed to solve four dilemmas for each initiative. I will now review the discussions based on a video recording which the photographer had circulated between the tables. I will then restate each group’s conclusions as this was the final event of the workshop. The video starts at Table Three who discussed Barn i Stan and Herrgårds Kvinnoförening (HKF). I was in charge at this table, and we began with Herrgårds Kvinnoförening. A discussion started about whether or not HKF wanted to start a commercial bu-

87 siness. The HKF representative replied that they began to consider starting a business when visitors asked them if they could buy the Persian carpets that they were making and repairing: “Then we realized….a-ha! There are a lot of things that the women are able to do without realizing it.” Then they started to think about cooking for lone refugee children who were getting expensive and unfamiliar food from another city. The question if one needed an approved kitchen for this was then raised. One participant said it is more on an individual basis that one needs knowledge about hygiene and a lot of papers to fill in. “There, one may need help from the incubator to support the individual,” in order to not get stuck in administra- tive tasks. This started a discussion about laws and regulations and the need for knowledge about how society works, and also the need for facilitators and door openers. The HKF representative believes that the society had tried many things to bring the women out into society—into work, into Swedish language courses, or into school— but they had failed. After a while, the women would be back at home again. “But we have been able to create trust between us and the families. They still live in collectives, and the group pressure is large. Therefore, we must create trust. It has already been ten years. Today, they can come to us and work without the men chasing them back. Now, it is time for the second phase where they can come out and earn money. They shall learn how to contribute,” said the representative. The video is moved to Table One, where Gnistan/Kaninhotellet and Aluma were discussed. Per-Anders Hillgren led the discussion. The Aluma representative brought in the discussion on the need to talk about money and not be afraid of it undermining one’s activities. A civil servant argued for the need for financing which creates long-term security and that an incubator should be able to provide financial means without “putting it into a box as a certain kind of activity.” The Aluma representative stressed the importance of a middle-man that distributes means, otherwise one could be afraid of “biting the hand that feeds you” and restrain oneself as moulder of public opinion. One of the Area Programme coordinators continued on that line. He lacked the means that could be used to quickly support someone with an idea for social innovation. They discussed what the ideal support for an initiative like

88 Gnistan would look like. The Gnistan representative said that homeowners like Malmö Kommunala Bostadbolag (MKB) could take responsibility for the premises. She said that she felt lonely, but did not have anything to lose and had built a network with, for example, The Swedish Public Employment Service and The Swedish Social Insurance Agency. She said it helped that she never gave up her idea, even when shutting them down due to lack of money was under discussion. One civil servant felt that in being independent, there is also freedom. Then one can make the contacts that are needed for the activities without the involvement of any bosses and feelings of disloyalty. But when you work within the municipality, many laws and routines must be considered. The representative of the women’s cooperative, Yalla Trappan, said that the municipality could be supportive in many different ways depending on the activity, but if they and others like them only support private entrepreneurs, they will lose the social aspect. There is a need for knowledge within the private and public sector about the existence of the third sector that is also very strong and which historically has survived catastrophes. She mentioned the “Agreement” between the public and third sector, but too many laws and regulations make people insecure and anxious. She used Yalla Trappan, which is run by women who have never had a job, as an example. “If one should turn Yalla Trappan into a public institution, then it is not going to be the women who run it anymore. Then you lose the initiative and participation.” The video then moves to Table Two, where Miljonprocessen and Feed’us were discussed. Here the group also discussed the different sectors’ prerequisites and the need for knowledge about each other. There is a need for changing structures, for example, regarding associations where the municipality structures build on how things functioned long ago. One of the Area Programme’s coordinators said that there is the need for a forum where those in power, like politicians, could meet and make decisions about issues such as these. It is not only about associations, but also about new types of engagement: “If you are not a formal association, you will not be taken seriously.” One of the Miljonprocessen representatives told the others about his experiences from traditional incubators. “I have been at Ideon

89 and MINC and have the feeling that they depart from the notion that everything should be quantitative, you create a product that is sold by the millions. But in the case of Feed’us, you have to think in another way. Usually, you go to a venture capitalist and get funding for what you do. But in the case of Feed’us and similar cases, it is more a model like Aluma that is needed.” Pelle Ehn made a summary of the discussions so far: there is a need for debate, and politicians need to make decisions about changed prerequisites. Miljonprocessen said that they wanted to be a part of the development of the incubator. A Miljonprocessen representative continued on that line by wondering what actors would be in the incubator. Some initiatives are dependent on grants and others will earn their own money. Miljonprocessen is both. He explained that he had been to the Social capital (Socap) conference and said, “RGRA did certainly not fit there because you have to earn cash, but Miljonprocessen fits fine.” He meant that there are social innovators like RGRA and Feed’us, where there is nothing with which they can earn money. He asked Stenquist what they think about actors. Stenquist replied that the discussions about an incubator started because there are many initiatives that create value for society but, with these, you do not simply put in a business model, get funds, develop it in eighteen months and then launch it on the market. The city lacks a coherent platform that could support such initiatives. Pelle Ehn asked what kinds of other models there are? The Artcom representative felt that it was “our role as actors in society to educate the politicians on how to evaluate,” meaning that the contribution from Feed’us is “gigantic” and that the municipality could make public procurements where one pitches ideas. A civil servant felt that one had to have another approach in the municipality and change routines, “but to change routines is the hardest thing to do. One does what one is used to doing.” The Miljonprocessen representative felt that the different sectors lacked knowledge about each other: “There is a lack of knowledge about what small actors is capable of and therefore the big actors and institutions get all funding.” Stenquist brought up the issue of power and control. The municipality is used to generating ideas and providing solutions: “We are the experts.” He feels this has to change, and the municipality must connect with other actors and bring in a wider

90 spectrum of ideas. “What we are doing now is building a platform for such a dialogue. Both politicians and civil servants have to turn their whole way of thinking around. We need to further discuss how to create these forums. This forum is a first attempt, but it has to happen so much more.” One member of Feed’us wondered how much of what was discussed actually reaches the politicians who make the decisions: “We don’t think they are doing their job. They say that they would support associations. Then nothing happens. You go there with a good idea that one want to develop or someone want to change his or her life, then nothing happens. Is there not one who is in charge that listens to all those ideas and can do something good about it?” The Miljonprocessen representative continued this argument and said that he was tired of being a “referee” without being allowed to participate later. In reply to this, Stenquist said: ”We don’t sit here to find a quick fix but to build some sort of entry to the municipal system together with other actors, not least, the private and third sectors. We must create some kind of structure for how we jointly develop ideas like this. We don’t have that today. That is why you and Feed’us can run around in the system without any plan or order at all. The feedback we receive now goes directly into the plans for an incubator for social innovation. How the hell should that one look like so that we actually can do something for you?” The representative from Glokala Folkhögskolan made a summary: “It feels like we agree in the discussion, that if we would have a social incubator, then we as actors, must be the owners and the municipality has to let go of power. We need to have leading roles and run it.” Stenquist: “We will try to go in that direction.” The discussion above is crucial. It deals with the importance of the incubator being aimed at various actors and initiatives, both for profit and nonprofit, and that it deals with the need of shaping, building, and owning the incubator in a collaborative way. It also deals with the necessity for spreading knowledge about social innovation across the sectors and across hierarchies. Also, decision makers and politicians need to be aware of the kind of discussions and mutual learning that took part during the workshops. But as we will see, a

91 continuation of the mutual and collaborative exploration that began during the workshops would not take place. Instead, the municipality and the politicians would hand over the power and ownership to trade and industry and the actor, Uppstart Malmö, that did not take part in the workshops. Regarding the role of trade and industry, the discussion at Ta- ble Two was brought in to this topic by the business developer at Medea. He felt that the discussion was too focused on the role of the municipality, but other actors are also involved: “Where are the companies? The region?” He said that within trade and industry, many interest group organizations drive discussions and drive the innovation system. There is a need for similar interest organizations and meeting places for social issues as well. He felt that an incubator could arrange monthly lectures to develop knowledge about social innovation. The Artcom representative thought that these functions already existed, but the need for a common knowledge platform remains. This discussion made explicit the lack of insight that an actor from one sector has regarding what is going on in other sectors. Stenquist then turned to Feed’us and asked if they had met Uppstart Malmö. They had not. This made the absence of Uppstart Malmö explicitly problematic. It would have been most advantageous to have had them present to be able to take part in discussions such as this and also be able to discuss if they were the right actor to support Feed’us at this phase or not. Back at Table Three, the group discussed the importance of public debate and that not all social innovation have to come in the form of companies; some need to be associations. The representative from Barn i Stan states, “I think that parts could be self-supportive in the beginning and generate a profit, partly for development, but also spill over onto the social part. I think it is wise to keep the associations with their onsets. One has to create constellations with different juridical persons.” One researcher from urban studies said that this kind of constellation is very common in the social sector: “Many have both a joint-stock company, an economic association, or a nonprofit association.” The business developer from Media Evolution said that many of the initiatives already acted as incubators: “Herrgårds Kvinnofören- ing is an incubator already today. What is missing in such an incu-

92 bator? Business concepts, maybe. There are a lot of incubators out there. You are also an incubator (turning to the Barn i Stan representative). We have a number of incubators that need to be clustered together in some way. It is not an incubator that we create because they are already out there. What kind of help do they need? Do they need help that is physical out there? Or do they need someone who travels around? Maybe they need to meet sometimes?” It is at this moment that the Media Evolution business developer create the generative metaphor “the incubator is out there” which becomes crucial for the rest of the process. The Urban Studies researcher said that it is important for the third sector to be the owner, not the municipality: “There is a tendency that when the public sector is involved, they squeeze the whole thing to death by a huge engagement. It is the same thing with trade and industry. It is important that they participate, but not for the sake of their money, but because of their engagement and resources. I think the key is networks and knowledge exchange.” The workshop ended with a summary from each table and a general discussion. Table One discussed the importance of the name of the incubator: a name says a lot about the activities. It is also important that the three sectors are equal, that “the social economy, the municipality, and trade and industry have equal mandate.” It is also easy to view the municipality or trade and industry as the enemy, but the municipality and trade and industry need to gain knowledge about the third sector to be able to understand how to invest money, for example. It was suggested that the different sectors could gain knowledge about each other through exchang- ing roles or civil servants could practice as a real enthusiast and vice versa. The social economy is also diverse and there are different prerequisites for different projects; some are small-scale and short- term and need certain kinds of support, while others are long-term and may become a part of public services in the long run. It is also important to provide support with services that small organizations neither have the knowledge, nor the economy, to do themselves, for example, socioeconomic balancing of accounts or business plans. They also discussed the openness of the incubator if the competences needed were to be found inside the incubator or if it consisted of a larger network.

93 Table Two’s summary was presented by Pelle Ehn. He referred to a participant who requested the cardboard sign with the word “power” on it. The participant wanted the sign to reflect that resources need to be redistributed and actors need to change their behavior. He continued with asking: “Is this a social incubator that we sit in right now, with contacts being made between various actors?” During the group’s discussion, Miljonprocessen suggested that they could be one of the actors that shape the incubator in the next phase. It was also important to include social innovators with their competences and networks as part of the process development from the beginning. For example, Feed’us could act as a case through which one learned more about how the incubator should work. One participant said that it was important not to recreate what already existed. “Good thoughts, support and coaching. There is plenty of that already, no more of that, I think.” Instead, there is a need for challenging and developing structures for real, to change systems. She also felt that there is much knowledge missing and with that, many fears. ”We have to work on knowledge creation, one has to educate the system in thinking in new ways. We can not sit her here and then sulk because they don’t get it.” She meant that we should arrange workshops with politicians because they are the ones who can change the system. One civil servant felt that attitudes and routines steer the culture clashes that arise when different actors meet often, depending on routines. I started the summary of the discussion at Table Three. We discussed whether or not an incubator could be situated in an existing company or in an existing organization. The Media Evo- lution business developer developed this: “Many of the associations that gather a lot of people and ideas are a kind of incubator.” He meant that there are a lot of undeveloped ideas out there locally: “What is missing is not an incubator, but a uniting function for many incubators. We have a lot of names here. One is ‘clusterbator.’ We need someone who works in the center and coordina- tes this, like the kind of network meetings that we arrange today, support them with different types of developments of their activities.” He also considered the incubator to be more virtual: “An incubator used to be a physical place where you gather, but I don’t think that you can gather all these initiatives in one place, but

94 you can gather parts of them at certain moments. They are spread incubators as they contain ideas that in some cases could be commercial companies.” We also had discussed this as a “liaison centra,” where everything is coordinated so one knows where the knowledge one seeks can be found. The Barn i Stan representative developed this: “This should maybe not only be a way of spreading knowledge, but a strong creator of public debate that provides a united voice for what is happening in the different sectors.” One of the civil servants felt that the creation of public opinion is needed, but it should be spread, diverse, and conflicting, then we can get cross-fertilization. Everyone does not have to agree. One representative from the Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap did not agree on this; instead, he thought that there is an advantage in being united, otherwise one becomes fragmented. He used trade and industry that is also heterogeneous as an example, but has the Trade and Industry Agency working with everything from grass-cutting to nanotechnology: “But in our sector it is either the social welfare department, the leisure and recreation department, or the culture department, or wherever you end up.” He meant that this is a way to “divide and rule” as a way to gain control. Another civil servant agreed and said that if one wants to change heavy structures, it demands a unified and strong voice. The Red Cross representative emphasized that the City of Malmö gives trade and industry a lot of resources and a dedicated agency, which is something one could have in mind when discussing the incubator: “The social sector needs a strong infrastructure like the Trade and Industry Agency.” Pelle Ehn concluded the workshop with observing that there were parallel processes happening in which different competences meet, and this could perhaps lead to a proposal for how the incubator could work. For example, the organization Selfmade had offered Feed’us help in developing a business plan. The last word came from Per-Anders Hillgren, who announced that Uppstart Malmö should be present at the next workshop and give a short presentation about themselves because it would be interesting to think about what that initiative could mean in the context of an incubator for social innovation.

95 Figure 3. The design material at Workshop Three.

Workshop Three: April 1, 2011 During the third and last workshop, the participants created four scenarios of the incubator. The design material at each table consisted of a large sheet of cardboard and four boxes with different insights, issues, and quotes regarding the six initiatives that had been generated during the previous workshops. Various headlines were written on the boxes, such as “Incubator as…” and “Actors, relations, and networks.” Also at each table were assorted cardboard signs with the names of the initiatives, resources, and ideas that had come up in previous workshops like Inclustrator or People’s Move- ment 2.0, and also actors like Uppstart Malmö and DoDream. There were also post-it notes in green and yellow, and red dots that one could use to mark disagreement.

96 Four scenarios

Scenario one The first group had created a cone-shaped incubator. The entrance to the incubator was a free zone populated by many people working with different issues in society and whose job it was to identify what needed to be done or what someone wanted to do. Many ideas for projects in the free zone existed, but also a lot of incubators. “There are people who see potentials, we can think of them as intermediaries. They identify things and say ‘wow this is good. I have to tell this to the people who can develop it.’” Further down the cone, the idea approaches what the group calls “dressaged receivers” in the form of trade and industry and research and public authorities with established templates for how to work and who own the right to take action. “Here, much courage is needed to try different ways. One has to dare to listen and place different input on an equal footing. We also believe that cultural workers play a crucial role in this new game among decision makers.” It is not at all odd that the role of cultural workers was emphasized, or even glorified, in this particular group, as the group itself was dominated by such strong examples of them. During the presentation, those representing the “old fogeys” (trade and industry and the municipality), though also quite strong characters, sat quietly with their arms crossed. The Media Evolution representative claimed that they had consensus in the group and did not use any red dots to mark disagreement, yet, fifteen minutes later, he would find himself with a red dot on his forehead.

Scenario two The next group had been making much use of the design material at the table. They discussed how to judge initiatives, who has the right to make decisions regarding financing, and who will be allowed to participate. They introduced a concept they called “crowd judging,” inspired by examples from the UK (participatory budgeting) where the people who are gathered decide which projects will get funding. They discussed ways of financing and how different actors place different demands on quality control: “Different opportunities for different structures are also needed when one is distributing money.”

97 meaning that existing funding structures did not favor projects and creativity; for example, the European Social Fund demands that an organization be of a certain size and sort. The civil servant responsible for the incubator process suggested that it should be possible to seek funding through the incubator. All the various functions of the incubator were gathered together in the center in their scenario, and discussed the need for the mo- bility of knowledge; metaphorically, they talked about having all competence placed inside a caravan that could be driven to the place where the competence was most needed. In the center, one would have access to an office, perhaps even without cost. Spreading awareness about existing support organizations like the Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap and Coompanion is needed. The Coompanion representative said that they rarely have people with immigrant backgrounds ask them for advice, “They don’t know that we exist, and we don’t communicate in different languages. There are a lot of structures, but we do not reach out in a good way.” There should be cost-free access to knowledge about socio-economic accounts. According to the Coompanion representative, much knowledge about this is already available. Many social entrepreneurs, social businesses, and volunteer organizations could make use of gaining access to the knowledge that has already existed since the 1970s about how to calculate the effects of what one is doing. It is also important for the municipality and the region to start making public procurements based on social criteria. Regarding trust and the fear of having one’s ideas stolen, the Coompanion representative mentioned Hjärntrusten in Lund where equivalent companies that are not in competition with each other meet in a trust wherein they have professional secrecy and are forbidden to steal and make a profit out of each other’s ideas. The civil servant responsible for the incubator process then made a comment that is important to this whole process: ”An incubator like this should not be allowed to kill the engagement that is out there; instead, the incubator should complement and support the existing engagement. We need to stress that. The thought is not to muni- cipalize or institutionalize this innovation activity, but to support it. It is not the incubator that owns the initiative, but the initiative that

98 owns the incubator. It is really important that we hold this view.” The group continued with the role of the incubator as a creator of public opinion and a center where decisions-makers could get a better foundation for making wise decisions that could change structures. In the long term, this could hopefully lead to the establishment of People’s Movement 2.0 and social innovation as a process of formation. After the presentation, one representative of the cultural sector turned to the civil servant responsible for the incubator process and said, “I like that you said that the innovations own the incubator, could one secure that in some way? Formally, one can say that, but it would be so beautiful if every innovation could become a co-owner.” The civil servant replied, “It has to be secured. One has to decide on the form: should it be some sort of company? A foundation or what? Partly, it has to do with securing the governing of the activity, so that those who work with innovations can influence, they participate and govern.” One participant said that the incubator stage is not the problem, “We can create a free zone in the incubator, but the problem is that all municipal and government programmes have the ambition that things should come from the bottom up, but just as well they all been taken over in practice.” He meant that one has to secure the ownership towards the municipality. The responsible civil servant replied, “It is that mandate that we now asks our politicians to get, to investigate how we secure this flow, how we secure the connection with the engagement and that it is the engagement that governs the activity.” The Media Evolution representative again brought up his idea of a cluster of incubators:

”Media Evolution is a cluster of media companies and incubators in the media business. We are a shareholder company owned by an association where Region Skåne and others are involved. There are financiers and the EU. I can see this as an association as well, owner wise, but with a shareholder company beneath and some employees and resources that would be intermediaries.”

This triggers a discussion between a participant from the cultural

99 sector and the Media Evolution representative:

“Do you talk about a bunch of civil servants as intermediaries?”

“No, I’m talking about a bunch of professionals, like these two gentlemen.”

“They are not employed by the incubator?”

“They are employed by the company that is the cluster.”

“I have to interpose a veto there.”

“The money that they are employed with comes from the core. So they are public employees in some way. But they have the freedom to…”

“That sounds like an unnecessary middleman.”

“I see it as Media Evolution. I don’t really know…”.

“Media Evolution has too many officials. I putting a red dot on your forehead.”

A civil servant who participated in the group comments on this disagreement: “That’s how much consensus we have in our group!”

Scenario three The third group began with stating that different initiatives have different needs regarding, for example, localities and financing. Their incubator was in the shape of a flower, where all the needs were placed in the middle and the leaves represented support functions like financing, counseling, or meeting places. They did not see the incubator as MINC, where one works for three years. Instead, it could provide meeting space for a larger group or a place to sit and work for a shorter period of time. Here, they referred to the example of “hot desks” from the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto that we provided as inspiration.

100 The leaves functioned as a resource pool: “It concerns pooling resources for the specific purposes of an initiative so that they do not become stereotypes. There could be a central secretariat, but it is important for it to be a network of resources where not everything is located in a specific place. If there is a need for juridical competence, for example, it is in the neighbourhood.” The resource pool should consist of existing resources; for example, with workshops like Fa- briken in STPLN. Regarding governance, they had talked much about equal partnerships and the equal distribution of power: “It should not only be the the ‘big elephants’ like the City of Malmö, Malmö University, and now, Uppstart Malmö, but where are the social innovators?” A discussion about equal governance arose from this and the idea of People’s Movement 2.0 and the values of “people’s education.” The group had discussed the incubator as a free zone, both regarding mental barriers and structural barriers and, to some extent, juridical barriers. It demands a change in attitude and mind-set for one to enter the incubator with a widened perspective. The local perspective is also important. The initiatives are out there and should not be gathered in a central node; instead, they should remain in their environment and be allowed to develop and grow there. The incubator could also work as a test bed where one could test ideas on a small scale to see if there is any potential for growth, similar to the test bed that exists within clean tech in Malmö today. Regarding financing, the group thought it would be beneficial to have a fund where one could apply for a loan if one had a business idea and then repay it if the idea bore fruit. If one gets a small grant which generates large societal gain, then the earnings could be returned to the fund and, in that way, allow it to grow. But the fund’s start-up capital must be provided by the municipality, the region, and trade and industry. Today, small organizations may be hindered in seeking EU funding because they do not have the liquidity required. In such a case, the incubator could help provide the liquidity they need. Here, the Media Evolution representative mentioned that they seek EU funds as a cluster of fifty companies. In a similar way, the incubator could seek funds collectively for many small organizations.

101 Scenario four The last group had started by looking at MINC and the fact that because the City of Malmö is the owner, they have been able to do many things that other incubators in Sweden had not been able to do. A social incubator could be organized in a similar way, but with other types of needs that need to be fulfilled. They saw that the City of Malmö was at the center of the incubator, but there was mutuality and equality in that. The incubator could be based on new economic models, like social impact bonds and social return on investment. They referred to how Gnistan could present figures and facts of what they had generated, and that it is important to have methods for calculating results. Thus, one resource that the incubator could provide is a new way of calculating results. Also, this group thought it was important that the incubator could be a free zone where one could test new ideas, for example, to challenge legislation and to be able to find innovative solutions. The group had also discussed the importance of finding new ways of bringing forward, rewarding and communicating social innovations. It is important that small organizations are able to build their communicative capacity in the incubator. They want the incubator to become a natural meeting place for private, public, and the third sectors, and it is important to create an atmosphere similar to the one at MINC through their restaurant and café. Regarding financing, they see an opportunity for linking corporate social responsibility (CSR) to crowdfunding by creating a local crowdfunding system for the actors in the incubator where companies can take local societal responsibility. They also saw the incubator as a place to test new methods and approaches to business and a place to explore new business models, as existing ones may not be suitable in the context of the incubator. They mentioned the methods of Medea’s Living Lab as a way of working in the incubator to generate new ideas between private, public, and third sector as well as academia. The group had also discussed “social entrepreneurs in residence” as a way to bring in international influences. Such a visiting entrepreneur could come from a completely different environment and contribute with perspectives that turn things up- side down. They also spoke about mobilizing forces and that the surrounding society could legitimize the incubator if it felt that it

102 was a concern of theirs and that it was possible for everybody to contribute. One of the representatives from the Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap stressed this aspect: “The entire surrounding society has to participate and accept this so that both organizations and individuals feel that this is something interesting and that it is possible for everybody to participate.” A discussion about the importance of being able to meet initiatives with different needs followed. An Urban Studies researcher stated that there needs to be different levels of entrance into the incubator. Some need a lot of support, while others just need some mentorship and another may simply need access to a network. It is important that one does not create a one-size-fits-all model. The group brought up alternative ways of pitching ideas where, for example, a company or the municipality invite different actors to find ideas for something they want to do, like addressing a certain challenge, similar to an architectural competition. In such a case, the incubator should give support to smaller actors so they can participate in collaborations with other actors, but one participant objected. Not all actors are as good at pitching ideas and, therefore, it often suits the stronger actors more: “It is important for everyone to have the same opportunity.” One of the participating social entrepreneurs developed this further: “One has to see that there are different needs on different levels. We may talk about someone that can solve the city’s problems, but Herrgårds Kvinnoförening have other needs. Many different levels and different actors exist: there has to be a forum where all can operate, but not in the same way.” The Centrum för publikt entreprenörskap representative continued on this line: “It has to based on dialogue. This concerns Malmö as a city. Everybody counts on all levels: the rich, the poor, organizations, individuals, and newcomers. We have to create an arena for dialogue where everybody can participate.”

Outcomes of the workshop

The broad and diverse group of stakeholders was reflected in the outcomes of the workshops that I present here under four recurring categories based on Ehn et al. (2011):

103 1. Ownership and Mandate: The general view was that not only the municipality should own and run the incubator, but also the actors active in social innovation should take part in running the incubator. The participants clearly expressed their will to take part in the forthcoming process of creating and building the incubator and that, “we as builders need to be the owners.” They also pointed out that the incubator needed to have a “mandate” from those who are active within social innovation in Malmö today. That message was repeated in the report. 2. Mental-Free Zone: Another outcome was that the incubator should be a place where civil servants and social innovators could shift roles, or work in a different mode than they usually do on an everyday basis to create a “mental-free zone.” I would argue that this came about because of the mix of stakeholders and perspectives that were represented at the workshops. A free zone was also discussed in the meaning of a safe place to experiment with ideas and challenge economic and juridical frames. 3. Centralized vs. Distributed: One of the more central and interesting outcomes was in regard to the set-up and location of the incubator. Traditionally, an incubator is viewed as centrally located with a few, employed support staff, such as business developers. During the workshops, this structure became more complicated and the majority favored a more-distributed model, building on existing resources such as an organization, a company, or a local municipality office which already provides different support services and locating activities to different city districts. In the final report, we worked with two contrasting models: the central incubator and the decentralized incubator, and we showed how they could fit into the wider social innovation landscape of Malmö. We thought it was important to not only focus on the incubator as such, but also we wanted to take a systemic view by embracing the whole innovation chain (see Figure 4.). 4. Reciprocal Learning Process: Initially, much critique of the municipality and civil servants was raised, but soon thereafter, the discussion focused on the importance of establishing mutual

104 learning between the stakeholders, the different departments within the municipality as well as between civil servants and citizens or NGOs. Also, some self-criticism was raised, and one representative of the third sector expressed that they also need to renew themselves. Here, the free zone was also mentioned as a place for reciprocal learning. Reciprocal learning is also one of the most important aspects of Participatory Design and the design thing. 5. Matchmaking: Our initial infrastructuring of the workshop process, where we aimed for a mix of organizations and competences, created immediate results during the workshops. We could see how different constellations were starting to emerge: the magazine, Aluma, entered into a discussion with the interaction design company, Do-Fi, on how to handle money transactions in a cashless society, Artcom helped Feed’us write a business plan, and the Swedish Red Cross also started a conversation with Feed’us.

Conclusions from the Workshops

After the three workshops, we summarized the results and had a meeting with the civil servant responsible for the incubator process and the civil servant responsible for writing the memorandum and official report that would be the basis for any further decisions of the Malmö City Executive Board. To some degree, they did not fully accept the distributed incubator model that had emerged as a strong model during the workshops because they could see how hard it would be to get support for such a model from the City Executive Board. However, they realized that a traditional central incubator would need ideas and initiatives originat- ing from the city areas with social problems and that one had to consider the whole chain of innovation where one had to mobilize, use, and support existing grassroots resources. During the meeting, these considerations opened up for what Per-Anders Hillgren would call “bureaucratic translation.” During the workshops, there were discussions at the City Office regarding “pre-incubators,” which also was closely related to the idea of Innovation forums in the Area Programmes. The distributed incubator model was therefore

1057 Figure 4. Ehn et al. 2011. The distributed incubator model that emerged during the workshops was transformed into a new model with both a traditional incubator (inkubator) and a distributed pre-incubator (förinkubator). transformed into a new model consisting both of a traditional incubator and a network of pre-incubators (where the latter contained most of the findings from the workshop). The skills of the civil servants made it possible to translate the workshop findings into a document that both presented something new (and slightly radical), yet was still within the “safe zone” of being accepted by the City Exec- utive Board. The feedback and input from the civil servants can also be considered as “back talk” (Schön 1995) which made us reflect and redesign the incubator model. The re-worked model with a central incubator complemented with pre-incubators was included in the report (Ehn et al. 2011) we wrote to summarize the workshops. The title of the report “Inkuba- torn finns därute!” (The Incubator is Out There!) was a direct quote from one of the participants; a quote that both summarized the discussions during the workshops and became a powerful metaphor used by participants and civil servants long after the workshops ended. During the workshops, the idea of a central incubator was challenged not only by the more distributed model that included

106 many diverse actors, but also by the importance of comprehending the whole innovation chain. In this innovation chain, not only could the pre-incubators and the Innovation forums take care of people in an early phase where ideas are young, but also they could give a forum to people with odd ideas that risk getting lost in-between established categories. The central incubator could take care of more mature and business-oriented ideas coming from well- structured entrepreneurs. Another aspect of the idea of pre-incubators that was not outspoken in the report, but is crucial in this thesis and in how the incubator process develops, regards democracy:

The importance of concentrating on a pre-incubator as a complement to, and part of, an incubator for social innovation also deals with who gets the opportunity to participate in building the future society. Even if there is a growing market within social entrepreneurship, there is a risk that these market shares goes to already well-established entrepreneurs that see new business opportunities in this area. This is basically a positive thing, but it is essential that actors that act and live in Malmö and in its suburbs (and is not very well-established) also gets a chance to enter this market for social innovation. A pre-incubator could mobilize, and in different phases, prepare them for these opportunities and secure an inflow to the incubator and other support functions like Uppstart Malmö, MINC or Coompanion. (Ehn et al. 2011, 17)

From the distributed system of pre-incubator and Innovation forums, initiatives that have matured or that already were more business-oriented, could be passed on to the central incubator or other support organizations that exist in the city, e.g., MINC, Uppstart Malmö, and Coompanion. Other initiatives that are more oriented towards public services like Gnistan/Kaninhotellet could be directed to the municipality and become an established public service. The main point is to make use of all the various support functions and organizations that already exist in the city and coordinate them to be able to create an auspicious innovation climate in Malmö.

107 Taken together, this makes it relevant to bring together the plans for an incubator environment for social innovation so that it embraces and supports the interplay between pre-incubators, a more traditional incubator function, and the City of Malmö’s plans for Innovation forums in the Area Programmes. (Ehn et al. 2011, 18)

To sum up, the message from the workshop participants was to go further in the direction of a distributed model, a kind of social innovation “system,” rather than a centralized single incubator. This was also in line with the initial recommendation from Lars Jannick Jo- hansen. We ended our report by recommending further explorations of the interplay between pre-incubators, Innovation forums, and a central incubator in a process anchored in the Area Programmes and the City Office, as well as involving the actors active in social innovation today.

Phase Three: The Trade and Industry Process

At the workshops, we gathered around forty actors with diverse backgrounds representing the private, public, and third sectors as well as academia. One reason was to get complementary perspectives, knowledge, and resources, something that is crucial in innovation processes. Another reason was democracy. An incubator concerned with social sustainability and the improvement of well-being for all inhabitants in Malmö concerns everybody, and therefore, a wide perspective of people should be able to make their opinion heard, define issues, and contribute with ideas. But this would change in the third phase of the process. After we handed over the report, the process was now taken over by the Trade and Industry Agency, which also became the location for the following meetings. Further, the actors involved in the process of preparing a decision document for the politicians changed. It became a much smaller group, which is quite natural in a decision phase. The “working group” now consisted of Stenquist and the civil servant responsible for the incubator process, along with three other civil servants from the Trade and Industry Agency and the City Office. New to the group was one of the founders of Uppstart Malmö who never participated in the

108 workshops although he was invited. Representing academia where the business developer at Medea. Important to note regarding the business developer is that he was not a researcher or person with good knowledge of academia, neither did he have any competence regarding social innovation. The “steering group” consisted of senior civil servants from areas like economy, integration and jobs, tourism, and trade and industry. There was no representative from the third sector; only Stenquist, the civil servant responsible, and our business developer had attended the workshops. Initially, there was no representative from academia with knowledge of social innovation. I attended one of the last meetings, of which I will give more details. The only person with insights in social innovation was Stenquist. The most determining difference between phase two and phase three was that none of the, from now on, driving actors with a business perspective had taken part in the workshops and the mutual learning process with the other actors. The Uppstart Malmö representative attended the first workshop for fifteen minutes and then left. He was also supposed to have made a presentation of Upp- start Malmö at the third workshop, but did not show up. Instead we, with some help from Stenquist and the responsible civil servant, presented Uppstart Malmö as well as we could to the other participants. The only connection between the two phases was the written report and the three actors above. The most important missing actor in the trade and industry network was the third sector who historically has proven to generate many social innovations and who was a driving force during the workshops. One civil servant commented on this in an interview I conducted: ”That was a mistake. We were thinking too squarely. We almost did not discuss it.” He meant that they should have been part of the working group.

There is no doubt about that both, from the politician’s side and from ours, that we feel that the importance of the third sector has increased over many years now. Considering scarce public resources in the future, we are all aware that the third sector will have a more important role. From that perspective, they should have been there. Most likely they would have enriched the discussion and maybe have contributed so that we would have come

109 further in the development of the concept than we have today.

The same civil servant explained that another reason the third sector was not included is their unclear identity, where the actors operate in a borderland and are a little bit of everything, “a little bit private, a little bit public. It is hard to sort in that landscape.” In a way, the “bureaucratic translation” continued in the more closed process that followed after the workshops. The group, that I from now on will name the trade and industry network, prepared an errand that included many of the outcomes from the workshops but had a focus on new jobs. But the politicians rejected this document because they considered the concept of social innovation to be too fluffy. One civil servant commented:

Then we got a pedagogical problem. Some politicians did not understand what social innovation and social entrepreneurship were: ‘You should not fiddle with the municipal competence.’ To work with the public functions that are the municipalities by law, that is holy, you cannot touch them.

Another civil servant who did not take part in the discussions with the politicians, brings up this lack of knowledge and understanding:

They had difficulties getting through and explaining what societal innovation and social innovation was. It was regarded as ‘folk high school for how to seek public grants.’ The word social innovation was meet with opposition. It became emphasized that the incubator should deal with ideas that were commercially viable.

The group now reworked the text and took away everything “social” and focused on jobs and innovation. But one civil servant thought that they had gone too far and suggested to keep the original focus on an incubator for social innovation. Again, there was a need for “bureaucratic translation” and rewriting that ended up in a compromise. The headline of the new text was now “The establishment of an incubator for entrepreneurs with a focus on social innovations” (Malmö stad Stadskontoret 2011, 1) which already in the first sentence was changed to “incubator for new jobs and innovation,”

110 which also dominated the rest of the text. But, reading between the lines, the main message from the workshops was still there: the idea of a local pre-incubator system that could complement a central incubator. The mentioning of an “innovation system” that could work on two levels is also important. But, the most important actors that work on the local level, associations, and the third sector, were as said, not represented in the group and only briefly mentioned in the report. In the decision document, it states that the incubator should have three interacting principals: the City of Malmö, Uppstart Malmö, and Malmö University. The municipality should be responsible for localities, administration, marketing, and the connection to relevant actors and users. Uppstart Malmö should be responsible for the activities, coaching, mentorship, and venture capital. Malmö University should be responsible for knowledge development, follow up, and evaluation. An application for funding was sent to the European Unions Structural Funds by Uppstart Malmö in the end of 2011, and in November 2011, the Malmö City Executive Board decided to commission the City Office to start the establishment of an “incubator for new jobs and innovation in Malmö” (Malmö stad Kommunstyrelse 2011).

Phase 4: Shrinking Democracy and an Incubator for “New Jobs and Innovation”

It is interesting to read the application from Uppstart Malmö (2011) to the European Unions Structural Funds, but from a democratic perspective it is depressing. What a civil servant initiated, and had been developed by a group of forty actors representing different perspectives and sectors, and gone through a decision process dominated by trade and industry actors, had now shrunk to a “We-Uppstart Malmö” and said to be initiated by trade and industry. “It has been an active initiative from trade and industry to start up a social incubator which makes the project a unique possibility that, through a public–private partnership, develops collaboration for increased growth and employment” (Uppstart Malmö 2011, 6). We know that this is not true and one civil servant, among others, has a different view on how things started: “It was brought up to discussion within

111 the frame of the Area Programmes and Bjarne (Stenquist) had heard of social incubators.” Despite this self-centric tone, the application is based on a collaborative approach and some important aspects from the workshops are still there. According to the application, one of the reasons for creating the new incubator was the lack of a structure to take care of new business ideas from areas with high unemployment in Malmö. Also, there was not a structure to develop and support new ideas and initiatives with a focus on social innovation and entrepreneurship. There is no lack of good ideas and initiatives, but these seldom get developed into commercially sustainable businesses; instead, they get stuck in a start-up phase based on public grants. The consequence of this is that when the public support ends, the business ends. To tackle this, Uppstart Malmö saw the need to create a structure that complemented the public support to new business and that could act as long-term fostering of private companies that could also be an alternative to employment. Another function of the incubator is to be the bridge between start-up companies or established businesses that want to grow and employ more people, and the investors at Uppstart Malmö. This could be seen as the last phase in a chain where pre-incubators take care of early and immature ideas and the incubator makes them more attractive for investors. According to the application, the incubator should also be seen as “the engine” in a coherent innovation system for the whole of Malmö where ideas and entrepreneurs could be developed; in turn, this will lead to both private and public economic development. In the description of the incubator, there is a contradiction between theory and practice. The application communicates openness and that the incubator should work as a common resource for the coherent innovation system that reinforces all the local initiatives, networks, engagements, entrepreneurship that form the base of the innovation system. In reality, that is a very heterogenic landscape of different public, private, and third sector constellations. But the incubator is seen as a uniquely private– public partnership, or more accurate, a triple-helix coalition, as academia also is a partner. But again, the missing link, the empty chair at the table, is the third sector. This constellation will be discussed further later from the con-

112 cept of governance. One important conclusion from the workshops, a conclusion that the civil servant responsible emphasized during the discussions at the Trade and Industry Agency, was the interplay between the central incubator and the more-distributed system consisting of pre-incubators, innovation forums, and all the various organizations that could have supporting roles. This aspect is recurrently mentioned in the application. More surprisingly is the mention of social innovation, a term that seemed almost forbidden in the decision document to the politicians:

Together, with the City of Malmö, we want to establish an incubator environment to stimulate entrepreneurship and create jobs within the frame of the area programme. (Uppstart Malmö 2011, 3)

That the incubator is established as the engine in a coherent innovation system where collaboration occurs with the pre-incubators out in the city districts. (ibid., 4)

That the incubator becomes known as a meeting place for entrepreneurs and investors for social innovations. (ibid.)

The recruiter will function as the spider in the web in the innovation system/with a strong connection to the work of the city districts (local pre-incubators). (ibid., 5)

Therefore, the incubator will act in a structure on two levels, partly with local pre-incubators (Innovation forum) in the city districts, and partly the actual incubator activity with placement in the center of the city as an assembled resource for advice and support. (ibid., 6)

Qualified support functions for development of pre-incubators/ Innovation forum. (ibid.)

The project is a reinforcement of the Innovation forum pre-study (ibid., 7)

113 However, Uppstart Malmö would not live up to these descriptions of the incubator’s functions. Neither pre-incubators nor Innova- tion forums have been created, which is something that has been brought up by civil servants as a lack. This function is also invisible or non-existent in the description of the incubator on their webpage; there, the focus is on growing companies and creating more jobs. One civil servant comments on the developments after the politicians’ decision:

It has not been so many within the City of Malmö or Uppstart Malmö that have said that this is very important. Rather, when you bring up the Area Programmes, Innovation forum, pre-incubators and “the incubator is out there” then it is something that feels hard to discuss.

The civil servant is disappointed about the outcome. The societal development aspect has disappeared: ”In a way, the municipality has sold the initiative to Uppstart Malmö.” The incubator was realized as the organization, Tillväxt Malmö. If social innovation was briefly mentioned in the application, it cannot be found in the description of Tillväxt Malmö. Instead, it discusses social entrepreneurship, and in a way, that makes it seems almost the same as ordinary entrepreneurship. From the questions and answers section of the website tillväxt- malmö.se:

What is social entrepreneurship? What is the origin of the term? There is no settled definition, but we define social entrepreneurship as activities where the primary goal is to do benefit other than maximizing economic profit.

How does this differ from ordinary business? No real difference. The difference is that one solves a social problem in one’s business plan.

Which role can social businesses have in society? They have the same role as a commercial company – they can employ. But they can also solve a social problem, which is an

114 important role. (Tillväxt Malmö 2014) In February 2015, this section was removed from the questions and answers.

One of the goals in the application was to create six hundred jobs before the project ended in October, 2014. Already by August, 2013, Dan Olofsson and Luciano Astudillo (2013) communicated in an article in Sydsvenskan that Uppstart Malmö had reached their goal and created one thousand jobs. They now talk about the Uppstart Malmö family that also consists of Tillväxt Malmö and Uppsök Malmö, so it is unclear how many jobs Tillväxt Malmö has created. They say that they are not satisfied with this result and should raise the bar and set new goals:

During work with Uppstart Malmö, we have learned that collaboration and partnership across borders, between trade and industry and the public, is the way forward. We have reached our goal of one thousand jobs, but we are not satisfied. Now we are ready to raise the bar and set new goals. We want to settle the new goals with the City of Malmö and our partners. (Olofsson and Astudillo 2013)

From this perspective the “incubator” is a success. But from the perspective of participatory design and who will have a say, it is problematic. The participants in the workshops wanted to be involved in the process of developing and running the incubator, according to them it should not be only the “big elephants” (the municipality, academia, and trade and industry). Now it is “we,” Uppstart Malmö, along with the municipality and their partners, who decide. Among these partners there is none of the participants of the workshops and none of the actors listed in the overview (Jönsson 2011) of the social innovation landscape in Mal- mö. When Astudillo and Olofsson state that they have reached “their” goal, one can ask how this correlates with the needs and goals of the participants in the workshops. There is a difference between Tillväxt Malmö and the incubator sketched in “Inkubatorn finns därute!” (Ehn et al. 2011), but there is also a “qualitative difference” between

115 Tillväxt Malmö and the incubator described in their own application, as Fredrik Björk (2014a) states in an evaluation report about Tillväxt Malmö.

Tillväxt Malmö is not only, by name, different than the ”Incuba- tor for new jobs and social innovation” that the project application indicated. Also, some of the project goals one has worked toward, while other—above all, the ones that are connected to the concept social innovation—have disappeared entirely from the project. To support social entrepreneurs in their business development is something qualitatively different than to run an incubator for social innovation. (ibid., 5 emphasized by me)

Björk quotes a protocol from the steering group:

November 8, 2012 The experiences from the last months indicate that work with social entrepreneurs demands much time at the same time as they contribute little to the overall goals of the project—to create new jobs. The members agree that Tillväxt Malmö must delimit their efforts and chose fewer, but sharper, projects with a clear business focus. The role of Tillväxt Malmö shall also be to create collaboration and connect different actors in the “system.” (ibid., 18)

Björk states that the project has reached “hard” quantitative goals like the creation of six hundred jobs, but when it comes to reaching the “soft” qualitative goals, like for example “meeting place, innovation system, network and collaboration” (ibid., 25) it has not succeeded.

Certainly there has been a form of relationship, but in the form that was sketched, one operative collaboration concerning that the municipality through pre-incubators in the city districts and the university should bring about job-creating business ideas to a central incubator, the way it was sketched in the Innovation forum report (see p. z) [more correct is the incubator report, my remark] and that was the foundation for the project application.

116 The project has chosen not to work with this, and therefore, this intermediate goal cannot be fulfilled. (ibid., 25)

Björk further states that the project chose not to work with social innovation but with social entrepreneurship, which one thought was closer to the competence within Uppstart Malmö. But in an interview with an investor, it becomes clear that social entrepreneurship was neither a primary goal, nor did they have the competence.

We from Uppstart Malmö, and Tillväxt Malmö, felt that this social entrepreneurship bit, how should we handle it? It has fallen into place a bit, but there is a lot more to do. We got it in the bargain when we got City of Malmö as financier of the project.

How do you mean you got it in the bargain? Was it not you that wrote the application? I don’t know the story of how we wrote that bit, but I did not experience it as primary. We want to connect investors as a support to business leaders out there. If we, as investors, should go into business, then we will need to form an opinion of whether or not the activity will grow for us in order to invest in it. Often, in the social entrepreneur bit, there is something else to it rather than money, so it is beside the original investment thought. To- day we see social entrepreneur businesses or organizations that really need help, but are not of a investment type, and where we could have a more active and clear role like Tillväxt Malmö. At the moment, we look to see how we could be clearer on that point. (ibid., 26 my italics)

From Björk’s report, one can conclude that the social incubator in the form of Tillväxt Malmö reaches the “hard” goals that initially was Uppstart Malmö’s: to make investments to create more jobs, but the “soft” goal of creating a network, or system, of support functions to develop social innovations—that were the result of processes initiated by Stenquist—have not been reached. As Björk states, it is a “qualitative difference” between investing in companies and to support and develop social innovations. In his final report, Björk (2014b, 15) states that an incubator for social innovation functions

117 as an “arena for developing new, including and in its prolongation, structural-changing solutions for societal challenges (and these are processes that could just as well take place within or in collaboration with public activities).” Both functions are needed in a system aimed at creating social change in a city, but when the municipality “sold” the responsibility for this support system, both the incubator and the development of Innovation forums, the potentially more radical and transformative aspect of social innovation, was effectively neutralized. There are still companies and organizations out there that “really need help.” The positive thing is that the “incubator” is also still out there, it just needs to be “drawn together.”

The Process of the Innovation Forum

As a continuation of our work with the incubator process, I became involved in the pre-study of the Innovation forums as an “additional researcher.” Again, the ideas for the Innovation forums came from Bjarne Stenquist. Initially, this function was discussed as “design workshops.” Stenquist had become aware of design methods applied in social contexts when working at the British think tank, Demos. There he got in contact with social innovation organizations like The Young Foundation, thinkers like Charles Leadbeater (a colleague at Demos), and design firms like Participle and Engine. But the chairman of the Malmö City Executive Board did not accept the term “design workshops.” Instead, they decided to use the term ‘Innovation forums’. The idea of Innovation forums is part of a holistic approach and way of working to reach the objectives of the Area Programmes that is described in the decision document from 2010.

One of many suitable working methods is to establish a number of “Innovation forums” where actors with various competences gather to form different points of departure to tackle the problems of the areas and realize their potential. In the Innovation forums, there is a focus on a trying and experimenting way of working, to in a relative quick way, develop prototypes to solutions that can be tested and modified, to be gradually scaled up and spread. Possible areas for Innovation forums are Jobs, Lear-

118 ning, Living, Security, and Participation. A permanent meeting place for Innovation forum, etc. should be established in each area. (Stenquist 2010)

Later, Stenquist would reflect on this holistic approach looking back at the experiences from the incubator process. He says that the whole way of working in a trying way is in the decision document which expresses a much more aware attitude regarding development work and the need for new structures and methods. “We should gather many actors to understand what the challenges are all about and then try. That is exactly what we tried to push with Innovation forum” (Stenquist 2012). He believes the incubator could be a tool to work with societal changes in the Area Program- mes and that the civil servants responsible for writing the decision document regarding the incubator for the politicians saw the connection between Innovation forums and the incubator. “They saw that this hangs together, and that this should be a tool for changing the city at large, but also to develop our municipal structures out in the city districts” (ibid.). An important aspect of Innovation forum is to develop a new way of working and performing public services. The idea of the experiment and trial and error is important here:

We cannot simply analyze our way forward. We also must try our way forward. The governmental and municipal investi- gation machinery believes that it is possible to analyze one’s way forward and that becomes problematic. One makes a reform of the unemployment benefit fund and a million of people leave it—“Oh shit! We do not develop any products or services in such an amateurish way, but in the public sector, it is still okay. (Stenquist 2012)

The pre-study The participatory approach involving many different actors also influenced the pre-study process. The pre-study was led by Annette Larsson, and the project group consisted of Bjarne Stenquist, Ma- ria Bredin, Emma Englundh, Falk Jandt and myself. The study looked both backwards and forward. It focused on learning from past

119 programmes by reading reports and interviewing people who were involved. It focused on the present by holding workshops and interviews with the coordinators of the Area Programmes, but also key persons involved in social sustainability in the city to create an understanding of different needs and wishes. It also looked into the future by arranging workshops to try ideas and to get inputs of what the Innovation forums should provide. Also future-oriented were two tele-presence sessions with international social innovation actors from all over the world arranged by The Young Foundation’s Social Innovation Exchange programme. During a study trip to London, the pre-study team, along with the coordinators from each Area Programme met with social innovation organizations like The Young Foundation, Nesta, Future Gov, Involve, and organizations working with design methods in the public sector like Participle, Innovation Unit and Social Innovation Lab for Kent. In the end, over one hundred local, national, and international persons provided input to the pre-study. In this way, the report was based on input from local front-line workers and actors as well as world-leading experts. It is quite disturbing that leading civil servants, politicians, and representatives from trade and industry can dismiss a knowledge contribution such as this and claim to know what both the problem and the solution are.

Outcomes The pre-study report (Larsson 2012) recommended some functions of the Innovation forums:

• To coordinate resources, competences, and methods currently existing in the Area Programmes. • To support the Area Programmes with expertise regarding processes and methods. • To be responsible for continuous learning regarding social innovation.

The Innovation forum should consist of a small team with high competence regarding methods and processes and networking. They should mainly operate in a distributed way and be located at the different local Area Programmes when they have need for support.

120 In that way, the Innovation forum is part of the distributed model of local innovation centers and pre-incubators that were discussed during the workshops.

Guiding principles of the Innovation forums The principles of the Innovation forums were much based in design. In the report, we developed a simplified translation of the design process: see, understand, connect, and try. This translation was based on previous experiences where people had difficulties in understanding what design was. The translation became like a mantra for the Innovation forums where see referred to an empathic gaze and ethnographic approaches, understand to the necessity of understanding the problem, connect to the need of working co-creatively in networks, and try to the need of experimentation and prototyping. The guiding principles were based on what the pre-study stated to be a basic approach for successful work: empathic understanding, co-creation, and an experimental way of working. Below follows a short summary of the principles.

1. The empathic eye. A recurring message during the pre-study was the importance of seeing things from the perspective of the people concerned to be able to gain insight and understanding. This connects to ethnographic working methods used by designers who spend time with people to understand their situation. 2. Build the right team. The importance of co-creation processes and cross-sectorial collaboration is brought forward both in international literature, study visits and interviews with local actors. ”The citizens should participate from the beginning and be part of the development process,” said one civil servant. Therefore, it is crucial to put together a team of various complementing actors that together can develop the right solution. 3. Mutual problem definition. A social challenge often consists of many interacting causes that are hard for a single actor to narrow down. Therefore, many actors are needed that, together with the people concerned, can define the real problem. If we do not understand the real problems, then all solutions will be wrong. 4. Create common overview of conceivable solutions. Through

121 different methods, generate ideas in a larger group to explore new combinations and solutions. 5. Test early! Test again! In a development process, one needs to try ideas, fail, detect problems, and try again until one finds the right solution. It is better to fail early than later when a lot of time and money is invested. 6. Implement. It is crucial to mobilize necessary competence and resources to realize what has been tested. 7. Spread. Can a solution that has proved to work in one location be scaled up and spread to contribute to societal change? This has to be judged from case to case and some solutions may show to only work in a certain context.

The organization of Innovation forums The Innovation forums were proposed to be organized around three functions.

1. Coordinating. To coordinate deals with mapping, making visible and making available the resources, competences, and working methods that already exist in the Area Programmes or in Malmö. Methods that have showed to work well can be collected in a “tool box” as a support for practice. The Inno- vation forum successively builds up the competence in applying these methods. 2. Supportive. The Innovation forum should act as method and process support for the development work in the Area Pro- grammes and for the whole of Malmö. Except departing from existing knowledge, the Innovation forum shall also complement with resources and competence which are missing. An important function is to find people with the engagement and will to change from a grassroots perspective. People need to be connected to real resources and a stable support platform to be able to develop a way of working in the long term. Innovation forum could have such a role. 3. Learning. The Innovation forum should also continuously act towards mutual learning and exchange between the different areas and development processes. An active gathering of information regarding social innovation and successful development

122 processes is also part of continuous learning. Innovation forum could take responsibility for knowledge development through arranging seminars, video conferences, and study trips, etc. The learning function should also include the organization of a methods and experience bank within the City of Malmö.

The pre-study recommended that the Innovation forums should be developed gradually and in dialogue with the Area Programmes and other key actors in the city. The task for the core group of Inn- ovation forum will be to support the Area Programmes through building and maintaining a local capacity to, in a more systematic way, develop ideas that can lead to social change. This innovation, or change capacity, consists of receiving and judging ideas and then mobilizing the resources and competences needed to develop an idea into a sustainable solution. The pre-study suggests three tools for building the Innovation forum: a core team with competence in methods and processes, a website for knowledge exchange, and meeting activities. The responsible civil servant at the City Office decided not to seek any more funding to develop the ideas in the report. Instead, he advocates that the function of the Innovation forum should be the responsibility (among many others) of one business developer located at the central incubator (Tillväxt Malmö). Again, the recommendations of a distributed model, based on the outcomes from a process that have involved many and different actors, was through top-down decision making turned into a centralized solution. As a consequence of this, the civil servant that had been in charge of the Area Programmes and an advocate of participatory and distributed models found it impossible to come any further and chose to resign his position and seek employment in another municipality administration more open to innovative bottom-up approaches. The municipality put the responsibility to develop an innovation system, including the pre-incubators and Innovation forums, on Tillväxt Malmö, who in their application, wrote that one of their activities should be “Qualified support functions for development of pre-incubators/Innovation forum” (Uppstart Malmö 2011,6). When Till- växt Malmö chose to not work with this, the Innovation forums became unrealized.

123 The Innovation forums have a family resemblance with Living Labs, for example in bringing together a heterogeneous constellation of actors with complementing perspectives. This heterogeneous constellation of actors can also be found in other ideas of democratic forums, for example design things, knowledge alliances (Stigendal and Östergren 2013), or hybrid forums (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2011). I will return to this constellation of actors when I discuss the second design thing addressing the prospect of a collapsing civilization. But first I will sketch the context for the second design thing, the crisis of civilization.

124 SITUATION TWO: THE CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION

Then, in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heat waves scorched the planet, destroying food crops around the globe. Panic ensued, with food riots in virtually every city. Mass migration of undernourished and dehydrated individuals, coupled with explosive increases in insect populations, led to wide-spread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never before seen. (Oreskes and Conway 2014, 25)

The quotation above is from a thin pamphlet titled “The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future” (2014). It is a piece of “science-based” fiction written by Naomi Oreskes, professor in history of science, and Erik M. Conway, professor in history of science and technology. In the story, an imagined future historian living in the Second People’s Republic of China in the year 2393 tries to understand what led to “The Great Collapse” during the years 2073 and 2093. One thesis is that “Western civilization became trapped in the grip of two inhibiting ideologies: positivism and market fun- damentalism” (ibid., 35). One of the reasons why civilizations collapse is that the inhabitants make wrong decisions, claims Jared Diamond in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2011). One factor behind these bad decisions is that it is “painfully difficult to

125 decide whether to abandon some of one’s core values when they seem to become incompatible with survival” (ibid., 433). Throug- hout this thesis, I will explore what role values and frames play in how we set problems and which trajectories of inquiry we choose to explore. And we still have a choice. The situation described in the quote above is not our destiny; it is a well-grounded scenario of what we can expect if we make the wrong decisions today. We are still at the beginning of the story of a possible collapsing civilization, a situation I will call the crisis of civilization. This is the departure point. The Crisis of Civilization is the title of a documentary by Na- feez Mosaddeq Ahmed (2011) that investigates how global crises like “ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.” Ahmed differs from most other researchers that focus on environmental factors by adding another dangerous and devastating factor: violence and war. He has pointed to the interrelatedness between factors like “global warming spiralling out of control; oil prices fluctuating wildly; food riots breaking out in the South; banks collapsing worldwide; the spectre of terror bombings in major cities; and the promise of ‘endless war’ to fight ‘violent extremists’ at home and abroad” (Ahmed 2010). He claim that we are running out of time:

Without urgent mitigating, preventive and transformative action, these global crises are likely to converge and mutually accelera- te over the coming decades. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. Af- ter 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse. (Ahmed 2010)

The situation also changes rapidly. In the past couple of years, it has not only been the “usual” financial, social and environmental crises that are reported in the news, but also we now have the threat of Ebola, and on top of the “endless war” and terrorism in some parts of the world, we can add IS, aggressions from Russia, and increasing

126 right-wing extremism. All these threats will claim resources and decrease our ability to tackle climate change while, at the same time, increasing the possibility of global social collapse. It is not just Ahmed who describes our situation as one of multiple interconnected crises. The UN report “Resilient people, Resi- lient planet” (United Nations Secretary General, 2012, 6) stresses the importance of “recognizing, understanding and acting on inter- connections—above all, those between the economy, society, and the natural environment.” Therefore, it is not surprising that early mentioning of the need of social innovation, and not only technical innovation, occurs at the same time as the need for sustainable development began to be discussed. Howaldt and Schwarz (2010, 3–4) mentions the Club of Rome report, “The Limits to Growth,” published in 1972, where the authors point to the need of “social changes” and “non-technological measures.” Howaldt and Schwarz (2010, 4) argue that this started a discussion “regarding the necessity of a different way of life and a different economy, particularly in affluent industrial economies.” If sustainability and its interconnected challenges is one source and driver of social innovation, the failing welfare state is another. According to Borzaga and Bodini (2012), the failure of the welfare system in Europe which began in the 1980s led to the privatization of many welfare functions in the 1990s, but this did not solve the problems. This situation, in which both government policy and market solutions “have proved grossly inadequate” (Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan 2010, 3) have made policymakers look for new solutions and one of the most popular has been social innovation (Borzaga and Bodini 2012). But the phenomena of social innovation will not deliver many “quick fixes.” Rather, it will emphasize that facing societal challenges today is to throw oneself into a situation of “overwhelming pressure, complexity and uncertainty” and this means “facing a challenge of reinvention with very little knowledge about how to do it” (Christiansen and Bunt 2012, 5). This new paradigm for innovation and design is, of course, not an isolated phenomenon. It mirrors big changes in society as a whole. If modern design as a profession is closely linked to industrial society and its economy based on mass production and mass consumption, this emerging design and innovation paradigm is a response to the

127 decline of Western industrial society and the problems it caused. We live in an era of crisis caused by climate change, financial crisis, unemployment, and so on. Even if daily life in Sweden goes on quite undisturbed for most people at the moment, images of riots in Athens or London, bushfires in Spain and Australia, and melting polar ice in the Arctic tell us that the state of the world is not good. But the recent flooding and large forest fires in Sweden make one wonder, how vulnerable are we? Will we have food riots? Well, it is not unlikely. According to a newspaper article, our food supplies are the worst since the 1930s (Agö 2013). “In a situation of crises the food in the shops will end quickly” (ibid.). According to the article, it is estimated that food will end in ten days. This has not always been the case. Before the 1990s, Sweden had stockpiles that made us self-sufficient for food for three years in case of a crisis or war (Jon- stad 2012). But since the end of the cold war and our membership in the EU, we have removed all stockpiles and placed our trust in the “market” to help us if we get into trouble (ibid.). But what if that market became unfriendly or collapses? How should we get food if an oil crisis stops all transport (remember 1973)? Then we are very vulnerable. This became evident in the UK in the year 2000 when truck drivers went on strike. Within three days, the usually abundant food shelves in the supermarkets were nearly empty. This situation has been eloquently described by Andrew Simms (2008) as “nine meals from anarchy.” So, are we heading towards a collapse? Well, if we for one moment leave the comfort zone of business as usual and our current way of life and stop to ignore the inconvenient facts from a majority of scientists, the future looks like a dark cloud, and it is approaching fast. As we will see, our problematic situation is not only about climate change, peak oil, or social exclusion, the things that we tend to focus on, but also a crisis remains in all our systems. However, if we just initially look at climate change, Kevin Anderson, deputy director at the Tyndal Centre for Climate Change Research at Man- chester University claims that we are now in a process of “going beyond what has traditionally been defined as the threshold between acceptable and dangerous climate change” (Anderson 2012, 16). To avoid a dangerous situation, the goal until now has been to not go beyond a temperature rise by 2°C compared to a pre-industrial pe-

128 riod. However, Anderson points to a recent impact analysis, which suggests that:

2°C represents the threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous, rather than between acceptable and dangerous climate change. Certainly, it could reasonably be argued that 1°C rather than 2°C should become the de facto appropriate target. (Anderson 2012, 20)

To be able to avoid 2°C, we must decrease our CO2 emissions by 10–20 percent per year from 2020, when emissions are assumed to peak, until 2035–40. But Anderson states that such reduction rates lack historical precedents. For example, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reduction in emissions was 5 percent per year in 10 years “a rate just half to a quarter of what is necessary to give us a 50:50 chance of achieving the 2°C goal” (Anderson 2012, 25). Or to put it another way, to avoid 2°C and at the same time give developing countries a fair chance to grow their economies and increase their well-being, the industrial nations would have had to stop emit- ting CO2 in 2010. This means that we, from 2010, should not have been using any kind of fossil energy to drive our cars to work, to fly in our job or vacation, to heat our houses, to grow our food, etc.—a radically different world. But when I look out of the window, it looks quite familiar. Nothing radical has happened. And according to our politicians, nothing radical will happen in the near future. Kevin Anderson is not alone in warning for this “dangerous” situation. In 2012, The World Bank released a report, written by the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Clima- te Analytics, which warned that we, with present emission trends, are heading towards a 4°C warmer climate within this century. In the foreword, the president of The World Bank, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, wrote that he hoped that the report “shocks us into action” and that “a 4°C world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs” (Yong Kim 2012). Kevin An- derson (2012, 29) states that “a 4°C future is incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable, and civilized global community. A 4°C future is also beyond what many people

129 think we can reasonably adapt to.” So, if we only consider climate change, it seems highly likely that we are heading toward a world that will be radically different from that of today—even toward a global collapse. But climate change is only one of our global challenges. Richard Heinberg (2007) claims that we not only face peak oil, but “peak everything,” and that during this century, we will see a decline in not only fossil fuels, but also in parameters like grain production, uranium production, fresh water availability per capita, wild fish harvest, and yearly extraction of metals and minerals like copper, platinum, silver, and zinc. We are living in a period of the greatest material abundance in human history, states Heinberg, but this period will soon end as the cheap fossil energy that has made the over-consumption and abundance possible is diminishing and becoming harder, and therefore more expensive, to reach. Heinberg states that, “while the 20th century saw the greatest and most rapid expansion of scale, scope, and complexity of human societies in history, the 21st will see contraction and simplification. The only real question is whether societies will contract and simplify intelligently or in an uncontrollable, chaotic fashion” (ibid., 8 my italics). Here, we have the question of choice that will be a red thread through this thesis, the choice between Conventional Development (continue the expansion) and Great Transition (intel- ligent contraction and simplification). For Heinberg, the root cause of most of our societal challenges is fossil energy: “Even long-standing and perennial problems like economic inequality have been exacerbated by high energy flow rates” (ibid., 21). If we instead of addressing our challenges one by one, direct our efforts on the root cause, and reduce our consumption of fossil fuel, we could both reduce “many forms of environmental pollution” and create “more local jobs, more fulfilling occupations, and more robust local economies” (ibid., 22). Not only is there an energy transition needed, but also what is perhaps more important is a mental transition. We need to wake up from the illusion that the way we live today is normal when, in fact, we have only lived this hi-energy, over-consumption life for a relatively short period of human history, Heinberg argues. Therefore, we need an “intellectual reassessment of every facet of life—food,

130 work, entertainment, travel, politics, economies and more” (ibid., 23). Here, different stories will play a crucial role that I will come back to. Although giving up a life of abundance that we, the wealthy part of industrial civilization, are accustomed to may seem tough, but it may also bring aspects that many of us will find attractive and worth striving for. According to Heinberg, not only will environmental destruction and greenhouse gas emissions diminish as a consequence of contraction and simplification, but also economic inequity. He brings up how pre-industrial, hunter and gatherer communities who survived on minimal energy flows also were “nearly free from economic inequality” (ibid.). These communities shared their resources equally and their economy was a “gift economy – as opposed to the barter, market, and money economies that we are familiar with” (ibid.). This does not mean that we have to become hunters and gatherers again, but to strive for a low-energy society and equality is necessary. That equal societies are better societies has been stated by, for example, Wilkinson and Pickett (2009). And when trying to bring forward good aspects that are likely to follow with a society that has contracted and simplified, Heinberg (2007, 14-15) lists some things that are not currently at their historical peak like, for example, community, intergenerational solidarity, cooperation, leisure time, and happiness. Of these, Heinberg (ibid., 15) discusses leisure further and comes back to the hunters and gatherers who worked about 1,000 hours per year. This should be compared with medieval peasants who worked 1,620 hours annually and US workers in the early industrial period who worked 3,500 hours. This is when work hours peaked. Today an employee works for about 2,000 hours. Heinberg (ibid.) concludes that “a simplification of the modern economy could result in a reversion to older, pre-industrial norms” regarding human labor. He is not alone in making this connection between less work and sustainability. To work, produce, and consume less has also been advocated by Coote, Franklin, and Simms (2011), Holmberg et al. (2011), and Sanne (2012). But, what will a world of “less, slower, and smaller” mean and look like? Here, Heinberg (2007) and many others point to the necessity of visions because people will not make this transition unless

131 they have a notion of where they are going and to which new goals they should aspire.

A reversion to the normal pattern of human existence, based on village life, extended families, and local production for local consumption – especially if it were augmented by a few of the thrills of the late industrial period, such as global communications – could provide future generations with the kind of existence that many modern urbanites dream wistfully. (ibid., 19)

Heinberg also mentions the Transition Town Movement as a positive example of communities that are already striving to live a simpler and less energy-intensive life. I will come back to them. As already stated, the transition into a sustainable world will demand an intellectual transition, a change of mindsets, worldviews, values, and practices. This is a cultural project that will be mediated by stories. We will need these stories to be able to make wise decisions about our future. Throughout this thesis, I quote different scenarios of how our future will turn out if things turn out wrong or right. Heinberg also delivers such a scenario, in the form of a letter from the future written by a historian in the year 2107. So, I began this chapter with Oreskes and Conway’s rather grim description of our future and will end it with some quotes from Heinberg.

At first, most people thought the shortages could be solved with “technology.” However, in retrospect that’s quite ludicrous. Af- ter all, their modern gadgetry had been invented to use a temporary abundance of energy. It didn’t produce energy. Yes, there were nuclear reactors (heavens, those things turned out to be night-mares!), but of course nuclear power came from uranium, another non-renewable resource. Then there were photovoltaic panels, which were a much better idea–except the fact that some of the crucial materials, like gallium an indium, were also rare, quickly depleting substances. /…/

Solar power was a good idea; its main drawback was simply that it was incapable of satisfying people’s energy-guzzling habits. With the exhaustion of fossil fuels, no technology could have

132 maintained the way of life the peoples had gotten used to. /…/ Stores were empty. People were out of work. How were they to survive? The only way was by endlessly recycling all the used stuff that had been manufactured before the energy crisis. /…/

The cruel irony was that most of their stuff consisted of cars and electronic gadgets that nobody could afford to operate anymore. Worthless! Anybody who had human-powered hand tools and knew how to use them was wealthy indeed – and still is. /…/

Ironically, perhaps the indigenous people who were most per- secuted by civilization are probably doing the best. They still retained a lot of knowledge of how to live simple on the land. In some places, people are dwelling together in makeshift rural communes; other folks are trying to survive in what’s left of the great urban centers, ripping up concrete and growing what they can as they recycle and trade all the old junk that was left behind when people fled the cities in the 2020s. /…/

Many of the survivors learned valuable lessons. They learned what’s important in life and what isn’t. They learned to treasure good soil, viable seeds, clean water, unpolluted air, and friends you can count on. They learned how to take charge of their own lives, rather than expecting to be taken care of by some government or corporation. There are no “jobs” now, so people’s time is all their own. They think for themselves more. Partly as a result of that, the old religions have largely fallen by wayside, and folks have rediscovered spirituality in nature and in their local communities. The kids today are eager to learn and to create their own culture. The traumas of industrial civilization’s collapse are mostly in the past; that’s history now. It’s a new day. (Heinberg 2007, 175-183)

133 134 PART III: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

135 SUSTAINABILITY, COLLAPSE, AND RESILIENCE

In this chapter, I will sketch a brief overview of the interrelated concepts of sustainability, collapse, and resilience. While sustainability is a familiar concept for most people, the question of collapse and what will happen if we fail to reach sustainability is seldom brought up in discussions regarding sustainability. It is almost taken for granted that we will succeed in this mission. I have never attended a meeting regarding sustainability where the question of collapse or survival has been central or even mentioned at all. So, am I just apocalyptic when bringing up this perspective living in Sweden, one of the wealthiest nations on Earth? Well, here is how the Malmö Commission define sustainability: “A sustainable development is defined as the situation for humanity that can be drawn out in time and with existing knowledge is assumed to gua- rantee human survival and welfare” (Stigendal and Östergren 2013, 20). If survival is the goal, then I think it is time to start discussing our prospect for survival, both globally and locally. If our survival was something that we could take for granted or guaranteed, why bring it up at all? As I mentioned in the introduction, the question of access to resources and how these resources are both overused and unequally distributed will have a crucial role in any discussions regarding sustainability. Consequently, the question of equity will be central, as we will se in the Brundtlandt Commission’s original definition of

136 sustainability. As seen, the question of equity is also central in the work of the Malmö Commission.

Sustainability or Resilience?

The need to discuss “our common future” and sustainability goes back to the nineteenth century when Thomas Malthus argued that we would not be able to feed a growing population (Östergren 2012). More contemporary voices have been Rachel Carson’s book A Silent Spring, published 1962, and The Club of Rome’s book The Limits of Growth from 1972. But the real breakthrough came in 1987 with the UN report “Our Common Future” led by Gro Harlem Brundt- land. The Brundlandt Commission defines sustainability as:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs. (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987)

In the Brundtlandt Commission’s definition, there are three interrelated aspects of sustainability: social, ecologic and economic. Some- times a fourth cultural aspect is also included. In recent years, the concept of resilience has become more common and used in parallel or as a complement to sustainability. Resilience is crucial in this thesis. But in becoming some kind of a buzzword in contemporary society—in the same way as design, social innovation, and sustainability—it can be difficult to grasp and there are many different definitions out there depending on different disciplinary perspectives. It is one of those concepts, like, again—design and social innovation—you almost feel that you should stay away from. Resilience theory has also been criticized for being apolitical, building on consensus, neglecting power issues, being abstract, and presented through an engine-

137 ering perspective (e.g., Hedrén 2014). I will discuss this critique below. But the resilience concept contains too many aspects that are useful in trying to define how society could respond to our complex challenges that not using it would be unwise. It is also frequently used when describing different practices, in both design and social innovation, which aim to deal with societal challenges and sustainability. Therefore, before developing more on resilience, I will briefly look into the difference between sustainability and resilience. Joseph Tainter (2006, 92) believes that people sustain what they value and what they know which is a “positive or valued part of their current way of life.” But sustaining an unsustainable way of life conflicts with reaching sustainability, which requires a changing lifestyles. Tainter, therefore, distinguishes between sustainability and resilience:

Sustainability is the capacity to continue a desired condition or process, social or ecological. Resiliency is the ability of a system to adjust its configuration and function under disturbance. In social systems, resiliency can mean abandoning sustainability goals and the values that underlie them. Sustainability and resiliency can conflict. (Tainter 2006, 92)

According to Tainter (2006), most human groups prefer, or strive for, the comfort of an accustomed life, sustainability, rather than the adventure or dramatic change of resilience. Tainter also views sustainability as problem solving, which often means adding complexity without knowing the long-term consequences.

Confronted with problems, we often respond by developing more complex technologies, establishing new institutions, adding more specialists or bureaucratic levels to an institution, increasing organization or regulation, or gathering and processing more information. (Tainter 2006, 93)

But this adding of complexity often implies the unforeseen, long- term effects of increasing costs and declining returns, and in the end, a possible collapse. Based on historical cases, Tainter (ibid.,

138 98-99) discusses three scenarios for the success or failure of long- term problem solving. The Roman model is based on solving problems by adding complexity, increasing costs, and extracting higher levels of resources, which eventually led to its collapse. The Byzantine model demonstrates a totally different strategy based on the insight that there are not enough resources to continue increasing complexity. Instead, it is based on systematically simplifying society and abandoning the established traditions of government and society. This model is resilient and leads to recovery. The Eu- ropean model, which we live in today, is based on problem solving that produces increasing complexity and consumption of resources. This model has been successful because we have, by luck according to Tainter, found new resources and energy. Had we not been so lucky, the world would be a different place, Tainter argues. He lists seven lessons we can learn regarding complexity and sustainability from these cases:

1. Sustainability is an active condition of problem solving, not a passive consequence of consuming less. 2. Complexity is a primary problem-solving tool, including problems of sustainability. 3. Complexity in problem solving is an economic function, and can reach diminishing returns and become ineffective. 4. Complexity in problem solving does its damage subtly, unpre- dictably, and cumulatively over the long term. Sustainability must therefore be a historical science. 5. Sustainability may require greater consumption of resources rather than less. One must be able to afford sustainability. 6. The members of an institution may resort to resiliency as a strategy of continuity only when the option of sustainability is foreclosed. 7. A society or other institution can be destroyed by the cost of sustaining itself. (Tainter 2006, 99)

The question is if, we today, face a situation were we must start a global discussion about whether or not we should abandon sustainability and strive for resilience. Here, I think a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse could be a space for such a discussion.

139 Tainter closes by discussing different strategies to deal with social complexity in relation to sustainability. For example, he stresses the importance of being aware and understanding that “unsustainable complexity may emerge over periods of time stretching from years to millennia, and that cumulative costs bring the greatest problems” (ibid., 99). The most interesting strategy is the last one which concerns recalibrating or revolutionizing the activity. Tainter states that these kinds of revolutions are rare and often mark a new era, like the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the In- formation Revolution. In these revolutions, fundamental change depends on opportunities for positive feedback where elements reinforce each other. Tainter (2006, 100) gives an example of how the combination of “coal, steam engines, and railroads” became the components of the Industrial Revolution, “all mutually reinforcing each other.” Today, we probably have most of the components of the Great Transition, the “reservoir of alternatives” (Westley, Goebey and Robinson 2012, 14) in place, just waiting for the opportunity to reinforce each other. Our task is to put these components and alternatives together. Here, I think a task of the design thing could be to experiment with these new compositions and explore them in different scenarios. Another task could be to communicate these visions and adherent value sets to a wider public that could then develop into a citizen movement. In this way, we would not only have a reservoir of alternatives ready in case of a crisis as opportunity, but also have an active public that desires and demands the alternative, and in this way, opens a window of opportunity.

140 COLLAPSE

There is real hope, but that hope reduces significantly each day. (Kevin Anderson 2012)

We are probably living at the end of an era—the end of industrial civilization. But, as Hine and Kingsnorth (2009) write in the Dark Mountain Manifesto, this does not have to be the end of the world full stop, but rather the beginning of something new. If we now recognize this end and start to prepare for a new world, to begin the transition of society and transformation of our systems, this new world does not have to be something horrible. Instead, we need to understand this transformation of society as something similar to the transition between agrarian and industrial culture. The problem is that we have a deeply rooted view of the future as the continuation of the values and goals of industrial culture, the ideas of expansion, technological innovation, and economic growth—more, better, and faster. But if we uncritically continue on this path, it seems that we are headed toward a very dark future. Instead, if we now acknowledge that this is the wrong way and choose to explore alternative paths (adventure!), there is still hope for a world worth living in. But, like an expedition into unknown territories, this will demand a huge effort from us. Therefore, from now on, I will discuss something that may seem contradictory—collapse and hope. Could design and a design thing be part of creating hope? I mean this not only in sense of creating

141 the usual visions or scenarios, but also and maybe more importantly, in the sense of preparation, of being part of building a adaptive and transformative capacity in people and society in a way that gives a sense of confidence—a sense that we are able to respond to crisis and changing conditions—that we don’t have to become victims of disaster. My own way into theory of collapse came through reading the book Kollaps – livet vid civilisationens slut (Collapse – Life at the End of Civilization) by Swedish journalist David Jonstad (2012) and some research articles from the HCI and Interaction Design communities (Tomlinson et al. 2012 a, b, Blevis and Blevis 2010). Also Björn Forsberg (2012) addresses the notion of collapse in his book Omställningens tid – Tillväxtens slut och jakten på en hållbar framtid (The Age of Transition – The End of Growth and the Search for a Sustainable Future). During my work teaching Design for Sustai- nability, I was aware of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse – How So- cieties Chose to Fail or Succeed (2011) as my colleague, Olof Kolte, often talked about it. But I never read it because then I had a more optimistic approach and was quite naïve and narrow-minded, mainly interested in solutions. But now, I turn to Diamond and Tainter for definitions because from the research I have conducted so far, they seem to be two strong and recurring voices. According to Tainter (2006, 92), socio-political collapse could be defined as “a rapid simplification, the loss of an established level of social, political, or economical complexity.” By collapse, Diamond (2011, 3) means “a drastic decrease in human population size and/ or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.” One major factor why past societies, like the Maya people or the inhabitants of Easter Island, have collapsed is that people have destroyed the environmental resources (forest, land, water, other species) that the society needed to survive. Today, we can add human-caused climate change, increase of toxic chemi- cals in our environment, energy shortages, and full-human utiliza- tion of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity as threats to our own civilization (ibid, 7). Diamond believes that most of these threats will be critical within the next few decades, and that the kind of collapses that are already a reality today in developing countries like Somalia and Rwanda

142 can also become a reality in industrialized countries. But, somewhat optimistically, Diamond (ibid.) means that rather than doomsday scenarios of human extinction or apocalyptic collapse, it will be more likely with a future of “significantly lower living standards, chronically higher risks, and the undermining of what we consider some of our key values.” In continuing to define factors that are important to consider in understanding how societies collapse, Diamond stresses that it is not only environmental factors, but also the interrelatedness between factors or systems which researchers like Ahmed (2010) and Huppé et al. (2012) emphasize as important. Aside from climate change and environmental damage, other factors which contribute to collapse are hostile neighbours, friendly trade partners, and how society responds to its environmental problems. Diamond (2011, 11) claims that the last factor, how a society chooses to respond to its challenges is always important and this depends on its political, economic, and social institutions as well as on its cultural values which is the aspect that I will focus on. “Those institutions and values affect whether the society solves (or even tries to solve) its problems” (ibid., 15). Diamond explains why some societies make disastrous decisions with failed group-decision making due to conflicts of interest or group dynamics. He lists four categories of factors which contribute to failures in group decision-making. First, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. One reason for this is lack of prior experience of a problem or lack of any memory of an experience. For example we quickly forgot about how the 1973 oil crisis demonstrated how vulnerable our societies have become by their dependency on global flows of oil. Second, when a problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Here Diamond (ibid., 425) brings up the term “creeping nor- malcy,” where phenomena like global warming emerge over a long period of time and “it’s difficult to recognize that each successive year is on the average slightly worse than the year before.” There- fore, the experience of older people who can remember how things were, let us say fifty years ago, is very important. Third, even if a society perceives a problem, they may fail to even try to solve it. One reason for this according to Diamond (ibid.,

143 427) is what social scientists have called “rational behavior” due to conflicting interests between people. “That is, some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interest by behavi- or harmful to other people. Scientists term such behavior ‘rational’ precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible” (ibid.). In this case, Diamond exemplifies how mining companies in the 1970s in Montana left their mines with arsenic, copper, and acid leaking out into the rivers because there were no laws forcing them to clean up their mess. Instead, the clean-up costs of five hundred million dollars fell on the citizens of Montana (ibid., 428). Another example of this “rational behavior” is when decision-making elites isolate and protect themselves from the consequences of their decisions. Diamond mentions one example of a society that has minimized these kinds of clashes of interest, the Netherlands. Through history, the Dutch have learned that all seg- ments of society live in the same polder and are dependent on each other for survival. Social scientists also talk about “irrational behavior” that is harmful to everyone. “Such irrational behaviour often arises when each of us individually is torn by clashes of values: we may ignore a bad status quo because it is favoured by some deeply held value to which we cling” (ibid., 432). Here is, I think, one of the clues to why we, both as individuals and societal collectives, have such difficulties in addressing our societal challenges in adequate ways. Diamond develops this thought:

It is painfully difficult to decide whether to abandon some of our core values when they seem to becoming incompatible with survival. At what point do we as individuals prefer to die than to compromise and live? Millions of people in modern times have indeed faced the decision whether, to save their own life, they would be willing to betray friends or relatives, acquiesce in a vile dictatorship, live as virtual slaves, or flee their country. Nations and societies sometimes have to make similar decisions collectively. (ibid., 433)

I will come back to the issue of core values and the need to change them below. It is not only Diamond who brings up this critical choice, but also resilience researchers. Folke et al. (2010 no page)

144 claim that the consideration of transforming a social-ecological system into a new stability landscape may demand “forcing people to change deep values and identity.” And as we will see, core values will also have a major role in the choice between staying on the path of Conventional Development and changing to that of Great Transi- tion. I also think that these considerations regarding whether or not to change values have to do with habits, practices, and relationships. The fourth, and last, category concerns how a society has antici- pated, perceived, and actually tried to solve the problem, but failed. Reasons for this failure could be that “the problem may be beyond our present capacities to solve, a solution may exist but be prohibiti- vely expensive, or our efforts may be to little and to late” (Diamond 2011, 436). The aspect of how we perceive something is fundamental in problem setting, and throughout this thesis, I will explore how values and frames (our worldviews) influence whether we see something as a problem or not. Diamond states that the difference between past collapsing societies and us is that today we have larger populations, more destructive technologies, and “today’s interconnectedness posing the risk of a global rather than local collapse” (ibid., 521). Despite this pessimis- tic outlook, he is cautiously optimistic. Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, “we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and starting solving them” (ibid. 521). “We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems; while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most part we ‘just’ need the political will to apply solutions already available” (ibid., 522). To date, we have seen a distinct lack of political will during the past thirty to forty years, but perhaps this will change. Furthermore, Diamond argues that we have two types of choices that determine whether we will fail or succeed: long-term planning and a willingness to reconsider core values. He means that “courageous” (ibid., 522), long-term thinking and decision-making when problems have become perceptible, but not yet developed into a crisis, can be decisive for the outcome. The other crucial choice concerns making “painful decisions about values” (ibid., 523), which connects to the discussion above. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can be maintained under changed circumstances and which have to

145 be replaced by a different approach? wonders Diamond. Among the examples in the book concerning societies that have been forced to make decisive choices regarding values and identity, he mentions the Norse population of Greenland who, instead of living as the Inuit, chose to stick to their identity as a “European, Christian, pastoral society” (ibid.) with the consequence that they died. Diamond hopes that these historical examples of how societies have made choices regarding whether to stick to or change long-held core values can inspire us to make wise choices: “how much of our traditional consumer values and First World living standard can we afford to retain? I already mentioned the seeming political impossi- bility of inducing First World citizens to lower their impact on the world. But the alternative, of continuing our current impact, is more impossible” (ibid.). Later, I will come back to the issue of values and frames, and how civil society organizations and social change movements aim to change these to attain social change.

Resilience

The first thing we must do to plan successfully for contraction is to set achievable goals, using sensible indicators. We must cease aiming for increases in scale, amplitude and speed with regard to nearly every material parameter of the economy. We must aim instead to increase society’s resilience – its ability to absorb shocks while continuing to function. That means relocalizing much economic activity. (Heinberg 2007, XXIV)

In this thesis, I aim to explore two characteristics of resilience— adaptation and transformation. Adaptation is more conservative and related to sustaining what we have and transformation is more radical, aimed at innovation and creating something new. These two versions of change are interesting to discuss in relation to the concept of sustainability and the more radical claim that we need to transform and re-organize society as whole. Conse- quently, adaptation would fit in the Conventional Development scenario and transformation would fit better within the Great Tran- sition scenario. Resilience is the capacity of a system, whether it’s an ecosystem

146 such as a forest or a fish population, or a social system like a community to deal with challenges or disturbances. The best way to understand resilience is by going back to its roots in ecology. One recurrent definition of resilience is by Walker et al. (2004, no page):

Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks.

Folke (2006) lists three types of resilience: engineering resilience, ecological/social resilience, and social-ecological resilience (see table below). I will focus on social and social-ecological resilience

Resilience Characteristics Focus on Context concepts

Engineering Return time, Recovery, Vicinity of stable resilience efficiency constancy equilibrium

Ecological/eco- Buffer capacity, Persistence, Multiple equilibria, system resilience withstand shock, robustness stability landscapes Social resilience maintain function

Social-ecological Interplay dis- Adaptive Integrated resilience turbance and capacity, trans- system feedback, reorganization, formability, cross-scale dynamic sustaining and learning, inno- interactions developing vation

Figure 5. Resilience concepts according to Folke (2006, 259)

Social resilience is the ability of human communities to withstand external shocks to their social infrastructure. But, according to Folke (2006, 260), by only focusing on human adaptability one could create changes that the ecosystem may not be able to sustain and therefore generate “traps and breakpoints in the resilience of a social-ecological system.” That is why the more holistic social-ecological approach is stressed in resilience theory. In social-ecological resilience, the ideas of adaptation, learning, and self-organization are important in addition to the general ability to absorb disturbances and notion of robustness.

147 Folke et al. (2010) have introduced the concept of resilience thinking which integrates resilience, adaptability, and transformability. They view adaptability as part of resilience and the capacity to adjust responses to changing external drivers and internal processes which allow for development within the stability domain. But under critical circumstances, there could be a need for leaving the current stability domain and shift domain. This is called transformability and is the capacity to cross thresholds into new development trajectories. Later, I will discuss transformability in relation to the Gre- at Transition scenario. Folke and colleagues also advocate the study of the resilience of social-ecological systems (SES) and claim that social-ecological resilience is about “people and nature as interdependent systems” (Folke et al. 2010 no page). It is difficult, and even irrational, to study them separately. Today, human civilization is close to cross a critical threshold that may force us to leave the stability domain of the Holocene. To be able to avoid undesired and critical transitions like this, we need innovation and profound changes in society; therefore, “social change is essential for SES resilience” (ibid.). This is why they incorporate adaptability and transformability as key ingredients of resilience thinking. With adaptive capacity, one can maintain certain processes despite changing internal demands and external forces on the social-ecological system. In contrast, transformability is the capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable. As an example, Folke et al. (2010 no page) claim that striving for adaptability that is socially desirable may lead to a more vulnerable social-ecological system; therefore, one has to consider transforming the social-ecological system into a new stability landscape which, in turn, may demand “forcing people to change deep values and identity.” These are the kinds of choices that Diamond has brought up; for example, if the Norse population on Greenland were to choose between holding on to their identity as Christians or start living as the Inuit to be able to survive. The following passage also stresses the importance of not only technical innovation, but also social innovation that includes aspects such as lifestyles, cultural values, and questions like:

148 Are there deeper, slower variables in social systems, such as identity, core values, and worldviews that constrain adaptability? In addition, what are the features of agency, actor groups, social learning, networks, organizations, institutions, governance structures, incentives, political and power relations or ethics that enhance or undermine social–ecological resilience… (Folke et al. 2010 no page)

A design thing addressing societal collapse will need to address questions and aspects like these in the preceding quotation. Later, I will look into how social change movements use the concepts of values and frames (worldviews) and work towards changing values and frames as a way to tackle societal challenges (e.g., Lakoff 2004, 2010a,b, Crompton 2010, Darnton and Kirk 2011). Developing the concept of resilience thinking further, Folke et al. (2010, no page) touch upon issues and dilemmas that we have experienced in our work with the Area Programmes in Malmö. First, we saw the tendency to focus on one issue (e.g., jobs) instead of the bigger picture and the interrelatedness of social challenges. Here, they distinguish between specified resilience, which regards specific aspects of a system and its specific challenges, and general resilience, which concerns all manner of challenges or shocks and coping with uncertainties in many ways. They claim that by focusing on one particular aspect, one is “narrowing options for dealing with novel shocks and even increasing the likelihood of new kinds of instability” (ibid). In this case, it is important to understand that focusing on one specific aspect of a system may not help in avoiding the system to shift into an undesired state and that one, therefore, must realize the need to transform the whole system. The authors claim that this is often not easy in social-ecological systems with strong cultural beliefs. The society may first need a wake-up by a shock or crisis that could “open up opportunities for re-evaluating the current situation, trigger social mobilization, recombine sources of experience and knowledge for learning, and spark novelty and innovation” (ibid.). Secondly, they bring up the importance of working across different scales and with different actors, especially in situations regarding transformational change. Transformational change involves changing the whole stability landscape by introducing new variables and

149 losing others. Here, they cite a region that moves from an agrarian economy to a resource-extraction economy as an example. Whether a social-ecological system is easy to transform or not depends on its level of transformability—in other words, if it has high levels of different forms of capital, diversity of landscape or institutions, actor groups, networks, and learning platforms. Again, social and cultural aspects are important. Transformational change can be deliberate if it is initiated by the concerned actors or forced upon them by changing environmental or socio-economic conditions. Forced transformational change is likely to occur on larger scales that are difficult for local actors to tackle. On the other hand, deliberate transformational change can be initiated on different scales but is likely to be considered too expensive, undesirable, or socially unacceptable if initiated on a larger scale. This corresponds well with how, for example, local transition initiatives (transition towns) voluntarily transform their communities and aim at becoming resilient to be able to meet peak oil and climate change while the higher societal levels of government are stuck in status quo. Therefore, Folke et al. (2010) claim that transformational changes introduced on a smaller scale and in a sequential way are preferable and could eventually lead to large-scale changes. For such a process to be successful, it is important to involve actors and organizations which bridge the small, local scale to the higher social-ecological scales. Transformations of social-ecological systems often consist of three phases: preparing the social-ecological system for change, navigating the transition by making use of a crisis as a window of opportunity for change, and finally, building resilience of the new social-ecological system (ibid.). With resilience thinking, Folke et al. (2010) broaden the resilience concept to not only mean the robustness or persistence of a system, but also the capacity to innovate and develop new pathways. It is interesting to relate the concept of resilience thinking back to the role of both design things and design labs. Aspects like “transformative experiments on small scales,” “cross-scale learning,” “involve[ing] a broader set of stakeholders” to allow new initiatives to emerge fits well with the functions of design things and design labs. I will come back to these aspects when discussing the design thing. Also recently, resilience researchers (e.g., Westley, Goebey and Robinson

150 2012) have begun to explore the notion of change labs and what role design can have in these. One important lesson from resilience thinking which could be brought in to the design thing is to gather actors from various levels, disciplines, and sectors around the question of whether or not one should stay and adapt in the current stability domain or start a transformation process leading to a new domain. This would mean exploring the space between Conventio- nal Development and Great Transition. In resilience theory, a healthy system continuously goes through the four phases of release, reorganization, exploitation, and conservation in an adaptive cycle often illustrated as an infinity loop. The concept was initially developed by C.S. Holling in the 1970s to describe ecological systems. However, recently researchers have applied the concept to both resilience and social innovation processes. According to Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton (2007) there are parallels between Hollings adaptive cycle and economist Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction where a healthy economy goes through cycles of destruction that release resources for creativity and innovation. “In both natural and economic systems, after a phase of growth, followed by a phase in which that growth was conserved, there seemed to be the need for release. Failure to release the creativity for the next phase created a rigidity to the system, which Holling described as the ‘the rigidity trap’” (ibid, 67). West- ley, Zimmerman, and Patton warn that we risk getting stuck in a rigidity trap if we can only see one way of doing things. We have to do things in a new way.

Change of this kind is always difficult. It often means stopping doing something that we have done for years. It may mean leaving a job, ending a program, abandoning an approach or a system that has served us well. But the adaptive cycle tells us that unless we release the resources of time, energy, money and skill locked up in our routines and our institutions on a regular basis, it is hard to create anything new or look at things from a different perspective. Without those new perspectives, and the continuous infusion of novelty and innovation in our lives, our organisations and our systems, there is a slow but definite loss of resilience, and an increase in rigidity. (ibid., 68 my italics)

151 I will claim that we, the inhabitants of industrial civilization, are caught in the rigidity trap of Conventional Development. To get out of this trap, we need new perspectives, that is, new frames, and we need to release the resources locked by Conventional Development to feed the creativity and innovation that is needed to realize the Great Transition.

Community Resilience

Which actors will drive the transition of society, strive for sustainability or resilience, and prepare for a society after a collapse? It will probably not be politicians or other powerful actors with interests in business as usual and Conventional Development. Instead, researchers mention grassroots and bottom-up initiatives like “creative communities” (Jégou and Manzini 2008). And, as we will see, it is the actors from civil society and engaged citizens who are pointed out as “the critical sources of change for new values” in the Great Transition scenario (Raskin et al. 2002, 49). We can find these active citizens striving to make their communities more resilient in the international Transition Towns Movement that has grown from just two groups in 2006 (Kinsale, Ireland and Totnes, England) to over 1,107 initiatives in more than forty-three countries across the world in 2013 (Transition Network 2015). Of course, powerful and established actors will have a role, but the questions are: Which role? And when? As Folke et al. (2010) state, transformational change at a larger scale is often considered too costly, undesired, and socially unacceptable, but if it is introduced and experimented with on a smaller scale, it may lead to feedback effects on a larger scale. It is for this reason, I now delve into the concept of community resilience. Connie P. Ozawa defines a resilient community as a “community that is able to respond to unexpected and unwelcomed events in ways that enable groups and individuals to work together to minimize the adverse consequences of such crises. A resilient community is adaptable, not rigid” (Ozawa 2012, 19). Ozawa discusses resilient communities that may face crises caused by risky technology, like nuclear power plants. Through emergency mitigation plans, a community can be prepared to “respond, minimize damage, reassess its assets, and resume normal livelihoods and lives” (ibid., 20). These

152 plans are created through a social effort involving all actors concerned. In this way, relationships among people are established long before a crisis, as well as during a crisis, and they will remain long after. Here, Ozawa stresses the role of social trust in achieving “the working relationships that fuel resilient communities” (ibid). Will Norman (2012) also stresses the importance of relationships for building resilience in a community. Norman (2012, 7) claims it is not just relationships between individuals in a community, but also between organizations, “specifically between the voluntary sector, the local community and the public sector.” In his report, Norman sets out to explore why some communities facing challenges fail, decline, or ultimately (but rarely) die, while others do well or even thrive while managing to renew themselves. Norman describes two types of resilience, one that focuses on the ability to survive change and shocks and the other that focuses on the ability to transform in the face of shocks. He claims that the defensive “survival” understanding of resilience has dominated the literature about community resilience. In this perspective, resilience is the ability to just survive and persist within the framework of business as usual and current way of life. To this understanding could also be added a focus on the individual without the influence of the complex system of family and different organizations, and a focus on one-off shocks or events instead of looking at more long-term changes which challenge a community. Resilience has also been a popular concept within policy and Norman (2012, 15) makes an important observation when bringing up the UK Cabinet Office definition of resilience as “The capacity of an individual, community or system to adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure, and identity.” Again, with its “acceptable level,” it is the defensive “survival” version of resilience. This must be considered in the light of the UK government “big society” and “austerity” policy. Here, the transformation aspect of resilience is missing and the notion that resilience can also be about “flourishing through change” (ibid.) and the ability to innovate into a better situation. To widen the notion of resilience, Norman discusses the characteristics of what makes a community able to both survive and thrive in the long term. The level of resilience in a community depends both on an in-

153 dividual’s personal resilience through skills and assets and on the relationships between the individuals, organizations, and authorities in a community. Building resilience in a community also depends on its resources which are not limited to people and relationships. Nor- man (2012) lists seven types of resources: social, human, political, natural, built, financial, and cultural resources. Of these, Norman describes cultural resources as:

The way people “know the world” and how they act within it. Cultural capital influences what voices are heard and listened to, which voices have influence in what areas, and how creativity, innovation, and influence emerge and are nurtured. (Norman 2012, 35 my italics)

The cultural aspect of resilience becomes increasingly more important and will influence whether we choose to go on with our current way of life or if we realize the need to break with many of the goals and values that have defined industrial civilization. This will affect if we choose to just go on as usual, wait and adapt for survival, or if we start the transformation of ourselves, our communities, and our society now; the transformation into a world in which we could thrive again. The challenge of re-learning how we “know the world” is probably much more important and of a greater magnitude than innovating new technology or finding new physical resources. I will return to the aspect of how we “know the world” when discussing how frames shape the way we see the world.

Collaborative and Communicative Resilience

Participatory Design builds on collaboration, a theme that is explored in the anthology Collaborative Resilience: Moving through Crises to Opportunity (Goldstein 2012). In the book, the authors discuss how collaborative processes can bring adaptive and transformative resilience through building trust and the cognitive capacity to understand and address complex challenges. As Participatory Design, collaborative resilience builds on mutual learning between various actors. Goldstein (2012, 360) suggests that the “productive tension” between different actors or disciplines (in his case, planners

154 and natural resource managers) informs what he calls “communicative resilience,” “which is not the intersection between these two fields, but rather a product of their difference. Communicative resilience is an empowerment discourse that often functions outside state control and challenges state legitimacy; as such, it challenges the persistent managerialism of both planning and natural resource management.” Contrary to the critique brought forward by Hedrén (2014) that resilience theory is apolitical, builds on consensus, and neglects power issues, many of the authors in Collaborative Resilience go beyond consensus processes and conflict resolution. As Goldstein (2012, 367) states, many of the collaborative approaches in the book “resemble social movements in which conflict is accepted as constructive and unavoidable.” This connects well to the concept of agonism that my colleagues have explored (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010) in participatory design processes. Goldstein (2012, 367) states that “experts who engage in a collaborative process as apolitical puzzle-solvers may reinforce an unfair and unre- silient status quo by displacing the focus from political ‘what to do?’ questions to technical ‘how to?’ questions, obscuring underlying conflict over what are fundamentally challenges of governance and power sharing.” Goldstein sees communicative resilience as a “framework for communities to both define and pursue resilience through collaborative dialog, rather than solely through expert analysis. A resilient system emerges as participants debate and define ecological and social features of the system and appropriate scales of activity” (ibid, 366). He also brings forward how many of the authors have emphasized the use of narratives or stories “about the past, present, and future” as a way to present alternative framings (ibid.). He state that “collaborative interaction can provide potent spaces for reshaping multiple frames and truths, enabling participants to re-examine their ways of thinking and revise assumptions that inform institutional norms, rules and practices” (ibid. my italics). This is much in line with how I imagine the function of a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse. The idea of mutual learning that is at the core of Participatory Design and design things is also recurrent in Goldstein’s idea of com-

155 municative resilience. He mentions joint fact-finding where experts engage directly with stakeholders, including those with local knowledge. This joint fact-finding and creation of a broad knowledge base also increases democracy as it “flattens power within the group by removing the knowledge monopoly enjoyed by some and eleva- ting the value added by practice-based and human systems knowledge, thus giving a larger array of stakeholders influence within the collective decision process” (Weber 2012, 193). But, Goldstein argues that communicative resilience goes beyond joint fact-finding and collective sense-making.

It suggests that the system does not preexist the collaborative, which draws on diverse knowledge practices and storytelling to define it, their place in it, and its preferred condition. It is a coproductive dynamic, as system conditions are determined and reshaped through collaborative interaction. (Goldstein 2012, 370)

This co-productive aspect challenges conventional practical engagements as, for example, resilience scientists “need to engage in dialo- gic processes to define resilience as opposed to providing a definition themselves” (ibid.). I believe this openness to others’ knowledge and perspectives to be ready to reshape one’s own knowledge and definitions is highly important. In conclusion, Goldstein states that:

communicative resilience invokes a spectrum of activities, from stakeholder-based collaboration to more agonistic politics of collective resistance and struggle against powerful actors and networks. This range of collaborative possibilities transcends widely accepted conditions and principles for good collaborative design, such as facilitator neutrality /…/ and maximum inclu- sivity /…/. In exchange for sacrificing comfortable assumptions about their managerial authority and prerogatives, practitioners can occupy new roles and contribute not only to a more resilient future but also to one that is more in tune with collective preferences arrived at through deliberation. They can contribute to a just social-ecological resilience. (ibid., 370-371 my italics) This concluding description of communicative resilience is much in

156 line with the idea of agonistic design things (Emilson and Hillgren 2014, Björgvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren 2010, 2012a, b). It also points to intersections between Participatory Design and communicative resilience, and I believe that exploring the potential in collaborations between these two practices can be most fruitful.

Critical Perspectives on Resilience

As mentioned above, resilience research has been criticized for being presented through an engineering perspective, being apolitical, and neglecting power issues (Hedrén 2014). Hedrén (2014) questions if resilience theory is able to generate the alternative vision of society that it claims to do. He argues that resilience theory lacks perspectives from the social sciences and humanities and there remains a “void of systematic and thorough analyses of social change and the historical transformation of society” (Hedrén 2014, 66). He means that conflicting interests and values are not seriously addressed and that “the resilient utopia makes its appearance as a society in perfect harmony” (ibid. 71).

When stripped of all its systems theory rhetoric, a pretty familiar beast appears: the utopia of resilience is strikingly similar to the current postpolitical society ordered by a capitalist economy. Flexibility and innovation within a capitalist framework show up as ecological modernization and flexible accumulation: a society ruled by production and consumption of the many for the profit of the few. Void of any serious analysis of the root of evil, resilience theory reaches a dead end in suggestions that, within the unquestioned capitalist framework, would probably bring the post-political ethos to a position of even stronger hegemony. (ibid.)

Hedrén also states that without anchoring to a certain political or ideological standpoint, resilience theory counteracts “sound utopianism” and rather recalls “blueprint utopianism” that can be found in totalitarian projects “in which a framework is sought that prescribes a number of institutional features and rules for organizing any society – irrespective of its cultural, geographical, historical,

157 economic, or ecological specificities” (ibid.). This critique may be relevant regarding the theory and the research that Hedrén quotes, but I will argue that the global citizen movement that strives to make their communities more resilient, that puts theory into action, would neither identify themselves with an “unquestioned capitalist framework” nor with a totalitarian project. In the introduction of his text, Hedrén mentions the “transition movement” among the proponents of resilience theory, but he never mention them again. Instead, he focuses on the academics. But as we will see below, transition activists are both aware of the “root of evil” and they produce alternative realities—“real utopias” (Wright 2010). Alf Hornborg (2013, 129) has also criticized resilience theory for lacking social science perspectives, “particularly its understanding of culture and power.” He states that power implies unequal access to resources, unequal influence over the construction of mainstream discourse, and that such inequalities are socially maintained through “cultural mystification, i.e. by rendering them either invisible or self-evident and ‘natural’” (ibid. 121). “To understand ‘social–ecological systems’, it is absolutely necessary to address the political dimensions of such cultural discourses. In the modern world, this means addressing the political dimensions of mainstream economics” (ibid. 122). Hornborg finds it remarkable that resilience theory has not yet zoomed in on money, or what he calls “general purpose money,” as a central factor in generating unsustainable practices and social ecological vulnerability, or how economic globalization “undeniably increases the dependency and vulnerability of local communities” (ibid. 124). According to the logic of general-purpose money, all kinds of values are commensurable and interchangeable on the world market. In this way, it has become a “natural” cultural practice to “trade rainforests for Coca-Cola” (Ibid. 123). As an alternative to general-purpose money and global markets, Hornborg brings forward the idea of a bi-centric economy consisting of special-purpose money and local markets as a complement to the global economy. As we will see, the idea of local markets and currencies is something the Transition Town Movement has already made a reality (e.g., Brixton Pound 2014). Hornborg (ibid. 124) also refers to them: “The creation of local currencies for community cooperation and survival is a recurrent theme in the turbulent history

158 of international finance, and is a central component in the Transi- tion Towns movement.” Given that it links theory with practice, I find Hornborg’s critique more generative than Hedrén’s. With that stated, Hedrén’s critique is also adequate, and I think that, for example, totalitarian tendencies can be avoided by bringing the issues regarding how to reach alternative visions and creating resilience in agonistic forums like a design thing.

Transition

So far, I have refereed to academic definitions of resilience and community resilience. The shortcomings with these are that they tend to become highly abstract, especially if they lack a case describing the situation and the role of a local community. But resilience is a term not only used by academics but also by citizens and activists striving to make their communities more sustainable and able to meet social, ecological, and economic challenges and crises. One such movement is the global Transition Town network that was initiated by Rob Hopkins in 2006. In the introduction to The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience, Hopkins (2008, 12) states that resilience is a concept familiar to ecologists, “but less so to the rest of us.” He defines resilience as “the ability of a system, from individual people to whole economies, to hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of change and shocks from outside.” He then asks the question that very few scientific texts addresses at all, but is crucial to the argument of this thesis—what does resilience look like? Hopkins answers this by describing a visit to the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan in 1990. His description is not only one of a resilient community, but also most likely of a community that lives according to planetary boundaries and social foundations. I will, therefore, cite a longer quote:

Here was a society which lived within its limits and had evolved a dazzlingly sophisticated yet simple way of doing so. All the waste, including human waste, was carefully composted and returned to land. The terraces which had been built into the mountainsides over centuries were irrigated through a network of channels that brought mineral-rich water from the glacier above down to the

159 fields with astonishing precision. Apricot trees were everywhere, as well as cherry, apple, al- mond, and other fruit and nut trees. /…/ Being on the side of a mountain, I invariably had to walk up and down hills a great deal, and soon began to feel some of the fitness for which the people of Hunza are famed. The paths were lined with dry stone walls, and were designed for people and animals. Not for cars. People always seemed to have time to stop and talk to each other and spend time with the children who ran barefoot and dusty through the fields. Apricots were harvested and spread out to dry on the rooftops of the houses, a dazzling sight in the bright mountain sun. Buildings were built from locally-made mud bricks, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And there was always the majestic splendour of the mountains towering above. Hunza is quite simply the most beautiful, tranquil, happy and abundant place I have ever visited, before or since. (Hopkins 2008, 12)

This is a story that easily could be dismissed as a traveler romanti- cising about an exotic destination in a magazine. But then Hopkins writes something that is highly relevant in the context of this thesis:

If (at that time) Hunza were to be cut of from the world and the global economy’s high-ways of trucks packed with goods, it would have managed fine. If there were a global economic down- turn, or even a collapse, it would have had little impact on the Hunza Valley. The people were resilient too, happy, healthy and with a strong sense of community. (ibid., 13)

Hopkins is not alone in describing people living in remote and self-sustaining communities as survivors. Kaufman (2012, 89) writes that perhaps the people that are most likely to survive a collapse may be “subsistence farmers.” The author John Berger defines his farming neighbours in the mountains of Haute Savoie in France as “a class of survivors” (quoted by Hine 2009, 94). Hopkins (2008, 55) lists three crucial ingredients of a resilient system: diversity, modularity, and tightness and feedbacks. When it comes to diversity, Hopkins (ibid.) states that we need a diversity of

160 functions in our societies, for example, regarding land use: “farms, market gardens, aquaculture, forest gardens, nut tree plantings” are key to the resilience of a settlement. Modularity relates to how the components of a system are linked. “The over-networked nature of modern, highly connected systems allow shock to travel rapidly through them, with potentially disastrous effects” (ibid., 56). For example, animals that are transported around the world and are spreading diseases. On the contrary, local food systems and local investment models add to the modularity, “meaning that we engage with the wider world but from an ethic of networking and information sharing rather than of mutual dependence” (ibid.). Regarding tightness and feedback, Hopkins means that in more local systems, the consequences of our actions are more obvious and direct than if they were in another part of the world. For example, people who live off the grid in terms of energy “are more mindful about their consumption because they are closer to its generation – the feedback loop is smaller,” Hopkins states (ibid., 57). The initial driver of the transition movement is the prospect of peak oil and climate change. The first initiative was the Energy Descent Plan for Kinsale in Ireland where Rob Hopkins was a permaculture teacher in 2005. Then back in Totnes, England, he initiated the first transition town in 2006. Transition initiatives are based on four key assumptions:

1. That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise. 2. That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil. 3. That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now. 4. That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more en- riching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet. (Hopkins 2008, 134)

It also becomes clear that people working with resilience on site are

161 not as apolitical and afraid to name the root of evil, and which is the critique Hedrén (2014) directs at academics. But the Transition Town Movement’s critique and activism comes not in the form of demonstrations and academic texts, it comes in the form of not only pointing out one alternative (we will need more), but also realizing it. In a way, they have created what Erik Olin Wright (2010) calls real utopias. Hopkins (2008, 14) clearly states that the root cause of our situation is economic globalization, which is both unjust and “a rapacio- us destroyer of environments and cultures.” But the “Achilles heel” (ibid.) of economic globalization is its oil dependency. “The very notion of economic globalisation was only made possible by cheap liquid fuels, and there is no adequate substitute for those on the scale we use them. The move towards more localised energy-efficient and productive living arrangements is not a choice; it is an inevitable direction for humanity” (ibid.). That fossil fuels are the root cause to our situation is something Hopkins shares with Heinberg as we have seen. Hopkins describes the way to more self-sufficient, low-energy and adaptable communities as one of rebuilding “local agriculture and food production, localising energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience” (ibid., 15). This localization includes increased democracy and local currencies like Totnes Pounds, or Brixton Pounds that “makes money work for Brixton by supporting smaller shops and traders who are under threat from the recession and larger chains. It stays in Brixton and circulates, increasing local trade and community connections. Money spent with independent businesses circulates within the local economy up to three times longer than when it’s spent with national chains, research by nef has shown” (Brixton Pound 2014). Hopkins (2008, 55) explains that this localization will not mean to “put up a fence around our towns and cities,” neither is it a rejection of commerce nor a return to a “rose-tinted” past: “What it does mean is to being more prepared for a leaner future, more self reliant, and prioritising the local over the imported” (ibid.). This localization of economic activity is advocated by new economics researchers (e.g., Boyle and Simms 2009) and by Hornborg (2012), who brings up the

162 idea of sphere economies, or bi-centric economy, with a local market and currency for products and services that are better to produce locally (food, textiles, construction material, care etc.) and a global market and currency for products and services that are harder to produce locally (telecommunications and high-technology health care). Hopkins and the transition network are not alone; around the world, a great many initiatives and communities are striving to become resilient. One that I have been following closely for a couple of years is the grassroots organization, Bay Localize, based near San Francisco. They define community resilience as “a community’s ability to withstand and recover from hard times. Even in the case of a widespread emergency, residents can meet their basic needs including food, water, energy, transportation, housing, and economic and social services” (Schwind 2009, 5). Bay Localize addresses challenges like climate change, rising energy costs, and economic recession. They believe that “the task of our generation is to learn to live happily on fewer resources, to distribute these resources equitably, and to make our communities resilient enough to withstand the bumps in the road along the way” (Bay Localize 2015). Also in this case, the critique of resilience theory to be apolitical does not correspond. Bay Localize stress the importance of meeting the needs of all residents in a community, especially in communities that struggle. This will mean to “change patterns of power and distribution of resources that contribute to inequities in our society” (Schwind 2009, 4). Equity can be seen as a keyword in the work of Bay Localize and not only in regard to income and class divisions, but also regarding race divisions.

People with greater access to resources – especially middle- and upper-class whites – may already live in or find it easier to build resilient communities than people whose families have not been allowed to accumulate assets in the same way due to our history of discriminatory laws, prejudice, and violence. (Schwind 2009, 16)

This aspect of resilience is also most relevant in Malmö with its socio-economic divides. Bay Localize prioritizes vulnerable residents

163 with low income or those have been racially discriminated against and are likely to be hit hardest by climate change and other crises. Through a survey (Schwind 2013, 13), they found that vulnerable citizens rate “partnering with organizations in vulnerable communities” as the most effective strategy for local governments to engage them in planning, and that these vulnerable citizens also think it is a good strategy to connect “vulnerable job seekers with jobs in resilience.” Bay Localize inform that local ”green jobs” are expected to grow in areas like “alternative energy, bicycle transit, energy and water efficiency and conservation, green building, material reuse, organic food, public transit, and recycling” (Schwind 2009, 60). Here, we can see another view of work and jobs than simply jobs within a market frame like that which was advocated by trade and industry in Malmö; in this case, jobs go hand in hand with community resilience.

A Safe Operating Space—Planetary Boundaries and Social Targets

So far, we have seen that both the concept of resilience and of transition can be helpful in finding a direction in how to reorganize society to become a place where we both survive and thrive. I will now look into the idea of a safe operating space and the linked concepts of planetary boundaries and social targets as complementary guides into the future. During the past ten thousand years, we have lived in an era called the Holocene where the state of the environment on Earth has been quite stable, and this formed the preconditions for human civilization to arise (Rockström et al. 2009). But since the rise of the Industrial Revolution, human actions have been pushing the Earth’s system out of the stable state of the Holocene “with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world” (ibid, 472). We have entered a new era called the Anthropocene “in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change” (ibid.). To avoid catastrophic consequences and to keep the Earth within the desirable Holocene state, Rockström et al. suggest a framework called planetary boundaries. “These boundaries define the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth

164 system and are associated with the planet’s biophysical subsystems or processes” (ibid). The seven planetary boundaries are: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle, phosphorous cycle, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, change in land use, atmospheric aerosol loading (to be determined), and chemical pollution (to be determined). Today, the first three planetary boundaries have already been crossed (ibid. 473). In a recent paper, Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014, 125) combine these planetary boundaries with “agreed social targets, such as the Millennium Development Goals.” The social targets are ”number of chronically hungry (hunger), international inequity (inequity), and water stress (water)” (ibid, 127). Although I will consider planetary boundaries as a guiding concept for finding a direction into the future, it is too abstract to work with on a local level. This also holds for the social targets. But the need to find a compass which combines environmental limits and social targets is also brought up in an Oxfam discussion paper written by Kate Raworth (2012), who also uses the planetary boundaries concept. Raworth extends the notion of a safe operating space by adding just, as in the title of the paper: “A safe and just space for humanity” (ibid.). The aspect of justice is often forgotten in discussions about climate change or environmental problems, but it helps when pointing out the problem: “the biggest source of planetary boundary stress today is excessive resource consumption by roughly the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world’s population, and the production patterns of the companies producing the goods and services that they buy” (ibid., 5). Consequ- ently, to tackle global inequity within planetary boundaries will demand that the wealthiest ten percent share their wealth and decrease their consumption. The model for a safe and just space is illustrated as two circles, or a doughnut, where the inner circle is the social foundation and the outer circle is the environmental ceiling (planetary boundaries), see figure 6 on the following page. The concept of a safe and just space for humanity offers an integrated perspective “where everyone’s lives must be built on the social foundation of human rights while remaining below the environmental ceiling” (ibid, 8). This also changes the role of the economy where the aim is no longer growth but to “bring humanity into the

165 Figure 6. “A safe and just space for humanity to thrive in” (Raworth 2012, 4). safe and just space” and to “promote increasing human well-being there” (ibid.). In 2014, Oxfam started to apply the concept in Scot- land (Sayers, Trebeck and Stuart 2014).

In this thesis, I will use the idea of planetary boundaries, or “environmental ceiling,” in Raworth’s words, and social foundation as guiding principles to work with in a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse. It is also interesting to view the social foundation and environmental ceiling as constituting a design space to explore. I will return to them and look into how Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014) relate planetary boundaries to the two scenario narratives of Conventional Development and Great Transition.

Shocks and Slides—Survival and Transformation

The collapse of industrial civilization will most likely not come in the form of apocalypse—one big blow that wipes out everything.

166 Rather, it will come in the form of a slow grinding down of our institutions and infrastructure that John Michael Greer calls the “long descent.” At the same time as this slow grinding down creeps upon us in the background, we will be hit by sudden crises in the form of natural catastrophes, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. This parallel existence of acute disruption and incremental disruption has been called “shocks and slides” by the American climate justice organization, Movement Generation (2015). This can be related to the two types of change capacities in resilience—adaptation and transformation. We need adaptive capacity to cope with and survive sudden disruptions within the existing organization of society, and we need transformative capacity to deliberately transform our society into a world where we can both survive and thrive from a long- term perspective. To transform our society means abandoning many of the values that contemporary society is built upon and breaking down its resilience, then start searching for new values and building up the resilience of the new world. Therefore, the task of a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse must address this disrupted state of “shocks and slides,” discuss new developing strategies based upon adaptation and transformation, and stake out new trajectories of inquiry and action into the future.

167 SOCIAL INNOVATION

In this chapter, I discuss social innovation as an approach to tackle societal challenges; but first, one has to acknowledge that social innovation is “complex and multi-faceted” (Nicholls and Mur- dock 2012, 7), and a diversity of actors, economies, and practices constitute the field. The purpose of this chapter is not to give a complete or in-depth overview of social innovation, but rather to sketch a framework that is relevant for this thesis; therefore, I only briefly mention some aspects or perspectives, yet go more in-depth on others. My own motive for diving into the social innovation discourse is a belief in democratic principles and an interest in how design can be part of exploring new possibilities to create a more sustainable, equal, and just world. To reach that goal, I believe one must move beyond single solutions in the form of products and services that sustain business-as-usual, or the hegemony, and instead, address issues on both the individual and systemic level. For me, the overall objective for social innovation is the reorganization of society to truly affect the causes of social problems and not simply relieve the symptoms. But first—what is social?

The Social

As stated earlier, my topic is to explore design for social innovation. If my topic were design for technical innovation, I could lean on a solid theoretical framework all the way back to 1969 and cite

168 Herbert Simon’s influential book, The Sciences of the Artificial. But what is the social? I must confess that this crucial question has haunted me since the beginning of this thesis work. How should I tackle it? Quite late, I began to glimpse into Mikael Stigendal’s book Den gode socialvetenskaparen – Vetenskapsteori i vardande (The Good Social Scientist – Theory of Science in the Making) (2002). His reasoning was greatly helpful, and therefore, I will base my initial understanding of the social on his writing. I had even written a book chapter called “Designing the Social” without truly knowing what the social was. Now, with the help of Stigendal (2002, 85 my translation), I will define the social as “contexts of social relations, activities and competences.” One recurrent argument in this thesis is that there is not one reality, but that we construct reality through various perspectives (frames) and various ways of making sense of the world (Schön 1993, 149). This connects to Stigendal, who believes that science needs to deal with a reality which holds meaning we cannot take for granted. He explains, “It is a reality that consists of relations between people who create” (Stigendal 2002, 69) and according to his view, people in relationships with each other are the prerequisite for a society and that the object of the social sciences—the social world—consists of people, relation, and activity/creation.

The social world demands human creation. All human activity with the aim of meeting a need according to a prearranged plan is to be regarded as creation. Without creation – no social world. /…/ Creative activities are therefore called primary. (ibid., 71)

Creative activity. This expression will become crucial in this thesis, and not in the restricted context of the fine arts, design, or the creative industries, but in the meaning of “all human activity” with the purpose to meet a need. I believe that human activity is something we need to reframe to be able to reach a sustainable and just world. Today, human activity is taken for granted as meaning work and production within the market economy. It was this kind of framing of activity that, in the end, decided the outcome of the exploration of what an incubator for social innovation could be. But as Stigendal argues, activity or work has a wider meaning than just wage labor.

169 My view on creation implies an upgrading of life outside the market economy. Society has become dependent on the market economy activities. Generally speaking it is only as a producer for the market economy or as a consumer that we are considered fully qualified actors in society. (ibid., 72)

Stigendal writes that, since the 1950s, it is almost only through gainful employment that one can become part of society; for example, unpaid housework done by mothers is not perceived as valuable and is viewed as unemployment. In one of the reports for the Mal- mö Commission, Stigendal (2012, 34) writes that “other kinds of work,” e.g., voluntary work within civil society, studying, household work or care work are not acknowledged. Also feminist economists (e.g., J.K. Gibson-Graham) argue that wage labor and the market economy represent work and production only in part, as the tip of an iceberg. They argue that unwaged work is essential for wage labor and market labor to exist (Emilson, Hillgren, and Sera- valli 2014, 53). In the depreciation of life outside the market economy, one reveals one’s theory of reality, writes Stigendal (2002). I will argue that it reveals how one frames life in the world. The framing of activity as gainful employment has a crucial role in the projects I have been involved in. In these projects, wage labor is something positive and contributes to social sustainability, but the activity of supporting immigrant women in increasing their self-esteem and thus become more integrated into society is seen as “grant dependent” or leisure, and not as creating value for society that one should get paid for. The social world does not only consist of creative people, but also of the relationships between them. And our relationships with each other are dependent upon competence. When referring to social competence, Stigendal (ibid., 76) means competence demanded for “the establishment, maintenance, alteration and settlement of social relations.” Stigendal sees the relationships between humans as primary in the object of the social sciences and our relation to nature as secondary. “Even relations between humans and nature are necessary, but not sufficient and therefore not primary” (ibid., 75). Here, I find Stigendal’s view of the social as limiting and will therefore complement it with

170 another way of viewing the social that is brought forward by Bruno Latour. For Latour (2005a), the relationships between humans in the social world is extended to become associations or connections between actors that are both human and nonhuman in actor–networks. These actors might be “associated in such a way that they make others do things” (ibid., 107). Latour exemplifies with the actor–network of fishermen, nets, oceanographers, satellites, and scallops. “Scallops make the fisherman do things just as nets placed in the ocean lure the scallops into attaching themselves to the nets and just as data collectors bring together fishermen and scallops in oceanography” (ibid.). This view of the social as connections between humans and nonhumans could be fruitful when addressing today’s societal challenges which are described as interconnected. This could also be a way to overcome the separation between disciplines in silos and the separation between humans and nonhumans (nature) that many have requested (e.g., Hine and Kingsnorth 2009, Lakoff 2010a, Gibson-Graham 2014). Certainly, nonhuman actors like the rain, energy, toxic salmon, broadband nets, and rare frogs make us do things. I will not claim to apply proper actor–network theory in this thesis, but the notions of relationships, connections, or interde- pendencies between different phenomena, entities or actors in constellations, collectives or networks, are all things I attach myself to. This relates back to my initial interest in designing networks and my present interest in design things, hybrid forums, and knowledge alliances. In relating the idea of an actor–network to the exploration of the space between sustainability and collapse, one might ask what kind of actor–network is at play in Conventional Development or in Great Transition—which humans, values, beliefs, artefacts, or species have agency in each respective trajectory? On a local level, it would be possible to trace actor–networks belonging to the two different camps to various organizations, individuals, municipality departments, or city districts. We can also see that in some actor– networks, businesses and technologies have agency while in others, there will be edible plants in a forest garden that make the other

171 actors do something. Recently, it was reported that a rare frog put an end to planned urban developments in the Northern Harbour area of Malmö. See, an uninvited actor can also have agency! Thus, I claim that it will make a difference if, for example, the dead seabird with its stomach full of plastic sits at the table as a fellow in the collective. The seabird and other nonhuman participation in a design thing will affect which possible futures we discuss and choose. In this thesis, I also claim that one actor who makes another actor do something could be both stories/fictions and frames. The introduction of a story or a frame may very well mobilize the gathered actors to act in a new way or choose another trajectory of inquiry. In that way, a frame or a design fiction may have agency and influence the beliefs and values in a social system. Resilience and Social Inn- ovation Researcher Frances Westley (2008) defines social system as “any organized assembly of resources, beliefs and procedures united and regulated by interaction or interdependence to accomplish a set of specific functions.” As we will see, relationships are crucial in social innovation, whether they are social relationships or relationships in complex systems.

Social Innovation, Social and Societal Entrepreneurship— New Arenas for Design

They were a ragtag group of misfits and mavericks, heroic figures, seemingly single-handedly bringing jobs, healthcare and education to deprived communities. They were visionary and re- lentlessly optimistic, but practical and pragmatic. They self-consciously applied business methods to social problems, but weren’t motivated by profit. This iconoclastic, inspirational, sometimes frustrating and often self-promoting group did not even have a name for themselves. (Leadbeater 2007)

So begins Charles Leadbeater’s article “Mainstreaming of the Mavericks,” where he returns to the Demos report “The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur” (Leadbeater 1997), which he wrote ten years earlier. In the report, he draws a picture of the welfare state in the UK that was designed for a world in which all men had employment and all families were stable—a world that no longer exists (if it ever

172 had). Instead, the welfare state is under heavy pressure and unable to respond to social problems like long-term unemployment, drugs, families in crisis, and illiteracy. Leadbeater believe that society is stuck in an impasse and needs “a long wave of social innovation to develop a new philosophy, practice and organisation of welfare” (Leadbeater 1997, 1). Leadbeater writes that social entrepreneurs will be one of the most important sources of innovation as they identify under-utilized resources (people, buildings, equipment) and find new ways of using them to satisfy un-met social needs. In this way, they can create new welfare services or improve existing ones. Social entrepreneurs can be found in the public, private, or third sectors. Charles Leadbeater can be seen as a (theoretical) pioneer in this field and an important figure in this thesis, as the author of influential papers like Health: Co-Creating Services (Cottam and Leadbeater 2004), but mostly as a member of the RED group, and co-founder of the design company Participle. It is interesting to see how the themes of The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, the crisis of the welfare state, and the need for new responses returns in Beveridge 4.0 (Cottam 2008), but now in the shape of a design manifesto and guiding principles for Participle. Beveridge 4.0, written by Hilary Cottam, founder and principal partner of Participle, returns to William Beveridge who, in the 1940s, drew up a vision of the British welfare state but at the end of his life, realized he had made a mistake: he had missed the potential power of the citizen. Beveridge feared that he had created a “Social Service State” that encouraged individuals to passively focus on their needs (Cottam, 2008, 3). Therefore Beveridge 4.0 is focused on looking at issues through a new lens and turning current approaches on their heads. It departs from people and the lives they want to live and focuses on people’s capabilities instead of their needs. It is about “harnessing the power of the social,” motivating deep participation, and encouraging social connections and contributions (Cottam 2008, 7). Neither Leadbeater nor Cottam are trained designers. Leadbeater is a former journalist, political advisor, and researcher at the think tank, Demos, and Cottam is a social entrepreneur who has been working as an urban poverty specialist for the World Bank. But both have influenced design practice, and in 2005, Cottam was named

173 Designer of the Year in the UK. From a Design for Social Innovation perspective, it is interesting that Leadbeater and Cottam’s idea of an “active welfare system” can be related to Ezio Manzini’s idea of active well-being where the user is a co-producer “where the involved subject, facing a problem, is not only ‘part of the problem,’ but also ‘part of the solution’” (Manzini 2007, 242). The theme in The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur started as an issue in a research paper and ending up influencing new design principles and is a good background for this thesis. There are also clear connections. Bjarne Stenquist, the civil servant who led the Area Programmes in Malmö and who introduced the notion of social innovation and design practice/labs in the public sector, worked with Leadbeater at Demos in the 1990s. In Sweden, social entrepreneurship or rather, societal entrepreneurship, (samhällsentreprenör) was already being discussed in research in the 1970s, but around 2008, there was a renewed interest in the concept and researchers at Malmö University among others began to gather and discuss the concept. At that time, the Swedish Knowledge Foundation supported research on social entrepreneurship and published the anthology Samhällets entreprenörer (Gawell, Johanisson and Lundquist 2009). In the anthology, societal entrepreneurship is defined as:

Societal entrepreneurship is an innovative initiative which develops functions of advantage to society. A societal entrepreneur is someone who creates an innovative initiative to develop functions of advantage to society. (ibid, 8 my translation)

The Knowledge Foundation emphasizes that societal entrepreneurship is concerned with creating “public utility” and that this does not necessarily have to be in the form of a business.

Why Social Innovation? Background and Context

When Leadbeater put the spotlight on the emerging social entrepreneur and the need for social innovation at the end of the 1990s, he brought this phenomenon to the attention of a wider audience, but it was not new as the Swedish example of Mjölkdroppen (2015)

174 shows. The association Mjölkdroppen (The Milk Drop Association) was started in 1901 to help poor mothers provide their children with nutritious milk. At the time, ten percent of all newborns died because breastfeeding frequency was low. In the 1940s, this support to mothers and children was taken over by the public service childcare centers. Mjölkdroppen is an example of how a small initiative taken by an association develops into a public institution that also understand the importance of civil society in developing social innovations. Other examples of public institutions that were first developed by civil society and not by the state or the market are fire brigades and libraries. This historical role of civil society tends to be forgotten in contemporary discussions of social innovation where the focus is often on the stronger actors coming from the private sector (social entrepreneurs or philanthropist) and the public sector (public service innovation). This tendency to disregard the role of civil society also became evident in the incubator process. According to Hubert (2010, 31) the academic literature on social innovation traces its origins to Max Weber and Emile Durkheim whose view on social innovation concerned “innovations in the organisation of work and of society.” In the 1930s, Joseph Schumpe- ter introduced “the fundamental role of innovation and structural change in the organisation of society and the role of the entrepreneur as driver of development” (Ibid). Another example of the long history of social innovation is the Rockefeller Foundation which celebra- ted its one hundred years of existence in 2013. Its current director, Judith Rodin, defines innovation as a break from previous practice, “occurring when different points of view or existing practices are framed, imagined, or combined in new ways. Innovation succeeds when it creates new pathways for solving entrenched social problems, resulting in lasting transformation of the systems that most affect vulnerable populations and leave stronger social relationships in their wake” (Rodin 2013, 2). Rodin explains that today’s crises are “more nuanced and much more complex than in the past—huge in scale and scope, with no regard for man-made borders, and inex- tricably linked” (ibid, 4). One reason for the growing interest in social innovation today is the emergence of “new” complex challenges, both human, like chronic diseases and aging populations, and environmental, like cli-

175 mate change and shrinking natural resources, e.g., decreasing fossil fuels and biodiversity loss. These “new” challenges, in turn, challenge established systems, both public services and private markets, which are no longer able to respond in an adequate way. Thus, both the modern welfare state and market capitalism are challenged and put in constant crises by these intractable problems. Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 8) argue that this “failure of conventional solutions and established paradigms entrenched in intractable institutional settings” cuts across all conventional sectors and becomes evident in the private sector through market failures, in the public sector through silo thinking, and in the third sector through fragmentation and lack of scale. As a consequence of failing established models, the former focus on technological and economic aspects in innovation research and policy is also criticized (Caulier-Griece et al. 2012a, Nicholls and Murdock 2012). Caulier-Grice et al. (2012a, 5) argue that, “social innovation can be seen as a reaction on the bias towards technology and business in innovation research, policy and practice.” Social innovation could also be seen as a reaction and response to the negative social and environmental consequences of industrial civilization. According to Mulgan (2012, 36), social innovation often starts from a situation which creates unhappiness, disappointment, or anger—“the gap between what is and what could be.” This is much in line with the view that design is about moving from an unwanted situation to a preferred one and this “gap” could be described as a “design space” (Westerlund 2009) of constraints and opportunities to be explored. Mulgan (ibid.) states that the “premise of any social innovation is that the world is imperfect; that our knowledge of the world is incomplete; that creative innovation can achieve improvement; and that the best way to discover improvements lies in experiment, rather than revelation or deduction.” This way of exploring possibilities through experiments is much in line with how designers work. Another important aspect of social innovation is the kind of opportunity that often coincides with some sort of crises. Westley (2008, no paging) stresses this aspect in her definition and argues that to achieve durability and scale, social innovation “requires both emergence of opportunity and deliberate agency.” Here, institutio-

176 nal or systems entrepreneurs (Westley 2008, Westley and Antadze, 2010, Westley 2013) play an important role in identifying promising alternatives to the establishment and dominant approaches, but also in finding opportunities to connect these alternatives to the resources of the establishment. “Opportunities occur most frequently when there has been some release of resources through political turnover, economic crises, or cultural shift” (Westley 2013, 8). Another important role of systems entrepreneurs is to not wait for the establishment to demand alternatives, but to develop these in preparation for a crises or turnover in demand. Thus, one crucial aspect of social innovation is to develop alternatives that are neither understood or wanted by the establishment, but ready to be put in action when the establishment goes through a crises, stagnation, or breakdown. The aspect of developing alternatives is also brought up by Mul- gan (2012) who points to the importance of timing: “Wonderful ideas may simply be impossible at the wrong time” (ibid., 51). He describe the historical interdependence between innovation and prevailing technologies, institutions, and values and how techno-economic paradigms succeed one another through cycles of booms and crashes. Mulgan exemplifies these techno-economic paradigm shifts with the Great Depression. Already before the crash in 1929, the elements of the new economy existed in the form of cars and telepho- nes: “But they were neither understood by the people in power, nor were they embedded in institutions” (ibid., 53). But in the aftermath of the crash in 1929, the economy transformed from heavy industry and engineering to mass-production and mass-consumption. The Great Depression became not only the opportunity for a new economy, but also for new welfare policies developed in countries like New Zealand and Sweden, which later spread across the developed world (ibid.). If I summarize and relate the section above to the space between sustainability and collapse, we will need to develop “reservoirs of alternatives” (Westley, Goebey and Robinson 2012, 14) ready to replace dysfunctional systems when opportunities occur. As West- ley points out, these opportunities may occur through political decisions, a crisis, or a cultural shift. I think cultural shift will involve working with frames and values and will influence whether or not we make wise pro-active decisions and use our alternatives to trans-

1777 form society before a collapse occurs. The other alternative, which seems to be what we are doing now, is to wait and use the alternatives when a crisis or a full-blown collapse eventually occurs.

A New Innovation Paradigm

Many research overviews suggest that social innovation will play a major role in an emerging new innovation paradigm (e.g., Howaldt and Schwarts 2010, Caulier-Grice et al. 2012c, Murdock and Nicholls 2012). According to these overviews, we are about to leave an innovation paradigm based mainly on technological innovation aimed at driving an economy based on mass-production and mass-consumption. Technology will still play a major role in the emerging or, actually current, innovation paradigm as it is based on information and communication technology, networks, and distributed systems. Also, innovation processes are more “open” involving users, customers, and citizens in co-creating and co-producing new products and services. Both Caulier-Grice et al. (2012c) and Nicholls and Murdock (2012) relate their arguments regarding a new innovation paradigm to Carlotta Perez’ (2010, 5) “Five Great Surges of Development.” These periods of macro innovation can be summarized as:

• The Industrial Revolution • The Age of Steam and Railways • The Age of Steel, Electricity, and Heavy Engineering • The Age of Oil, Automobiles, and Mass Production • The Age of Information and Telecommunications (Based on Perez 2010, 5)

Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 2) state that these waves of macro-innovation have been driven more by economic and technological factors and that social and societal aspects have been considered subsidiary or external. But today, Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 2) consider social innovation to be a “sixth wave” of macro-innovation following the more technological-based predecessors listed above. They also mean that rather than viewing social innovation as a sub-category of technological-economic innovation, “it may be the

178 case that the reverse now makes a more compelling case” (ibid., 25). Social innovation has the potential of being as disruptive and influential as previous technological-economic waves. However, Nicholls and Murdock state, “rather than simply providing disruption within existing systems, it is proposed here that social innovation often goes further and attempts to disrupt and reconfigure systems themselves via changes to their internal institutional logics, norms, and traditions” (ibid., 2). As we will see, this systemic level of social innovation will play a crucial role in this thesis. But what is missing here and what I aim to address, is a discussion about what social innovation on a systemic level in a society that contracts rather than expands could mean.

Definitions

There is no single definition of social innovation and in our practice, we have experienced the concept difficult to communicate and many consider it “fluffy.” One reason why it is hard for most people to grasp social innovation is that it is a fairly new phenomenon. Therefore, I think social innovation suffers from the same difficulties in communication as sustainability. Lakoff (2010a, 73) argues that to understand something complex, “a person must have a system of frames in place that can make sense of the facts. In the case of global warming, all too many people do not have such a system of frames in the conceptual system in their brains. Such frame systems have to be built up over a period of time.” I think that the same goes for social innovation; it does not yet evoke associations in our minds that help us understand what it is. As a result, for example, politicians in Malmö dismiss social innovation as “folk high school for seeking grants.” Social innovation can be seen as an umbrella concept covering different actors, economies, and sectors (public, private, and third sector) or practices like entrepreneurship, health care, social service, or activism. Consequently, Caulier-Grice et al. (2012 b, 5) suggest that it is appropriate to view social innovation in the plural, consisting of diverse “fields and practices.” Social innovation also frequently builds on collaboration between actors from various disciplines and sectors which create new kinds of hybrid organizations or economic

179 models. I agree with this pluralistic view of social innovation, and as we will see, a hegemonic and ideological battle is being fought over how to define social innovation and what objectives to obtain with social innovation. In trying to capture both the scope and the core ideas of social innovation I will review some recurrent definitions of the field. A good starting point is in practice, and Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan (2010, 3) describe social innovation as:

New ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society’s capacity to act. (ibid.)

Here, I think one can connect the focus on building relationships and collaborations to enhance society’s capacity to act to the concept of adaptive and transformative capacity coming from resilience theory. It is reasonable to reflect on the aspect of the “new.” As Moulaert et al. (2005) have pointed out, social innovation in the sense of changes in an institution that lead to, for example, social inclusion, do not have to be new. In this perspective, social innovation could be a return to old institutional forms that serve inclusion better, and in that way, can be considered reformist. Phills, Deiglmeier, and Miller (2008, 39) stress that social innovation is a way to meet needs that otherwise would not be met and to create value that would otherwise not be created and thus define social innovation as:

A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals. A social innovation can be a product, production process, or technology (much like innovation in general), but it can also be a principle, an idea, a piece of legislation, a social movement, an intervention, or some combination of them. Indeed, many of the best recognized social innovations, such as microfinance, are combinations of a number of these elements. (ibid.)

180 From this definition, I will connect to the argument that innovation does not have to come in the form of a conventional product but could also be a law or an intervention, or the idea of hybrids and combinations of various elements. But the most important form of social innovation in the context of this thesis will be social movements, for example, the Transition Towns network that develop a range of alternatives, e.g., local currencies like Bristol pounds, to meet the challenge of peak oil and climate change. Here, we go beyond the single entrepreneur or organization and deal with a larger collective of actors that reframe reality, explore alternative life practices, and reorganize society to reach system change and resilience. Approaching social innovation from a third sector perspective, Borzaga and Bodini (2012) argue that the market is not only populated by for-profit enterprises, but also contains different types of enterprises such as shareholder companies, cooperatives, and social enterprises. Borzaga and Bodini (2012, 7) distinguish between pure business innovation “that have either a neutral or a negative effect on quality and quantity of life,” bifocal innovation that can be both business and social innovation that is both profitable and have “a clear positive effect on quality and quantity of life,” and pure social innovation “that are not business innovations and address needs that are not satisfied through the market mechanism” (ibid.). According to Westley and Antadze (2010, 2), “social innovations involve institutional and social system change, they contribute to overall social resilience, and they demand a complex interaction between agency and intent and emergent opportunity.” They define social innovation as:

A complex process of introducing new products, processes or programs that profoundly change the basic routines, resource and authority flows, or beliefs of the social system in which the innovation occurs. Such successful social innovations have durability and broad impact. (ibid.)

From this definition, I will connect to the idea that social innovation concerns complex systems and resilience. Later, I further develop

181 Frances Westley’s view of social innovation as I find it is in line with my own aspirations. As seen in the definitions in the preceding text and as Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 4) show, social innovation exists on different levels with different foci: on an incremental level with a focus on products and services, on institutional level with a focus on markets, and on a disruptive level where the focus is on politics and system change. It is the latter, disruptive level that I find most interesting and relevant to this thesis.

Example Level Objective Focus Organisation

Incremental To address identi- Products and Kickstart (low- fied market failures: services cost, irrigation foot e.g., negative pump), Aurolab externalities and (low-cost, intra-ocu- institutional voids lar lenses), Afghan Institute of Learning (female education)

Institutional To reconfigure Markets MPESA (mobile existing market banking), Institute structures and pat- for One World terns to create new Health (‘orphan’ social value drugs), Cafédirect (Fairtrade)

Disruptive To change the Politics (social Greenpeace cognitive frames of movements) (environmental reference around change), markets and issues BRAC (micro to alter social sys- finance), tems and structures Tostan (human rights)

Figure 7. Levels of social innovation according to Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 4).

In their review of the use of the term, Caulier-Grice et al. (2012a, 6) found five recurring categories describing social innovation: societal transformation; organizational management; social entrepreneurship; development of new products, services and programmes, and lastly, a model of governance, empowerment and capacity building. The category that deals with “transformation of society as a

182 whole” (ibid.) is much in line with disruptive social innovation on a systemic level (Nicholls and Murdock 2012, Westley and Antadze 2010). Finally, Howaldt, and Schwarz (2010, 21) explain that the distinction between social and technical innovation is in the imma- terial and intangible structure of social innovations: “The innovation does not occur in the medium of a technical artefact but at the level of social practice.” Practice—what people really do—is also fundamental in Participatory Design (Robertson and Simonsen 2013). Another important characteristic of social innovation for this thesis brought up by Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan (2010, 7) is the role of stakeholder networks. The firm is the key agent of innovation in business. The drive in the social innovation field is more likely to come from a wider network, “perhaps linking some commissioners in public sector, providers in social enterprises, advocates in social movements, and entrepreneurs in business” (ibid.). This insight from social innovation theory fits well with our ambition in the living labs of gathering a wider network of heterogeneous actors to explore and tackle social and societal challenges.

Difference Between Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation

I began this chapter with recalling Leadbeater’s report, “The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur” (1997), where he argues for the need of a long wave of social innovation. So, are social innovation and social entrepreneurship the same thing? In mainstream jargon, it is common to jump back and forth and mix up the concepts, but they do not have the same meaning. Through the example of Muhammad Yunus microfinance service, Phills, Deiglmeir, and Miller (2008) make the distinction between the social entrepreneur (Muhammad Yunus), social enterprise (Grameen Bank) and social innovation (microfinance). According to Caulier-Grice et al. (2012a), social innovation is a much broader concept than both social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, but they may overlap with each other. Also, West- ley and Antadze (2010) address the overlap between the concepts but call for conceptual precision. They make a similar distinction as

183 Phills, Deiglmeir and Miller and state that social entrepreneurship is human centered and focuses on the qualities of the individual who creates an organization. In social enterprise, the focus is on organizations with profit orientation obtained through blending business interests with social ends, but according to Westley and Antadze (2010), profit is one distinction between the concepts and social innovation does not need to involve a commercial interest. Again, Westley argues that it is the orientation toward systems change that is distinctive for social innovation.

The Hegemonic Battle Over a Name

Social innovation is not neutral or without values, but rather the opposite; it is always political and socially constructed (Caulier-Grice 2012a, Nicholls and Murdock 2012). Consequently, social innovation is not by itself something objectively good. It always depends on the context and the values, needs, and objectives of the actors involved. According to Nicholls and Murdock (2012, 5), social innovation may have a “dark side” exemplified by secret societies, extreme political parties, or “deviant or unintended consequences that achieve negative social effects (e.g., by excluding some groups from the focus of social goods, services, or change).” On the other hand, as Mulgan (2012, 36) states, if “social innovation has any ideological bias it is towards deeper democracy and empowerment of society” and “a belief in rough equality” (ibid, 61) which is very much in line with the ideological bias of Participatory Design. But to ally oneself with vulnerable and marginalized actors and challenge the establishment implies “a necessarily uneasy relationship with any fixed institutions, power structures, and policies” (ibid.). This is something we have experienced in our practice, the resistance from powerful actors within trade and industry, the municipality, and the academy who embrace the idea of social entrepreneurship and social innovation, but at the same time, stubbornly maintain the perspectives and interests of the old order. Social innovation in this conservative sense is more about adapting and sustaining existing systems and power relations rather than transforming them into new systems and distributing power and resources. If, in the past, social innovation or social change movements were

184 associated with individuals or grassroots organizations, unhappy with social inequalities or environmental destruction, and who challenged the establishment and called for change. Today it is becoming mainstream, as pointed out by Leadbeater, and embraced by both governments (new policies) and the market (social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility). With this mainstreaming follows a hegemonic bias where the establishment demand the change makers to subordinate themselves according to their logic through policies and objectives in grant applications. This development has been criticized. For example, Borzaga and Bodini (2012) find it iro- nic that so much of the debate on social innovation borrows heavily from the private sector as it, in many cases, could be seen as the source of many of the problems that social innovation addresses. They exemplify with the crises of the welfare state where the response in the 1990s was a wave of privatization where many welfare functions became transferred from the public to the private sector; yet, this did not solve the problems. This failure of the establishment, both of the market and the state, calls for radically new types of logic, organizations, and policies. Borzaga and Bodini (2012) propose that this could be found in “pure” social innovation and in actors from the third sector or civil society. As we have seen in historical examples like Mjölkdroppen, to a large extent, social innovation has its roots in civil society. And as we will see, it is actors from civil society and groups of ordinary citizens that are believed to drive the “great transition” (Raskin et al. 2002). Roberto Magabeira Unger (2013) describes social innovation as “headquartered in civil society” (ibid., 4), but as the social innovation movement concerns not only civil society, but “everything” (ibid., 1), then civil society must also reach out and engage the politics of the state, the corporate world, media, and culture. “It must engage every area of social life, although beginning from its seat within civil society” (ibid., 4). The collaboration between sectors and disciplines, exemplified through concepts like the bees and the trees and powerful stranger (see below) is necessary, but not without its difficulties and conflicts. Therefore, when powerful actors with interest in Conventional Development embrace and define social innovation in a way that neutralizes and depoliticizes it, it is important to recall its roots

185 in civil society, social movements, and the ambition to change root causes and systems.

Networks in Social Innovation

Social innovation is often prompted by social needs that neither the market nor the state have addressed or managed to respond to. This gap represents the opportunity an innovator or entrepreneur needs to take an initiative, and it seems that social innovation thrives in this borderland of gaps, crossings, and hybrids of existing models and organizations. Social innovation is often created in alliances between “the bees” and “the trees” (Mulgan 2007), crossing sectors or silos within organizations.

Social change depends, in other words, on alliances between what could be called the ‘bees’ and the ‘trees’. The bees are the small organisations, individuals and groups who have the new ideas, and are mobile, quick and able to cross-pollinate. The trees are the big organisations – governments, companies or big NGOs – which are poor at creativity but generally good at implementation, and which have the resilience, roots and scale to make things happen. Both need each other, and most social change comes from alliances between the two, just as most change within organisations depends on alliances between leaders and groups well down the formal hierarchy. (Mulgan 2007, 20)

The kinds of networks and resources that are considered to be valuable in social innovation is in deep contrast to the small, informal, and exclusive governance networks that have been described earlier. One reason for this is that social innovation often aims beyond the focus on markets and entrepreneurs that are favored in governance and city politics. Rather, as seen, in social innovation theory, the ultimate goal of social innovation is often described as systemic change (Murray, Caulier-Grice and Mulgan, 2010, Nicholls and Murdock 2012, Westley and Antadze 2010). This disruptive level of social innovation (Nicholls and Murdock 2012, 4) involves interaction between diverse elements such as social movements, business models, laws, and new practice (Murray, Caulier-Grice and Mulgan

186 2010). Systemic innovation “commonly involves changes in public sector, private sector, grant economy and household sector, usually over long periods of time” (ibid., 13). Disruptive social innovation will not be content with relieving the symptoms with Band-Aid solutions but aims for the underlying causes. This often means challenging established institutions that control the distribution of resources and power. To be able to disrupt and change the broader system “a social innovation must cross multiple social boundaries to reach more people and different people, more organizations and different organizations, organizations nested across scales (from local to regional to national to global) and linked in social networks” (Westley and Antadze 2010, 5). Networks that only span between the private and public sector will, consequently, be insufficient if you aim to reach real system transformation; rather, one will need collaboration between the establishment and radicals. Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton (2007) describe such collaboration with the concept “powerful stranger.” They see power as control of resources “of time, energy, money, talent and social connections” (ibid., 95), and that the creation of something new needs such resources. To have power also means the power to maintain the status quo or the power to change. Anyone who wishes to transform a system has to unlock resources claimed by the status quo. Therefore, a change maker that lacks resources needs to embrace “the risk and rewards of engaging the powerful stranger” (ibid., 99):

Early power and resources for change are often found through connection, through joining together with fellow travellers, like-minded individuals whose chief resources are their passion, their time and their energy. If successful at this stage, the community becomes a movement, which opens the door for confrontation and possibly conflict as those who control larger portions of money, authority and access resist demands for change. If the system is to be transformed as opposed to overturned, collaboration between the radicals and the establishment must be created. If it succeeds, deep shifts in the distribution of resources may occur. (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007, 99)

187 The powerful, established governance networks that often are seen as efficient with a strong “ability to act” will not necessarily be the solution because social change cannot be enforced with muscles top down, but rather one has to mobilize resources and create conditions for change to emerge (Westley, Zimmer- man and Patton 2007). Also, when aiming for social change it is crucial to take approaches that put inquiry ahead of certitude and to allow for paradoxes and multiple perspectives because “there are no simple formulas – serious and significant social change necessarily involves recognizing and dealing with complex systems” (ibid., IX). This calls for networks built on heterogeneity and explicit inclusion of smaller actors. One such network concept is “the bees and the trees” (Mulgan 2007), introduced above. Here, it is important to stress that it is not only the “bees” that need the resources of the “trees,” but that the established and powerful actors also need the resources of weaker actors— the knowledge from the margins. Murray (2009) brings up the shift to a networked paradigm where distributed systems spread complexity from centralized organizations to the margins, to households and front-line workers. These actors at the margins could be seen as closely related to the “bees”.

Those at the margins have what those at the centre can never have – a knowledge of detail – the specificity of time, of place, of particular events, and in the consumer’s and citizens case, of need and desire. This is the potential. But to realise it requires new terms of engagement with users, new relations at work, new terms of employment and compensation. (Murray 2009, 19)

Westley and Antadze (2010, 5) also stress the importance of local contributions and viewpoints from marginalized actors: “social innovation not only serves vulnerable populations, but is served by them in turn.” Against this context, I think it is interesting to explore if a design thing could be a platform for “new forms of participation” and for gathering heterogeneous stakeholders to consciously deal with societal challenges and social innovation.

188 Complexity and Systemic Social Innovation

One characteristic of contemporary societal challenges is that they are interconnected and complex (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007, Huppé, Creech and Knoblauch 2012, Christiansen and Bunt 2012, Caulier-Grice et al. 2012b).) Here, one also finds a common denominator between design and social innovation: they address and act upon complex or “wicked” (Rittel and Weber 1973) problems. According to Rittel and Weber (1973, 160), societal problems are inherently wicked. They are hard to define and, therefore, hard to solve: “Social problems are never solved. At best they are only re-solved – over and over again” (ibid.). Wicked problems require a mind-shift from the experts, “I already know the problem,” and what kinds of tools and processes to use to solve it to a more humble, “I don’t know the problem,” and need to explore and learn more to approach the problem. Conklin (2006, 11) argues that designers do not follow the traditional and linear waterfall model from problem to solution (gather data, analyze data, formulate solution, implement solution). Instead, their process is more nonlinear, jumping back and forth between problem definition and solutions. Their understanding of the problem continues to evolve “forever,” even in the implementation phase, the understanding of the problem is changing (ibid.). Designers active in the social field have also highlighted the aspect of continuous problem re-definition and re-solving. For example, Burns et al. (2006, 21) state “design is never done,” instead, designers should seek to leave behind “not only the shape of a new solution, but the tools, skills and organizational capacity for ongoing change” (ibid.). This aspect of constant change can be related to the need of building adaptive capacity and the concept of adaptive cycle in resilience theory. Another characteristic of contemporary challenges is that they are systemic and due to systems failure. This has lead to an increased attention in systemic innovation. Mulgan (2013, 7) defines systemic innovation as “an interconnected set of innovations, where each influences the other, with innovation both in the parts and in the ways in which they connect.” Mulgan (2013) gives two main reasons for the greater importance of systems. Firstly, the growing complexity and interdependence of modern societies and economies

189 on systems, infrastructures, platforms and rules to function well. And secondly, the advancement of technology where some systems consist of machines talking to machines. Others are solely based on people, but most combine technology and human elements. However, today we see increasing failures in financial systems, health systems, food systems, energy systems, and political systems. These are all systems that we all depend on for our general welfare. It is this development that Nafees Mosaddeq Ahmed (2011) eloquently describes as “the converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.” As with social innovation, systemic innovation is not a new phenomenon. According to Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan (2010), many transformative innovations in the past have been systemic in that they build on combinations of many elements that could be innovative by their own and in new ways. They exemplify this with cars (combustion engines, rubber tyres, road traffic management, networks of petrol stations, and driving schools) and mobile phones (microprocessors, transmitters, networks of masts). Also, the welfare state was once a systemic innovation through the combination of, for example, legal rights, service delivery systems, and tax collection models (ibid.). Systemic innovation differs from product or service innovation in many ways. Firstly, it depends on changes in mindset: “systems only change when people think and see in new ways” (ibid.). Here, we again see the recurrent importance of how we perceive and think about the world, an aspect that I will explore further through the concept of frames and values. Secondly, it needs changes in power relations and to replace old power holders with new ones. Thirdly, as we have seen with social innovation, systemic innovation often involves actors from the public, private, and third sector. Tackling complex societal challenges from the perspective of only one sector often miss important aspects and how different elements interact. This insufficiency has been stressed in many scientific reports on societal challenges, for example the Malmö Commission (Stigendal and Östergren 2013) recommends a holistic perspective and “equal” collaboration between many different actors from academia, the public, private and third sector in “knowledge alliances.”

190 Caulier-Grice et al. (2012a, 41) describe the interaction across different actors and sectors in systemic change through the example of how the green movement has developed:

This was initially driven through social movements (‘conservation’ and later ‘environmentalism’) and third sector campaigning organisations (for example, Greenpeace). As academia provided evidence of man-made climate change, governments began to re- gulate and make major public targets for carbon reduction. The business sector responded by making adaptations to products and reporting its environmental impacts with greater transpa- rency. And consumers began changing their behaviour (adopting recycling as an everyday rather than niche practice) and preferences (for sustainable products, for example). This kind of systemic change inevitably brings with it more opportunities for innovation in terms of products, services and systems. (ibid)

The complexity and “wickedness” of systemic innovation makes it “much harder to orchestrate than innovation in products and services; and it takes longer to happen” (Mulgan 2013, 9). It is also difficult to point at any specific tools or methods to use in systemic innovation. As seen in both social and systemic innovation, initiatives can come from all sectors or actors as different as civil servants, private entrepreneurs or activists representing an NGO. They could use approaches like campaigns, research or the introduction of a new policy, technology or business model. In- itiatives could be top-down, e.g., new health or environmental policies or service innovations, or from bottom-up like with Tran- sition Towns or the Slow Food Movement (Murray, Caulier- Grice and Mulgan 2010). As we have also seen social and systemic innovation is often created in new combinations of actors crossing sectors coming up with hybrid solutions. This interdependency and friction between actors from different societal positions will be further explored in this thesis through the concepts “bees and tress” (Mulgan 2007) and “powerful strangers” (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007).

191 Merging Social Innovation with Resilience

I will now describe a perspective on social innovation that departs from complexity and systems theory; it applies adaptation, transformation, and disruption with the aim of systems change and reaching resilience. A leading representative for this perspective which merges social innovation and resilience is Frances Westley from the Universi- ty of Waterloo in Canada; she has thoroughly described the meeting between social innovation and resilience (e.g. Westley, Zimmerman and Patton, 2007, Westley 2013). Recently, Westley and others have also added design (Westley, Goebey and Robinson 2012) to this merging of fields. Westley’s theories will serve as backbone of this thesis. “To understand social innovation we must see the world in all its complexity” (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007, 7). To- day, the old mechanistic worldview is increasingly abandoned for a more organic, complex, and living one. The use of mechanistic and machine-like metaphors has proven ill-suited for a world that mainly consists of, and still mostly runs by, living systems. “Complexity science embraces life as it is: unpredictable, emergent, evolving and adaptable–not the least bit machine like” (ibid.). But not all complex systems are human or natural; the stock market and global organizations are also complex and share the characteristic that their parts cannot explain their behavior. Connections or relationships are key in complex systems and define how they work. This focus on relationships and connections resembles Latour’s (2005a) idea of actor–networks. Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton (2007) differentiate between simple problems (baking a cake), complicated problems (sending a rocket to the moon), and complex problems (raising a child). They mean that social innovation combines all three problems but that the least understood, yet most fundamental, is the complex. This comes a no surprise as with complexity comes states of uncertainty and unpredictability. But, according to Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton (2007, 21), we are not helpless in acting on complexity if we find ways of to act deliberately and intentionally about “those things that seem to emerge without our control, without our intention.” To act on complexity one needs a mindset that puts inquiry before certitude, and embraces paradoxes and multiple perspectives.

192 This cautiousness, described by the authors as “getting to maybe” (ibid., 24) or doing the best we can, differs both from the self-secure calculative and mechanistic worldview in traditional natural sciences, and the recipes for success in management literature. This more cautious and inquiring attitude is one of the guiding points for how to deal with complexity that the authors give. One needs to ask questions that can illuminate issues although there are no final answers in complex situations. Tensions and ambiguities can be revealed and understood through questioning. As seen, relationships are key and for social innovation to succeed, everyone involved plays a role and is affected by changes. “It is what happens between people, organizations, communities and parts of systems that matters” (ibid., 22). Another characteristic that is needed in dealing with complexity is the ability to combine reflection and action. “The need for ongoing reflection is shaped by the fact that in complex systems, no patterns stays in place for long and no intervention has a predictable result” (ibid 61). This connects to Schön’s (1995) view on design as a practice based on reflection in action. Westley (2013, 6) writes that resilience theory is increasingly used as a lens to focus on “linked social-ecological systems at all scales, from the individual, to the organization, to the community, to the region, and the globe.” According to her, the fields of social innovation and resilience have much in common and can learn from each other. The dynamic, cyclical, and infinite process of adaptation and transformation in resilience theory fits well with social innovation. Also social innovation is not static but “it is part of a process that builds social resilience and allow complex systems to change while maintaining the continuity we rely on for our personal, organizational, and community integrity and identity” (ibid., 8). Whereas system change is often considered the ultimate goal in social innovation theory (Murray, Caulier-Grice and Mulgan, 2010, Nicholls and Murdock 2012, Westley and Antadze 2010), Frances Westley is one of few who, in her theories, more outspokenly aims at system change. This is evident in her definition where social innovation “profoundly changes the basic routines and authority flows or beliefs of any social system” (Westley 2008, no paging). Westley describes social systems as organized assemblies of resources, beliefs and procedures that are united and regulated by interaction

193 or interdependence to accomplish a set of specific functions: “Each social system has its own character or identity that can be analyzed in terms of its culture (the beliefs, values, artefacts and symbols) its political and economic structure (the pattern by which power and resources are distributed) and its social interactions (the laws, procedures, routines and habits that govern social interaction and make it predictable)” (ibid., no paging). But for a social system to function well and to “survive” (Westley 2008), it must be able to adapt to change. A social system needs to be “ever evolving to adjust to the emerging needs of the subsystems (organizations and individuals)”(ibid.). Here, Westley touches upon what I think is our contemporary core challenge—the interaction and relationship between individuals and systems, whether technical, societal, or natural. “Social innovation begins where the individual and the system meets,” states Westley, Zimmerman and Patton (2007, 19). “When we cease to change we die; when our social systems cease to change they become brittle and vulnerable to external shocks” (Westley 2008). This is what we see today, the so-called progress of our industrial civilization is unevenly distributed and favors some parts of our social-ecological system while other more vulnerable parts, whether they are human individuals, organizations or other nonhuman species, will suffer or become ext- inct. This is also evident in the social challenges facing Malmö, perceptible through the gap in well-being and life expectancy between the different populations and areas of the city, which both the Mal- mö Commission and the Area Programmes address. The challenge is to create resilience not only in one part of the population, but also resilience for all. Therefore, issues regarding equality and democracy become most relevant. This also means that the capacity to become resilient—the capacity to adapt and transform—has to become distributed. I hope this will be the task of future design things as well as design labs addressing societal challenges. In both design theory (e.g., Christiansen and Bunt 2010) and in social innovation theory (e.g., Westley 2013) the focus is increasingly not only on solutions, but also on capacity, and the elements of this capacity to create solutions. Westley (2013, 6) writes that to be able to address the socio-ecological challenges where our ecological systems are pushed close to the “planetary boundaries,” we

194 need “innovative solutions that take into account the complexity of the problems and then foster solutions that permit our systems to learn, adapt, and occasionally transform without collapsing” (ibid.). Therefore, we need to build the capacity to create innovative solutions continuously. To reach resilience, “cultures of innovation” (ibid.) that value diversity and have the ability to combine different elements into radical solutions are needed. These cultures build on communication and engagement which allows “disparate elements to meet and mingle, and that allows for experimentation and support rather than blame” (ibid.). I think that it is these kinds of “cultures of innovation” that we have strived for in our work with the living labs; in creating infrastructures of heterogeneous and complementary actors and in creating “agonistic design things” which allow not only disparity, but also conflict. I develop this further later in the text. According to Westley (2008), social innovation needs to have a broad and durable impact; it has to be “disruptive” and challenge established social systems and institutions “by affecting the fundamental distribution of power and resources, the basic beliefs that define the system or the laws and routines that govern it.” This is not a neutral objective; it is political. And it is here that I think West- ley’s view on social innovation, at least in theory, differs from many others that claim to be innovative but rather, are conservative and sustain established power structures. I began this chapter with Leadbeater’s “heroic” social entrepreneurs; somewhere in the middle, Phills, Deiglmeir, and Miller (2008) argue that the focus should be on the “mechanism” of the social innovation itself, and now in the end, the focus has turned to the process and the intersections between social innovation, resilience, and design. Reflecting on the last hundred years of social innovation at Rockefeller Foundation, current president Judith Rodin puts the focus on the process and the capacity to innovate: “We believe that innovation must be just as much about capacity-building among organizations, communities, and individuals” (Rodin 2013, 5). She continues and outlines a new objective for innovation—resilience:

We cannot predict the future form and scope of the shocks that communities and systems will have to withstand and recover

195 from—whether they result from climate change, financial crisis, armed conflict, or social upheaval. In the face of these challenges, innovating for resilience—resilient networks, communities, and organizations better able to respond to and adapt to these unexpected events—is among the most important kinds of innovation we can pursue. (ibid)

The question here is what kind of capacity building are we talking about? Is it only the capacity to adapt within the existing system or is it also the transformative capacity that will allow a community to be able to create something entirely new? I think we need both; with not only the capacity to respond to challenges and “shocks” within the existing system, but also the capacity to reflect upon the long- term “slides” and discuss whether to abandon the old social-ecological system and create a new one.

196 DESIGN

The subject matter of design is potentially universal in scope, because design thinking may be applied to any area of human experience. (Buchanan 1992, 16)

Other kinds of design than the dominating design for the market have always existed. The search for this other kind of design, not only the idealistic or critical, but also the mysterious with its “secret wells” (Cornell 1981) has been with me since I started to write about design and architecture as a journalist in the early 1990s. This led me not only to write about design and sustainability, but also about the designers, architects, and engineers who turn to nature and the natural sciences (chaos and string theories) for inspiration. Over the years, I have explored many different themes and paths. I have a quite schizophrenic relation to design and, in the past ten years, have vacillated between the pragmatic sides of design (e.g., Service Design) and the more poetic, mysterious, and even dark sides (e.g., Critical Design). In this thesis, I hope that I have overcome these dichotomies and merged these two often-conflicting sides. The exploration that goes on in this thesis began when I reviewed Ezio Manzini and François Jégou’s book, Sustainable Everyday: Sce- narios of Urban Life (2003). With this book came insights that still remain with me today: the first is that we must find a new idea of well-being to replace the product-based well-being which dominates today. The second is that we need to shift from products toward access to services through product–service systems, I will consider

197 this shift to be one way of redefining our relation to artefacts, but many more will be needed. A further insight is that we need to communicate alternative possible futures through scenarios. These ideas guided me when I developed the course Design for Sustainability that was held for the first time at Malmö University in spring, 2008. Another major influence for that course and the way I think about design is John Thackara, both through the book In the Bubble: De- signing in a Complex World (2005) and through the Doors of Per- ception conference and blog. Manzini and Jégou also led me to explore social innovation as they brought up the concept in the anthology Collaborative Services: Social Innovation and Design for Sustainability (2008). The research of Manzini, Jégou, and their international research network has been the foundation for the emerging design research field Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability and the establishment of the research and education network with the same name, mostly referred to by its acronym (DESIS). In this chapter, I will go through the design theory that I, for the most part, will relate to in this thesis. With the exception of Interac- tion Design and Participatory Design, which I already introduced, these theories consist of Donald Schön’s idea of design as a conversation with the situation, the emerging fields of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability and Collapse Informatics, and finally, Critical and Speculative Design. I will try to build a foundation for my view of design as a collective and explorative process which is grounded in democracy, imagination, and experimentation. There is increasing demand in contemporary society for processes which build on inclusion (hybrid forums, knowledge alliances), visions of alternatives (Wright 2010, Bradley and Hedrén 2014) and of experimentation. Geoff Mulgan (2009, 69) claims that there is need to complement traditional future models like scenarios and foresight with “future oriented action, which discover the future through experiment” (ibid., 70). My first thought when reading this was: this is the task of design. My view of design can be summarized thus: to design is to explore different situations or issues in order to envision and give form to new proposals and alternative futures. Design is a collaborative and reciprocal learning process. Design is the capacity for change.

198 Design as We Know It—Some Basics

What designers know about especially is the ‘artificial world’ – the human made world of artefacts. What they know how to do especially is the proposing of additions to and changes to the artificial world. Their knowledge, skills and values lie especially in the techniques of the artificial. /…/ So design knowledge is of and about the artificial world and how to contribute to the creation and maintenance of that world. (Cross 2001, 54 my italics)

This is the starting point. Design is about creating artefacts. But, as we already know, the notion of a separate “artificial world” is problematic. First, the “creation and maintenance” of the artificial world according to the logic of industrial civilization has been dependent on the natural world and to large extent the destruction of it. It has also been dependent on the social world in the exploitation of others’ time and resources. These negative consequences of design and the creation of the artificial world has been addressed for a long time, a least since William Morris critiqued the consequences of industrial manufacturing in the late-nineteenth century. Today, we can see many attempts to transgress this separation and expand design beyond the artefact. The emerging field of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability is just one way of addressing the negative consequences of conventional design. But I think we have to go further, and as we have seen, many authors who address the prospect of societal collapse propose that we do so by overcoming the separation between the artificial world, the social world, and the natural world. I think that to seek a path toward a future where we can both survive and thrive, the artificial world and development of new technology is the wrong place to start. Therefore, designers and the rest of us must step out of the artificial world for a while and start from where it all began, in the social and natural worlds. Then we can redefine our relation to the artificial world as if “people and planet mattered” (to borrow the slogan of the New Economics Founda- tion). Consequently, artefacts and technology will play a minor role in this thesis. But let us go back to design as we know it.

199 Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artefacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training (Simon 1994, 129)

That design can be considered to be at the core of most professions is a view that Simon shares with Schön. Although with the help of Schön, I distance myself from Simon’s technical rationality. There are at least two reasons why the preceding quotation is so often used, especially when it comes to design concerned with societal challenges. First, it says that design is a change practice and the first thing a designer does to understand a situation is to change it. The other reason is that design is something practiced by all of us, something that Nigel Cross (2011, 3) repeats in his book about Design Thin- king which begins: “Everyone can – and does – design. We all design when we plan for something new to happen.” Cross then points out that we have always been designing and that designing things is something normal for humans and that it is only recently that design has been regarded as an activity that needs special abilities or excep- tional talent. “Design ability used to be somehow a collective or shared ability” (Cross 2011, 4 my italics). Is that not something worth going back to? Today, when we need “all hands on deck” to tackle our challenges, can we afford or risk to regard design as an activity done by a small creative elite? No, and therefore, it is worth considering if we should again make design into a collective and shared ability. Therefore, the many signs of an emerging collective change practice are good news. Pelle Ehn talks about the collective designer, and the Participatory Design movement has been working in this direction for a long time. Ezio Manzini’s new book has the eloquent title Design, When Everybody Designs (published 2015), and the design firm Ideo has created Open Ideo as a way to get “mass” input to various challenges. Many talk about open innovation and crowd sourcing and in social innovation the idea of “welcoming responses from anyone” (Murray et al. 2010, 6) is strong. In this thesis, I will

200 explore the idea of design as again a “collective ability” to create change and the relation between professional and non-professional designers. One future task for professional designers will be to distribute design ability to many actors and “empower” them in the role of co-designers. This collective and distributed design ability can be related to community resilience. Norman (2012) states that if many people within a community have the skills and knowledge to adapt and transform, then that community is in a better position to respond to challenges than a community without these assets. So, then, what is design and design ability all about? What does it mean? The answers to those questions are not easy, as Bill Moggridge (2007, 647) has stated: “If you ask a designer for a definition of design, you are often answered with a smirk, a joke, or a change of subject, as design is notoriously difficult to define.” But one way of trying to understand design is to look at what designers do. Design is about doing things—alone or together with others. So what do they do? There are many answers to that question. Where to begin? I look at my bookshelf and pick out Klaus Krippendorff’s The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design (2006). When describing what designers do, Krippendorff (2006, 28) starts with some motivations that drive designers:

• Challenges, troublesome conditions, problems, or conflicts that have escaped (re)solution. • Opportunities to change something for the better – not recognized by others – to contribute to their own or other communities’ lives. • Possibilities to introduce variations into the world that others may not dare to consider, creating something new and exci- ting – just as poets, painters, and composers do – aimlessly and for fun. (ibid.)

Krippendorff continues and states that designers “consider possible futures, worlds that can be imagined and can be created in real time” (ibid.) Designers are less concerned with what already exists than with what can be done. But, today designers also need to consider what should not be done even if it is possible. For example, Fry (2009, 173) brings forward the idea

201 about eliminating “what we do not need, especially those objects/ things that actively harm us or our nonhuman others and all that they depend on.” Further, Krippendorff writes that designers “evaluate the desirability” of these possible futures. “Developing a consensus on the desirability of a possible future calls for deliberations among its stakeholders, using a language that is capable of going beyond data or facts” (ibid., 28-29). Designers also “search the present for variables, things they are able to vary, move, influence, alter, combine, take apart, reassemble, or change. These variables define a space of possible actions, a design space” (ibid., 29). Finally, designers “create and work out realistic paths from the present toward desirable futures and propose them to those who can bring a design to fruition” (ibid.). Koskinen et al. (2011, 42) state that designers “are people who are paid to produce visions of better futures and make those futures happen.” But they don’t do that according to a “scientific” formula limited to the material world as it is now, instead they “imagine new realities and build them too see whether they work” (ibid).

For designers, imagination is methodic work rather than a mental activity. They do not produce those futures themselves, but as part of a larger community of practitioners ranging from engineers to many types of professionals and other actors. This work takes place in a cycle that begins with an objective of some kind, and continues to user studies. These studies lead to concept creation and building mock-ups and prototypes that are typically evaluated before the cycle begins again” (Koskinen et al. 2011, 43)

What, in this quote, is called “a larger community of practitioners” is what, in this thesis, I will call a constellation of actors. The difference is, as already mentioned, when designers move into new territories and more complex situations, this constellation grows and become more heterogeneous. It not only involves professionals in the creation of technological artefacts like engineers, but also different actors that influence how society in whole is organized: citizens, civil servants, sociologists, politicians, etc.

202 And as we will see, according to actor–network theory, it is time to also include nonhuman actors, whether artefacts or species, into this constellation. This brings us to the issue of “better futures.” Given that designers are not only part of a larger community of actors, but also part of a larger system of production and consumption which we all know is deeply unsustainable in all aspects, it is time to question the “better futures” that designers propose and start discussing the ethical and moral dilemmas of these futures. Today, conventional design works in the service of Conventional Development that, without radical policies and regulations, will lead to collapse. Therefore, all designers (including those who design for social innovation and sustainability) need to reflect more on which futures they support, which will likely lead to a collapse, and which can lead to a sustainable world.

Design as Conversation with the Situation

In this section, I review and discuss Donald Schön’s concepts conversation with the situation and reflection in action. After a review of the concepts and their relation to the arguments in this thesis, I will zoom out and discuss them on a societal scale, or the scale of social policy, rather than on the scale of the material artefact (like a building in Schön’s most referred to example). Also, Schön did this scale shift at the end of the book The Reflective Practitioner (1995), where he talked about the larger societal conversation with the situation and also in the book, Frame Reflection: Towards the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (Schön and Rein 1994), where the authors talked about design rationality and conversations with the policy situation. Here, the concept of design rationality is used to respond to controversies about issues such as poverty, crime, or environmental protection “which are highly resistant to resolution by appeal to evidence, research, or reasoned argument” (Schön and Rein 1994, xi). But in these cases, it was not members of the “design professions” (architects, industrial designers, engineers) that “designed,” but policy makers, NGOs, etc. In this way, Schön preceded the design community in the development that we can see today and also when members of the design professions, in its traditional meaning,

203 start to address societal issues with design methods. In dealing with societal issues, the participants in the conversation with the situation increase and widen, from individual designers or cross-disciplinary teams to heterogeneous assemblies or constellations. The character of the issues in the conversation also changes from mostly material-technical to social-ecological and ideological-political matters of concern. Interesting for this thesis is also the description of the larger societal conversation with the situation as a combination of “adversarial process with cooperative inquiry” (Schön 1995, 351). In this way, Schön becomes a forerunner to contemporary design research concepts like design things (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010) and Adversarial Design (DiSalvo 2012). What does design as a reflective conversation with the situation mean when the design situation changes from being mostly “material” to be more about “societal issues” or “planetary challenges”? What is it that designers inquire into then, or rather, what can designers contribute to a collective inquiry in an assembly? Those are some of the questions I try to address in this thesis. But, as Nelson and Stolterman (2003, 227) have pointed out, “material” does not have to be limited to physical materials as paper, wood, or iron; they can also be people or cultural material. “Materials are what a designer puts together in compositional relationships, creating real things. Materials are used to bring a design into existence in the world, to make it appear in a real sense” (ibid). Schön also claims that “the design professions – and designing, broadly conceived, is the process fundamental to the exercise of artistry in all professions” (Schön 1987, 41) and as makers of artefacts, e.g., lawyers build cases, agreements, or a piece of legislation, physi- cians construct diagnoses and test new treatments, “all practitioners are design professionals” (ibid, 43). I will take this as a departure in the search for a change practice based on collective reflection in action and reciprocal learning.

From technical rationality to societal issues in the “swamp” In his two books, The Reflective Practitioner: How Profes- sionals Think In Action (1995, first published 1983) and Edu- cating the Reflective Practitioner (1987), Donald Schön departs from the crisis of professional knowledge and the need

204 to develop knowledge based more on reflection in action than technical rationality.

In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, mana- geable problems lend themselves to solution through the application of researched-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner must chose. Shall he remain on high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards or rigor, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems and nonrigorous inquiry? (Schön 1987, 3)

Today, I believe we can place the complex and wicked problems that social innovation addresses in the swamp rather than on the hill. Therefore, I think it is relevant to explore Schön’s theories in relation to design practice which addresses these kinds of challenges. Also, at the bottom of the swamp waits the toughest challenge of them all, shall we keep on believing in the stories and values on which our industrial civilization is based, or shall we abandon them and search for new ones on which we can build a new world? Schön (1995) begins his review of the professionalization of society by stating that we have become dependent on professions—whether they make war, teach children, or cure diseases—for the functioning of society. But at the same time, the failures of professional action becomes visible. “Professionally designed solutions to public problems have had unanticipated consequences, sometimes worse than the problems they were designed to solve” (Schön 1995, 4). Today, we need to mobilize all creativity and intelligence to deal with the “unintended consequences” of past decisions, policies, designs and innovations—the consequences of progress in an industrial civilization. Most of the societal challenges that we address today with social innovation, such as climate change, chronic disease, or insufficient welfare services, are unin-

205 tended consequences of past designs or solutions. From a design perspective, the importance of being attentive to consequences has been brought up by John Thackara (2005, 1) who argues that if we have designed ourselves into difficulty, “we can design our way out.” Thackara argues that today’s designers need to think about the consequences of design actions before they take them and “pay close attention to the natural, industrial, and cultural systems that are the context of our design actions” (ibid). To be able to deal with the consequences of our actions in the world will be a crucial task and competence from now on. In the 1970s and 1980s, Schön (1991, 14) saw that leading professionals became increasingly aware of a complexity in their practice fields that resisted “the skills and techniques of traditional expertise.” The dominant source of professional knowledge at that time was technical rationality. In technical rationality, practitioners are seen as instrumental problem solvers focused on well-formed problems. But according to Schön (1987), real-world problems do not present themselves to practitioners as well-formed structures, but more as messy and indeterminate situations. These indeterminate situations characterized by complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflicts are ill-suited for instrumental problem solving. Schön gives the example of civil engineers who, when building a road at a particular site, can use their technical knowledge of “soil conditions, materials, and construction technologies to define grades, surfaces, and dimensions” (ibid, 4). But when it comes to decide what road to build, or to build a road at all, technical knowledge is not enough. “They face a complex and ill-defined mélange of topographical, financial, economic, environmental, and political factors” (ibid). Today, designers address the latter kind of situation to an increasing degree. I believe this difference between how-to and what-to knowledge and decisions will be increasingly important for designers as they move up-stream and offer their services in more complex and “wicked” societal situations. These indeterminate situations have also been described as the “fuzzy front end” (Sanders and Stappers 2008, 7), a phase in the design process characterized by its chaotic nature. “The goal of the explorations in the front end is to determine what is to be designed and sometimes what should not be designed

206 and manufactured. The fuzzy front end is followed by the traditional design process” (ibid). I also think that a design thing addressing societal collapse deals more with what-to knowledge, decisions and consequences on a societal/global scale and a design lab deals more with traditional design and how-to knowledge and decisions on a more local scale. For example, a design thing could explore the consequences of a “maker space” in relation to Conventional Development and Great Transition scenarios, and a design lab could explore the consequences of a “maker space” together with the community on a local scale. The challenge here is not so much problem solving, but rather problem setting. Design theorists with a focus on social innovation have also recently brought up the importance of problem definition (e.g., Blyth and Kimbell 2011). Schön (1987) describes how practitioners set up a problem by naming and framing. By using the example of road building above, he describes how the civil engineer may notice things like drainage, soil stability, and ease of maintenance, but not issues like how the road will affect the towns surrounding it. “Through complementary acts of naming and framing, the practitioner selects things for attention and organizes them, guided by an appreciation of the situation that gives it coherence and sets a direction for action” (ibid, 4 my italics). Schön continues to describe how problem setting becomes even more challenging as different disciplines have their own perspective on an issue which may conflict with each other. “Those who hold conflicting frames pay attention to different facts and make different sense of the facts they notice” (Schön 1987, 5). The process of naming and framing and the issue of frame conflicts will be crucial in this thesis, and I will refer back to them many times in the text from now on. Or in Schön’s (1987, 13) words, it is the “art of problem framing” that I will relate to. Instead of technical rationality, Schön (ibid.) suggests “artistry” as an inhe- rent quality in the practice of competent professionals. According to Schön, artistry is an exercise of intelligence, a kind of knowing that is different from our standard model of professional knowledge, but rigorous in its own terms. “There are an art of problem framing, an art of implementation, and an art of improvisation – all necessary to mediate the use in practice of applied science and technique” (ibid).

207 Schön explains his notion of artistry through the practice of architectural design that he views as a “prototype of the kind of artistry that other professionals need most to acquire” (ibid, 18). The architects practice is characterized by reflection in action, a concept I will now go deeper into.

Reflection in action In contrast to technical rationality, where practice is based on the “application of knowledge to instrumental decisions” (ibid, 50), Schön turns to the more spontaneous and intuitive knowledge that we use to perform our actions in everyday life. We have a “feeling” for what is right that guide our actions. Schön terms this knowledge knowing-in-action, for example, how to ride a bike. Most often we perform this knowing-in-action without thinking about it. But in situations of “surprise”—something fails, a routine leads to an unexpected result, or an error resists correction—both ordinary people and professionals start to reflect and think about what they are doing. Here, Schön (1987) distinguishes between reflection-on-action where we stop and think back on what we have done, and reflection-in-action where we reflect on how to make a difference to the situation at hand while we are doing it. “It is this entire process of reflection-in-action which is central to the “art” by which practitioners sometimes deal well with situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict” (1995, 50). Schön (1987, 27) connects reflection-in-action to the process of “trial and error” and how reflection of each trial and its outcome sets the stage for next trial. This pattern of inquiry can be described as a sequence of “moments” in a process of reflection-in-action that Schön (ibid) describes, and I will summarize as follows:

• A situation of action to which we bring spontaneous and routine responses reveals knowing-in-action • Routine responses produce a surprise • Surprise leads to reflection • Through reflection-in-action we question our knowing-in-action • Reflection leads to on-the-spot-experimentation where we try out new actions to explore the newly observed phenomena. We

208 test our tentative understanding of them or affirm moves we have invented to change the situation for the better. (Based on Schön 1987, 28)

Schön (1987) compares the process of reflection-in-action to jazz musicians who improvise together or everyday conversations where participants pick up and develop on each other’s contributions, “each spinning out variations of her repertoire of things to say” (ibid., 30). Schön sees conversation as collective verbal improvisation that sometimes leads to surprises or unexpected directions.

In such examples, the participants are making something. Out of musical materials or themes of talk, they make a piece of music or a conversation, an artefact with its own meaning and coherence. Their reflection-in-action is a reflective conversation with the materials of a situation–“conversation,” now, in a metaphorical sense. Each person carries out his own evolving role in the collective performance, “listens” to the surprises—or, as I shall say, “back talk”—that result from earlier moves, and responds through on-line production of new moves that give new meanings and directions to the development of the artefact. (Schön, 1987, 31)

Here, Schön has reached the place in his argument that I will connect to and explore in this thesis—the notion of a collective conversation where each participant brings their profession’s perspective and “repertoire” (frames) and exchanges these in a process of reciprocal reflection and learning as a way to explore complex societal issues.

Reflective conversation with the situation In contrast to analysts or critics, a designer put things together, says Schön (1995). A designer makes things. Sometimes this thing is the final product, but more often it is a representation of an artefact to be constructed and manufactured by someone else. As we have seen, this making process is complex and Schön characterizes it as conversation with the situation where a designer’s move produces consequences other than those intended.

209 When this happens, the designer may take account of the unintended changes he has made in the situation by forming new appreciations and understandings and by making new moves. He shapes the situation in accordance with his initial appreciation of it, the situation “talks back,” and he responds to the situation’s back-talk.

In a good process of design, this conversation with the situation is reflective. In answer to the situation’s back-talk, the designer reflects-in-action on the construction of the problem, the strategies of action, or the model of the phenomena, which have been implicit in his moves. (Schön 1995, 79)

In this thesis, the making of things through a conversation with the situation takes place on two levels. Firstly, in the conversation with the larger societal situation (the prospect of a collapsing civilization). Secondly, in the making of the design thing itself and the making of the design fictions, frames, and narratives that will be used in the thing. An important element in reflection in action and conversation with the situation is the practitioner’s repertoire of examples, images, understandings, and actions. In the case of an architect, it could be sites and buildings he has visited, design problems encountered, or solutions devised for different problems. “A practitioner’s repertoire includes the whole of his experience insofar as it is accessible to him for understanding and action” (ibid 138). A practitioner uses his repertoire to make sense of a new situation through seeing the new situation as something already experienced in his repertoire. The idea of “seeing this situation as that one” may be followed by “do in this situation as in that one” (ibid 139). “It is our capacity to see unfamiliar situations as familiar ones, and to do in the former as we have done in the latter, that enables us to bring past experiences to bear on the unique case. It is our capacity to see-as and do-as that allow us to have a feel for problems that do not fit existing rules” (ibid). Schön means that the “artistry” of a practitioner depends on the range and variety of the repertoire that is applied in unfamiliar situations. An example of the importance of repertoire and family resemblance from our own practice is how we could use our ex-

210 periences from working with the women’s association Herrgårds Kvinnoförening to recognize similar situations when working with the women’s association Kvinnor på Lindängen. In this thesis, I claim that we need to create a collective repertoire of frames, understandings, and examples that can help us to address the prospect of a collapsing civilization.

Experiments in reflection in action To conduct experiments in the form of interventions or prototypes plays a crucial role in design. But this is not as common in the social sector, and Mulgan (2009, 70) points to the need to “discover the future through experiment.” According to Schön (1995, 141), the practitioner uses his repertoire to see-as to get a first understanding of the new unfamiliar situation. But seeing-as is not enough, and the practitioner must begin to experiment with the situation to test the adequacy and utility of it. “Reflection-in-action necessarily involves experiment,” Schön (ibid) argues, and a reflective conversation with the situation is a way of experiment in reframing. Through their repertoire, practitioners make (by seeing-as) a first framing of the situation. Thereafter, they try to shape the situation to the frame and evaluate the entire process to see:

whether they can solve the problem they have set; whether they value what they get when they solve it (or what they can make of what they get); whether they achieve in the situation a coherence of artefact and idea, a congruence with their fundamental theories and values; whether they can keep inquiry moving. Nested within the larger problem-setting experiment, there are also local experiments of various sorts. (ibid.)

This way of experimenting is different from the notion of experiment in technical rationality where a researcher confirms or refu- tes a hypothesis in controlled experiments. But according to Schön (ibid, 145), hypothesis testing in controlled experiments is only one of many ways to experiment. And in practice, different kinds of experiments are mixed up and follow a different order than in research. According to Schön (ibid), to experiment in its most generic sense is to do something in order to see what happens. And the most

211 fundamental experimental question is “what if?” which also is common in design practice. Thus, if the logic seems to be the same, according to Schön, he argues that the difference between experimenting in a research context and in a practice context is to be found in the intention behind the experiment. In a research context, the intention is to understand a situation, in the practice context, the intention is to change a situation. “The practitioner has an interest in transforming the situation from what it is to something he likes better. He also has an interest in understanding the situation, but in the service of his interest in change.” (ibid). Another distinctive character of experimenting in practice is that the practitioner mixes different kinds of experiments, “his experimenting is at once exploratory, move testing, and hypothesis testing” (ibid). Also, there are differences between a practitioner’s hypothesis testing experiments and controlled experiments. The practitioner’s experiments consist of moves that change the phenomena at hand to make the hypothesis fit. In this way, the practitioner breaks with the canon of the controlled experiment, where the researcher should strive for objectivity and distance. The move through which the practitioner tests the hypothesis is also a way of trying to change the situation. “He understands the situation by trying to change it” (ibid 151), and changing the situation is his primary interest. In this thesis, the way to change the situation, but also to understand it in another way and reframe it, is to bring in various possible worlds into the design thing. These worlds come in the form of scenario storylines like Conventional Development and Great Transi- tion, but also various forms of design fictions.

Schön as forerunner of design things and Adversarial Design At the end of The Reflective Practitioner, Schön (1995) reflects over the place of professions in larger society and public policy making. He claims that professional knowledge is based on values and interests and that the professional imposes his or her categories, theories, and techniques on the situation at hand. This also means that the professional ignores or explains away those features of a situation that do not fit the knowledge of his practice realm. He

212 does not see himself as accountable for anything other than the expertise he represents in the institution he works for. “He does not see himself as free, or obliged to participate in setting objectives and framing problems. The institutional system reinforces his image of expertise in inducing a pattern of unilateral control” (ibid, 345-346 my italics). I believe that it was in many ways this kind of “professiona- lism” and “institutionalism” that we encountered in the cases of the social incubator and innovation forums, where powerful and established actors ignored other, more marginalized and weaker, actors’ knowledge, experiences, and perspectives, and avoided taking part in a more participative problem framing and setting of objectives. Instead, Schön argues, we need professionals that are able to reflect both on their own evaluative frames and are able to understand and communicate with others who view and frame situations based on other kinds of expertise. Today, representatives of both design (Brown 2009) and social innovation (Mulgan 2014) advocates the skill of combining one’s core expertise with the ability to communicate with other kinds of expertise, often called “T-shaped competence.” According to Schön (1995, 346), professionals need to take part in a “larger societal conversation” and make that conversation a reflective one. He believes that descriptions of reality are socially constructed by a “we” who act as agents of society through media, public institutions, the actions of intellectuals, and public debates. This we “construct[s] ideas powerful for action concerning the issues and crises of our society, the problems to be solved, the policies to be adopted. When we act from these ideas, we change social reality” (ibid, 347). Schön develops his idea of this collective conversation with the situation and writes that when “we” engage in a conversation with the larger societal situation, we act like a designer who converses with a design situation. “Like him, we construct a view of the situation; we act from it, thereby changing the situation; but we also elicit ‘back talk’ which takes the form of unanticipated meanings, problems, and dilemmas” (ibid). But the larger societal conversation with the situation is not without friction; rather, it is marked by both intellectual inquiry and political contention. Schön (ibid, 349) describes this process as “essentially adversarial,” whe-

213 re some professionals represent the views and values of established interests and other professionals advocate the dissident and the dis- possessed. With the description of the societal conversation with the situation as adversarial, Schön precedes the main ideas in the concepts infrastructuring and design things as developed by Björgvins- son, Ehn, and Hillgren (2010) and the notion of adversarial design (DiSalvo 2012). One major difference is that in a design thing, the dissident and the disposed would not be represented by a professional but participating themselves. Schön claims that there is “undeniable social utility in counter- institutions which criticize and resist the excesses of established institutions, and advocates the rights and interests of the relatively powerless” (Schön 1991, 349). But, according to Schön, the contestation between different opinions has led to a polarization of society where pendulum swings between opposing extreme positions lead to stalemate and the inability to manage societal inquiries that could lead to new views of social reality. In order to avoid the risk of stalemate in these kinds of adversarial processes, professionals need to be:

capable of advocating and acting on their own views of reality while at the same time subjecting them to reflection, of taking an adversarial stance toward their opponent’s view while at the same time striving to understand them. Professionals in conflict with one another would also have to be capable of reciprocal reflection-in-action. (ibid. 350)

As a way to manage the societal conversation with the situation, Schön suggests a strategy that combines adversarial process with cooperative inquiry. That, to me, sounds like a good description of what goes on in a design thing. I will come back to this societal conversation with the situation when developing Schön and Reins use of design in policy situations in the chapter on frames.

214 Contemporary Design Approaches Addressing Societal Challenges

In this section, I give a brief overview of how design is entering new territory. It is, in part, based on previous texts (Emilson 2010, Hillgren, Seravalli and Emilson 2011, Emilson 2014). I will begin with two geographical areas that have been important in the emergence of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. Thereafter, I will introduce a few design approaches that I think are important in this thesis and then end with some recent developments in Sustai- nable HCI and Interaction Design wherein researchers are addressing the prospect of collapse.

Transformation Design and Service Design in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom can be seen as an important center in developing new design responses to societal challenges. In the early 2000s, there was an almost parallel development of both Service Design and Design for Social Innovation, even if that name was not used at the time. The design company, Livework (founded 2001), is considered a pioneer in the field of Service Design. They not only realized that the design of commercial services offered by banks and hotels is a design task with its own characteristics, but also they saw in these services the potential to guide society toward sustainability. They were interested in supporting the shift from buying and owning products to getting access to products through services or through Product–Service Systems. The potential of services and Product-Ser- vice Systems have been brought forward by, among others, Manzi- ni and Jegóu (2003). Also Thackara (2005) advocated the shift to services with the slogan “use, not own.” This slogan was paraphra- sed by Livework on their early website (see Moggridge 2007, 420). The interest in supporting the shift from products to services was the impetus for Livework to contact the first commercial car sharing company in the UK, Streetcar, and offer to redesign their services, which became the start of a longer collaboration. Livework has also addressed many contemporary social challenges within healthcare, but also social exclusion, e.g., long-term unemployment. Other

215 pioneering service design companies in the UK that have addressed societal challenges are Engine and Think Public. It was not only small pioneering service design companies that made the UK into an early center for Design for Social Innovation. The British Design Council also played a crucial role in supporting designers moving into new areas. Between 2004 and 2006 the Design Council financed a research unit called RED. RED can be seen as an early collaboration between professional designers and social entrepreneurs as their leader, Hilary Cottam, is a social entrepreneur and one of the other members, Charles Leadbeater, is a former journalist and researcher who was among the first to bring forward the phenomena of social entrepreneurship in the UK. The themes that the RED unit explored were: health, energy, aging, democracy and citizenship. One could argue that healthcare, energy and aging are not new areas for design, but the way that the RED group approached them, with more focus on services and peer-to-peer support than new products, was novel. Burns et al. (2006) describe the RED unit’s approach, called Transformation Design, as based on involving heterogeneous stakeholders from the beginning through Participatory Design. They state that “design is never done” and by this mean that professional designers should transfer capacities among the actors by leaving behind “the tools, skills and organisational capacity for ongoing change” (Burns et al. 2006, 21) in order to enable them to be “continually responding, adapting and innovating” (ibid.). They also stress the importance of prototyping as a way to ”fail early to succeed sooner”(ibid.), especially when it is conducted in the actual context of use. The RED group’s way of working with systemic challenges, long- term engagement and reciprocal learning among actors was successful, so when the project ended some of the members decided to set up the company Participle to continue the work. Former members from RED and Participle also founded the design company In With- For that operated in Australia but closed in 2012. The Design Council has also initiated demonstration programs like Designs of the Time and Public Services by Design. Further- more, other public institutions have initiated projects involving design companies. Engine (2015) has helped Kent County Council

216 build a social innovation lab where one co-creates innovative public services; Livework (2015) has designed new solutions for multiple sclerosis patients and created services to support hard-to-reach unemployed people; ThinkPublic (2015) has prototyped an innovative service called Community Coaches that supports families with complex needs in Barnet Council. This combination of public support and engaged design companies have made UK a leading scene in the field of design for social innovation.

Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (Italy) Important contributions in the development of Design for Soci- al Innovation have also come from Politecnico di Milano in Italy from where Ezio Manzini and François Jégou have led international networks of design researchers and design schools interested in De- sign for Social Innovation and Sustainability, initially in the form of the Sustainable Everyday Project (2015) and more recently, the DESIS network (DESIS 2014). One departure point for this research is the interdependence between a product-based economy and our well-being. Manzini and Jégou (2003) state that we have to leave the notion of product-based well-being by which more well-being = more products = more consumption of natural resources. The idea of product-based well-being is an “impossible promise” and would, on a global scale, lead to both ecological and social catastrophe (ibid. 40).

The great design issue that society as a whole must face is this: how can we move towards a society where expectations of well-being are separated from acquisition of new artefacts? How can we enable people to live well consuming (much) less while regenerating the quality of our habitat? (Manzini and Jégou 2003, 47)

This statement can be seen as both challenging and provocati- ve for designers who have been trained to create new artefacts for mass-consumption. Manzini (2007, 233) believes that designers have been part of creating the unsustainable situation we now face; an accusation that Victor Papanek already delivered in the 1970s. To become a part of the solution, designers have

217 to “become active agents in the transition towards sustainable ways of living” (ibid.) and make profound changes in their culture and praxis. As we will see, the idea of a shift from product-based well-being, grounded in the belief in progress and economic growth, to a focus on quality of life, is much in line with the Great Transition scenario (Raskin et al. 2002). In the search for a new well-being Manzini and Jégou (2003) discuss the notion of context-based well-being: “Our hypothesis is that to move away from product-based well-being we need to value community assets more highly, develop islands of slowness and promote individual participation. Exactly the opposite of what is happening today”(ibid. 48). Well, they were right, because that is exactly what is happening today, ten years later, with phenomena like sharing economy, commons, and collaborative consumption. Their ideas of well-being are much based on Amartya Sen, and they explain that “well-being emerges from the dynamic relationship between functionings and capability, between what could be done and what one could be and what one actually can, and knows how to, do and be” (ibid. 49). Manzini (2007, 242) later develops the idea of “active well-being” where the user is actively involved and the “co-producer of the results he/she wants to achieve.” Manzini (ibid.) further explains that the current mainstream idea of well-being is based on the idea of using artefacts as “slaves” to liberate us from personal involvement, physical effort, and “the least need for ability and skill.” From a collapse perspective, physical effort, ability, and skill are what will be demanded of us in the future. According to Manzini, designing for a more active and involved subject means moving from the idea of User-Centered Design—designing to solve problems—toward Actor-Centered Design, that is “designing to enable people to live as they like, while moving toward sustainability” (ibid. 243). The research network around Manzini and Jégou would later find representatives of an active well-being in what they call creative communities who are: “groups of people who cooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways of living. And they do so recombining what already exists, without waiting for a general change in the system (in the economy, in the institutions, in the large infrastructures)” (Jégou and Manzini

218 2008, 30). Generally, the outcomes are collaborative services that are: “social services where final users are actively involved and as- sume the role of service co-designers and co-producers” (ibid., 32). As stated above, creative communities create collaborative services; for example, a house where elderly people live in a resource-sharing community suited to their diverse needs or a workshop where unemployed, people who have disabilities, and immigrants find work by repairing and up-grading used products. The insight that sustainability is not only a technical issue (in the form of new products) but may be applied to social aspects such as lifestyle, cultural values, relationships, and behavioral changes has led to a shift in focus from Design for Sustainability to Design for Social Innova- tion and Sustainability. According to Jégou and Manzini (2008, 29), social innovation refers to “changes in the way individuals or communities act to solve a problem or to generate new opportunities. These innovations are driven more by changes in behavior than by changes in technology or the market and they typically emerge from bottom-up rather than top-down processes.” The appearance of phenomena-like creative communities means that designers no longer can claim the sole right to creativity, but rather have to see themselves as part of a designing network. Jégou and Manzini claim that we live in a society where “everybody designs” (ibid., 40). “The result is a society that appears as a mesh of designing networks: a complex system of interwoven design processes, involving individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions who imagine and put into practice solutions to a variety of individual and social problems” (ibid.). According to Jégou and Manzini (ibid.), this new context means that designers need to take the role of design experts “interacting with diverse actors who design without being designers, i.e., design amateurs.” They see two main modalities in this interaction: designing in and designing for creative communities. When a designer designs in a creative community it means taking a more peer-to-peer type of role and, together with other actors, builds the community and, at the same time, uses design skills to facilitate the process toward shared and potential ideas. When designing for a creative community, the designer has to analyze different typologies of col-

7 219 laborative organizations, and after identifying the strengths and weaknesses, intervenes in their context and develops new solutions which make them more accessible and effective and therefore easier to replicate. Ezio Manzini is one of the main sources of inspiration for the exploration in this thesis. Therefore, it is interesting that he, after sustainability and social innovation, has now turned to resilience as a new research theme. In early 2015, with only a few weeks left to work on this thesis, the book Cultures of Resilience (Manzini and Till 2015) was released. It is the first outcome from a research group at University of the Arts London led by Manzini and Jere- my Till. They state: “to make our societies more resilient we must change them by moving away from dominant ways of thinking and doing. In other words: against a background of mainstream models, resilience is quite a disruptive concept: one that calls for radical transformations” (ibid. 12)—seems that I have found some potential fellow adventurers out there.

Design and Politics

Designers interested in societal change are not only working with citizens or grassroots organizations, but also, in recent years, they have become increasingly involved in designing public services, public sector innovation, and public policy (e.g., Bason 2010, Man- zini and Staszowski 2013). With this development, it becomes evident that design is never a neutral act; it is always political. For example, the co-creation and collaboration which are central in Par- ticipatory Design and in Social Innovation also plays a central role in new policy like the British government’s “Big Society” vision that, among other things, builds on citizen involvement and action using local knowledge and social networks (Coote 2010). The British De- sign Council saw “clear parallels” in their Dott Cornwall (2010) programme and the concept of Big Society. But even before the Big Society policy was launched, the social design agency, Participle, had presented their own vision of how to design the new welfare state in their manifesto Beveridge 4.0 (Cottam 2008). It departs from insights into the dreams and aspirations of people—their capabilities rather than their needs—and involves citizens collectively designing

220 new responses. When David Cameron presented the new policy, Hi- lary Cottam (2009) welcomed it and pointed out the similarities it has with their own agenda; but at the same time, she showed a political awareness by criticizing Cameron’s view on inequality: “Britain is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Unless we are willing to talk about and address this disparity, neither a re-imagined state nor an army of social entrepreneurs can build Cameron’s big society” (ibid.). This kind of statement and willingness to discuss the political contexts and social conditions that designers are now beginning to operate in is most necessary. Cameron Tonkinwise (2010) reflects on the situation in the UK wherein designers create new services according to government policy and mentions the need for an awareness of political and ethical dilemmas:

Designers are already facilitating social innovations that can replace government services that David Cameron has a mandate to cut the cost of. The rhetoric, as a recent Economist article on social innovation made clear, is all about doing services better, but in ways that just happen to also save the government money and, more importantly, withdraw governments irrevocably from such services.(Tonkinwise 2010)

Simon Blyth and Lucy Kimbell (2011) also reflect on the role of design in relation to Big Society politics. They stress the importance of how problems are framed and defined, how issues are made public, and do not simply view design as problem solving. It is also important to go beyond the individual as in User-Centered Design and “situate individuals within dynamic social systems” (Blyth and Kimbell 2011, 8). They quote C Wright Mills:

When in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million people are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and

221 character of a scatter of individuals. (Mills 1959 in Blyth and Kimbell 2011, 8)

Blyth and Kimbell (2011) argue that the view of the design process as a collaborative and consensual activity needs to bee challenged and that contestation and difference are important parts of the process, especially in public or community contexts. Sarah Schulman from the design consultancy InWithFour goes further, and based on her own experiences in the social field, calls for more ethical outrage in the design community and that designers need to deal with the moral dilemmas of today’s society: “These moral dilemmas underpin the ‘social design’ work we try to do. They have informed our value set – a value set that enables us to make decisions about the projects we choose to take on, the people we choose to work with, and the solutions we co-create” (Schulman 2012). In Schulman’s case, the importance of values became evident when working with a government agency with an internal co-design unit that were more driven by values as “innovation” and “efficiency” than questions of inequalities. Even if the methods were new, the “ends” were quite the same. She believes in social design methods as long as “they shake up the status quo, narrow inequalities, and set new social standards. The danger comes when these new design methods make social services more palatable, more attractive, and thus more difficult to challenge” (ibid.). These reflections regarding Design for Social Innovation point to the need for more discussion about the conditions and contexts in Social Design work; designers should ask the questions “what?” and “with who?”—and not just how to design. It also points to the relevance of making a distinction between what Carl DiSalvo (2010) calls “design for politics,” with its focus on “improving structures and mechanisms that enable governing” (ibid, 368) and “political design,” which is more focused on revealing and confronting power relations, identifying “new terms and themes for contestation and new trajectories for action” (ibid, 369). With the concept of Adver- sarial Design, DiSalvo (2012) emphasizes a certain kind of political design that does the work of agonism (Mouffe 2000). “To claim that adversarial design does the work of agonism means that designed objects can function to prompt recognition of political issues and

222 relations, express dissensus, and enable contestational claims and arguments” (DiSalvo 2012, 12). DiSalvo states that the most basic purpose of Adversarial Design is to create spaces for confrontation and create opportunities to participate in contestation which have clear links to the idea of design things.

Absence of the political in Design for Social Innovation Historically, social innovation has been associated with heroic individuals, grassroots organizations, or communities that take initiatives to create social change. This has also been the perspective of (Manzini 2011, 2) who have mostly regarded social innovation as emerging bottom up “from the grassroots rather than from above” and “at the margins more than the centre”. However, Manzini (2014) has recently described three different approaches: bottom-up (driven by ordinary people and communities), top-down (driven by experts or decision makers), and lastly, hybrid process, where initiatives undertaken by people (bottom-up) are supported by “institutions, civic organizations or companies (top-down)” (ibid., 63). This view falls in line with the views of social innovation researchers like Mulgan (2007) who state that Social Innovation is not limited to one sector or grassroots organization, but can be driven by politics and governments, for-profit or non-profit companies, and public sector organizations or academia. Today, one can say that social innovation is moving from the margins to the mainstream (Mulgan 2007, Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007) with increasing attention from governments and companies and is created both bottom-up and top-down—“the bees and the trees” Mulgan (2007). But one may wonder, is this interaction between actors with different agendas, values, and resources without friction? Of course not, as we have seen through concepts like agonism, governance, and the “powerful stranger” (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007). If by social innovation one means solutions that “profoundly change the basic routines, resource and authority flows, or beliefs of the social system” (Westley and Antadze 2010, 2) or else to “disrupt the continuity of our situation” (Kiem 2011) or even “shake up the status quo, narrow inequalities, and set new social standards” (Schulman 2012), then the main challenge is not to strive for consensus, convergence, and implementation too soon but, rather, allow for diver-

223 gence and a multiplicity of perspective and ideas. It is important to allow disparate opinions and views that challenge existing power relations and hegemonies. Matt Kiem (2011) brings up the importance of discussing questions of power in Design for Social Innovation in an analysis of the EMUDE (Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions) project lead by Ezio Manzini. Kiem (2011, 5) writes, “Even an approach as progressive as EMUDE still remains allied to the structural conditions that maintain hegemonic unsustainability.” He continues:

As an example of design for social innovation, the amenability of EMUDE towards resolving problems within (not against) liberalism, and the reluctance to imagine alternative practices of organising (for) political power is a telling limitation vis á vis the need for discontinuous change. Some of the limitations that stem from not recognising power and politics as agencies within social relations include an inability to differentiate between who/what (as assemblages of individuals and artefacts) can act towards sustainable futures and who/what maintains the status quo, and an inability to work explicitly towards mobilising assemblages of sustainment against established orders. If this is indeed the case, then it is reasonable to suggest that design for social innovation lacks the kind of political gravitas required to initiate a serious disruption to structural unsustainability. (Ibid. my italics)

Kiem’s critique of the EMUDE project could also be related to Tonkinwise’s (2010) critique of service designers in the UK who create “better” services according to the government’s Big Socie- ty agenda “in ways that just happen to also save the government money and, more importantly, withdraw governments irrevocably from such services.” This could be compared to what Kiem (2011, 6) calls a “pragmatic social innovation” which helps people cope with their everyday challenges, but at the same time, within a liberal political order and “may be useful for relieving the burden of state expenditure without threatening established power relations or economic interests.” Kiem argues that designers need to relate this pragmatic approach to “praxiological politics” which would be:

224 concerned with consciously generating politically autonomous socio-technical assemblages that are antithetical to the unsustainable. These assemblages would need to be elastic enough to cope with change and crisis but resistant to political co-option. Designers in this sense, professional or not, may seek to engage at various levels with the political implications of space, visibility, time, labour, consumption, production, finance, exchange, and ownership. Designers might also take on the role of media- ting between groups taking action, government institutions, and other significant actors. /…/ Furthermore, designers could use their expertise to visualise, advocate and promote alternative social policies, development agendas, and importantly, new ways of practicing politics. (Kiem 2011, 6)

This type of reflection and critique can seem unfair toward pragmatic-oriented designers working with social change. It also reveals a gap between the pragmatic and critical and politically oriented practices. This gap needs to be addressed by design research that is both politically aware and pragmatically oriented, and which contributes to radical transformations of people’s living conditions as well as society’s overall organization. In summary, for a designer to engage in social innovation means entering new territory that is complex and dynamic, driven by new constellations where old divides between disciplines are breaking down. This development brings both new opportunities and new dilemmas. Entering this new territory may mean to work in a new way with both new and unfamiliar actors, but also with new kinds of artefacts like laws, organizations, and policy.

Sustainable HCI and Collapse Informatics

Reading the papers “Hope for the Best and Prepare for the Worst: Interaction Design and the Tipping Point” by Blevis and Blevis (2010) and “What if sustainability doesn’t work out?” by Tomlin- son et al. (2012b), (co-authored by Eli Blevis) sparked my interest in this more extreme perspective of sustainability—the collapse. In their paper, Blevis and Blevis (2010) take the discourse of Sustaina-

225 ble Interaction Design a step further. Until then, Sustainable Inte- raction Design had mostly focused on designing digital interactivity which could support people in changing behavior from unsustainable to sustainable lifestyles. That is a strategy of mitigation and reducing the harm done by, for example, greenhouse gas emissions. But, Blevis and Blevis (2010, 28) write “at least some if not many of us need to also consider the degree to which some of our efforts need to be directed toward designing digital interactivity to prepare for and adapt to the potential effects of global warming and climate change.” Tomlinson et al. (2012b) also begin their article by bringing forward the need of both mitigation (reducing the magnitude of change) and adaptation (mobilizing responses to change). Today, most projects are focused on mitigation as a way for industrialized countries to enable their citizens to maintain their lifestyle. This could be related to what Tony Fry (2009) calls “sustaining the unsustainable,” or to Tainter (2006, 92), who claims that sustainability is also about “sustaining a way of life” that we are accustomed to and feel comfortable with. But, if we, as Tomlinson et al. (2012b, 51) write, are unable to prevent dramatic global changes, then “adaptation to these transformations will be of growing relevance. The manner in which humans adapt to the changes will define the future of civilization.” This last sentence reminds me of the contributing factor that is always present in the difference between a succeeding or failing civilization: how societies chose to respond to its problems (Diamond 2005). So, what then, can design offer in adaptation to global change? Tomlinson et al. (2012b) are quite limited here because they focus on IT tools and informatics. But, in some of their suggestions I think it is possible and even fruitful to replace “adaptation informatics” with design in general. The claim that we must re-imagine a quality of life based on “less lavish, more innovative deployment of materials” echoes Ezio Manzini’s (2007) claim that we must leave the idea of a “product based wellbeing” and instead reach for a more “active wellbeing” and replace owned products with services. Tom- linson et al. (2012b, 52) also make an important point in turning to people in “certain cultural margins” who reject “the assumption that we can sustain the profligacies of contemporary society” for

226 inspiration. This again echoes the idea of “creative communities” that Manzini, Meroni, Jégou and others have advocated. One of the groups that Tomlinson et al. (2012b) turn to for ideas about future adaptation practice is the Transition Towns movement. “We want to understand how such communities and enterprises operate, how they conceive of quality of life.” In this way they make claims that has almost become mainstream in the design for sustainability field during the years. Coming from interaction design, Tomlinson et al. (2012b, 52-53) of course look at how IT could be used to “organize and propagate knowledge,” help foster new kinds of communities like Transition Towns, or “enable human communities to build robust relationships with ecosystems of native species.” Even if the authors claim that successful adaptation build on cultural transformation and not only on technological, their examples focus much on IT. So are the examples from Blevis and Blevis (2010, 29) who mean that there is a need for:

digital networking and interactive technologies that can help people at various levels—as individuals, small groups, governments, and global bodies—plan and prepare for the orderly adaptation to these effects. Such networks will need to make available data, visualizations, tracking, and predictive simulations about changing locations of food production and threats to particular urban environments. A number of interactive systems could potentially play a positive role.

The question one must raise here is how much these digital networks and interactive systems add complexity to society and contribute to a collapse rather than help avoiding or adapting to it? In a “peak everything” (Heinberg 2007) scenario with declining resources like energy and rare earth metals, it seems wise to begin questioning the expansion of digital networks as a solution for everything. Accordingly, Tomlinson et al. (2012a, 662) bring up the issue of “Peak ICT” given that “ICT systems rely extensively on fossil fuels.” The limits or dangers with ICT is brought up in Tomlinson et al. (2012a, 655) where they introduce a new genre in HCI—Collapse Informatics—that is “the study, design, and development of soci-

227 otechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity.” They feel that it is time for the HCI community to consider how they could help civilization to prepare for a possible global collapse and that “we as a discipline have largely failed to appreciate the need to design and build technologies that may be of use on the ‘downward slope’ of social complexity” (ibid., 657). They self-critically point to the fact that a majority of ICT innovations have contributed to “perpetual growth,” the development of environmental issues, and increasing vulnerability to threats like a massive electromagnetic pulse—all factors that may play a “prominent role in bringing about collapse” (ibid.). Instead, they propose thoughtful development of computing technologies and even the removal of some technologies. Here, they echo Tony Fry’s notion of redirective practice and acts of elimination, which they also quote. “The goal is to adapt to potential futures that may involve collapse, rather than preserving the ‘business as usual’ that may, in fact, be hastening the collapse” (Ibid). By introducing collapse informatics and adaptation informatics, Tomlinson et al. (2012a,b) make a contribution to the design community in general, where the notion of a collapse and adaptation is not yet discussed; here, sustainability discourse and mitigation strategies still dominate. In fact, the core concepts of collapse informatics could be useful for design in general. When discussing the concepts of adaptation and mitigation, they state that if mitigation efforts fail, adaptation is required and “because adaptation takes time, it is necessary to begin adapting even before changes occur in order to be successful” (ibid. 658). The authors also introduce the concept of “adaptive capacity” coming from resilience theory. They relate the concept to vulnerability and claim that adaptive capacity is a type of actions made to reduce vulnerability to changing conditions in the future. “Vulnerability describes actual conditions; adaptive capacity describes possible conditions” (ibid.). Further, they claim that adapting to collapse means both reducing vulnerability and increasing adaptive capacity. But to be able to do this, we need knowledge because we cannot change our ways if we do not know how. “Thus increasing adaptive capacity entails, among other things, gathering and developing knowledge relevant to fulfilling fundamental human needs in various contexts despite the disturbances of global change.

228 Reducing vulnerability means helping interested parties deploy that knowledge” (ibid.). This relates well to our ideas of living labs or design things where “interested parties” can take part of a reciprocal learning process. The approach of long-term infrastructuring also becomes interesting when discussing how it takes time to change a way of life or develop new food systems, etc. Therefore, it is wise to start increasing the adaptive capacity now, even if the disturbances that may lead to a collapse are decades away. According to Tomlinson et al. (2012a), the core design challenge of collapse informatics is to understand how socio-technical systems could support and provide basic human needs in a sustainable way in a future with scarce resources. One dilemma here, as in any practice that tries to deal with a future that is some decades away, is that “the imagined users are not yet in the imagined context of use (collapse). They may not even have been born yet” (Tomlinson et al. 2012a, 659). I will return to this dilemma and discuss it in regard to the notion of “meta design” (Binder et al. 2011) and design that takes place after, or beyond, design during a project. To summarize, collapse informatics address a range of controversial issues that go against everything that is considered mainstream, “normal,” and business as usual in today’s industrial societies. Instead of everlasting growth and increasing complexity, it addresses the need to consider a world with scarce resources and reduced complexity, simplification. Instead of manufactured needs made possible by access to fossil energy it suggests addressing basic human needs and design systems that support future well-being. There are challenges and dilemmas with a perspective like collapse informatics. For example, how to make people believe in a future of scarcity and simplicity and even to make them desire such a future? As we will see, one aspect of preparing ourselves for a possible future collapse is a “transition” of our cultural beliefs and values. For this, there is the need for new stories and narratives of a post-collapse world that are not apocalyptic or doomsday. But how to tell those stories without losing the amount of effort we have to do? Here, one can build on the examples that are already out there, like Transition Towns. We also need to consider designing some socio-technical systems today that are highly flexible and robust, but

229 also wait to design others that we do not know the consequences or need of yet. Here, we need to discuss the issue of removal of technology. In the meantime, we can spend more time on increasing the adaptive capacity for meeting future situations, that is, a task concerning knowledge about how to make a living in a world of scarce resources and a task of spreading this knowledge and capacity. Could continuous use of the design thing for spreading knowledge about how to design and produce in a sustainable everyday be an answer? Here, I think there is a need of building local knowledge that is independent of digital networks and digital media if they break down. I also think that it is wise to return to a situation where design is a “collective and shared ability” (Cross 2011, 4), but now as part of general adaptive and transformative capacity.

230 FRAMES AND VALUES

Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or a bad outcome of our actions. In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies. To change our frames is to change all of this. Reframing is social change. (La- koff 2004, XV)

We set social problems through the stories we tell. (Schön 1993)

Uncivilised writing /…/ is determined to shift our worldview. (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009)

In this chapter, I explore how the concept of frames can support us in understanding our world in other ways—to shift our worldview— and support us in imagining new, possible worlds. From a design perspective, frames and framing are associated with the front end of a design process: they influence how we define problems or issues, go about “designing the problem” (Blyth and Kimbell 2011), reframe problems (Schön and Rein 1994), and point out “new trajectories for action” (DiSalvo 2010). Design researchers Halse et al. (2010) use the concept in a similar way as Lakoff states in the quotation at the beginning of this section: “When we change the frame, we change the outlook on the world, and thus we also change the way we can interact with it” (ibid., 143 my italics). The use of fra-

231 mes can be found in design theory (Schön 1995, Schön and Rein 1994, Blyth and Kimbell 2011, Westerlund 2009), resilience theory (Goldstein 2012), and in literature about sustainability and “global challenges” (Crompton 2010, Holmes et al. 2011). In social innovation, the concept of frames is found in “disruptive” social innovation (which is the view I subscribe to) where the objective is to “change the cognitive frames of reference around markets and issues to alter social systems and structures” and where “social movements and self-consciously ‘political’ actors, groups, and networks aiming to change power relations, alter social hierarchies, and reframe issues to the benefit of otherwise disenfranchised groups” (Nicholls and Murdock 2012, 4–5, my italics). The importance of frames can be found elsewhere, but is not always outspoken. For example, An- drew Simms (2013, 11), fellow of The New Economics Foundation, writes that we need very large-scale changes to “cancel the apocalypse.” “But just as important as changes in energy, transport and farming systems, corporate governance and the design of cities and buildings, is a shift in values and outlook, a change in the way we see ourselves in the world and in relation to each other” (ibid. my italics). What can design contribute within this shift? My interest in frames in this thesis is based on the belief that we need to construct and establish new frames, worldviews, or outlooks in the conversation with the situation to be able to imagine possible worlds or speculative societies that are radically different than those already established. In this way, we can construct new collective action frames, or trajectories of inquiry and action. Collective action frames can be related to the “sociolinguistic perspective” (Gray 2007) on frames which views frames as social constructions created by people engaged in conversation about how to make sense of a situation and are attempting to define it. The application of the frame concept in this thesis will involve frame reflection, frame conflict, and re-framing, as well as generative metaphor. Crompton (2010) has explored the connection between frames and values, and I subscribe to this theory. Working with values and frames in this way becomes a tool for social, or rather, societal change. Lakoff’s (2004, XV) statement, “To change our frames is to change all of this” is also in line with my view that social innovation should concern systemic change and the reorganization of society as a whole,

232 rather than simply attempting to quick fix isolated problems. Another motivation for my use of frames is the focus on the front end in a design process where, in my case, a collective of actors explores what should be designed. Erving Goffman (1986), who is seen as the founder of the concept of frame analysis, argues that people use frames to answer the question, what is it that’s going on here? The ‘what’ question also characterizes the explorations of the “fuzzy” front end of a design process where the goal is ”to determine what is to be designed and sometimes what should not be designed” (Sanders and Stappers 2008, 7). The design process is also full of explorative and speculative ‘what if?’ questions. Golds- tein (2012, 367) states that ‘what?’ is more of a political question, as in ‘what to do?’ in contrast to the more technical ‘how to do?’ question. Following on the ‘what?’ question is also who is asking what and whose frames are present in problem setting and exploring an issue. The question of who is asking what is fundamental in a design thing. My working hypothesis is that working with values and frames more deliberately in a design thing could be helpful in generating possible futures in which humans could live well in relation to each other (equality and justice), to the natural world (resilience and sustainability), and the artificial world (design). How to do that is what I aim to explore. I will use frames as both an analytical concept when revisiting the case in this thesis and as a generative and transformative concept in proposing how a design thing addressing societal collapse could function. With differences in the frames of the participants in a constellation or collaboration, a frame conflict is most likely, but conflict and differences in values and opinions are at the heart of democracy. What we see with political processes like governance is the avoidance of conflict by framing an issue as neutral and in everybody’s interest through only collaborating with those who are like-minded and avoid, or leave out, actors with other opinions or perspectives—other frames. This was what happened during the third phase of the incubator process. I begin with a review of the concept of frames and discuss how it is used in design, social change, and resilience theory, then I will conclude with a description of how I aim to apply the concept in this thesis.

233 Frames

The concept of frames is used in many disciplines: computer science, cognitive science, media and communication studies, political science and policy science, and sociology (Crompton 2010, Benford and Snow 2000, Darnton and Kirk 2011). Our experiences and concep- tualizations of the world are based on structures in our long-term memory called frames (Crompton 2010). Darnton and Kirk (2011, 66) define frames as “cognitive devices that we use to understand words and things, and by which we structure our thoughts.”

When we hear a word, it automatically evokes in us a set of ideas, values and feelings. This set of evocations can be described as the ‘conceptual frame’ for that word. When we encounter new words, we understand them by reference to existing frames, and as we acquire new frames so our understanding moves along. What occurs with words also occurs with sensations and experiences: we understand the world by reference to our existing frames. (ibid. my italics)

According to Goffman (1986, 21), an individual who recognizes a particular event tends to imply a framework, or “schemata of interpretation,” which enables its user “to locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences defined in its terms.” With the help of frames we can render occurrences meaningful, organize experience and guide action (Benford and Snow 2000). Crompton (2010) relates frames to values and narratives that shape people’s everyday perception of the world, meaning that frames are “constructs that activate and strengthen particular values culturally” (ibid, 40). Joe Brewer, a colleague of Lakoff, defines ‘frame’ as the structure a concept carries with it to provide content to the concept. Brewer (2007, no page) exemplifies with the concept of a cup. When you hear the word “cup,” you will automatically know certain things about what a cup is:

1. It is a container that typically holds liquids. 2. It is graspable, meaning it comes in a size and shape compati-

234 ble with grasping it with a typical human hand. 3. Certain body movements are associated with it, including: reaching, grasping, lifting toward your mouth, drinking from it, and so on. 4. It has a logic to it that includes the following rules: 1. It must contain liquid in order to drink from it 2. If you drink all of the liquid, it will be empty 3. You cannot drink from it if it is not located near to or in contact with you mouth (Brewer 2007)

Brewer (2007) states that all of “this information arises automatically when you hear the word ‘cup’ because the concept associated with this word has all of these features in many experiences you have pertaining to cups. This hidden structure that gives meaning to the word ‘cup’ is a frame.” Framing is political. This becomes evident when reading about framing in the literature and particularly when reading George La- koff, an American cognitive linguist who takes a political stance by supporting the Democratic Party and who uses frames to create social change. According to Lakoff (2004), all knowledge, thinking, and speaking are based on frames “And since frames come in systems, a single word typically activates not only its defining frame, but also much of the system its defining frame is in” (Lakoff 2010a, 72). Political ideologies are characterized by systems of frames and “ideological language will activate that ideological system” (ibid). Ideo- logical language that is repeated often becomes “normal language” (hegemony). According to Lakoff, one cannot avoid framing, the question is simply “whose frames are being activated – and hence strengthened – in the brains of the public”? (ibid). Lakoff gives the example of how democrat senators began to use the word “tax re- lief” which was initially introduced by the conservatives, and in this way, the usage accepts their framing. “The conservatives had set a trap: The words draw you into their worldview” (ibid). This is what framing is about, argues Lakoff; framing is about finding language that fits your worldview. The question of creating a system of frames, a language, and the right words to be associated with a phenomena or concept is cru-

235 cial. The challenge with new phenomena like social innovation, resilience, and planetary boundaries, just to mention a few that are relevant in this thesis, is that most people lack a system of frames to make sense of them. Lakoff (2010a, 2010b) brings up this lack of frames in relation to environmental communication. He (2010a) argues that many environmentalists have been making the mistake of believing that simply stating facts is enough. However, a fact must make sense in a person’s system of frames. To understand something complex, “a person must have a system of frames in place that can make sense of the facts. In the case of global warming, all too many people do not have such a system of frames in the conceptual system in their brains. Such frame systems have to be built up over a period of time. This has not been done” (ibid., 73). One way to build up a frame system is to use narratives. Conservatives have been building frame systems in people’s minds for a long time, states Lakoff, but progressives have not. Therefore, they have difficulties in communicating any alternatives. Another consequence is that people have the “wrong” frames for understanding the environmental crisis and what to do about it. Here, Lakoff distinguishes between conservative and progressive moral systems and exemplifies this with the conservative, “let the market decide” ideology, in which there should be no authority higher than the market.

Hence no regulations, low or no taxes, no workers’ protections or unions, no tort cases. Thus, environmental regulation and government subsidies for sustainable energy, green technology, and green jobs are seen as government interference in the market, and hence immoral. But as the recent world economic collapse has clearly shown, markets require regulation to function effectively and in the public interest. (ibid., 75)

Another example is that conservatives tend to think more in terms of direct rather than systemic causation: “But phenomena like global warming work by systemic, not direct causation” (ibid.). Lakoff argues that we need to activate the progressive frames in regard to the environment and inhibit the conservative frames. “This can be done via language (framing the truth effectively) and experience (e.g., providing experiences of the natural world)” (ibid., 76).

236 I believe a new task for design is emerging: to contribute in finding or constructing new frames for phenomena of which we currently do not have a proper understanding. We need to fill the frames of a low carbon and resilient life, life in transition, and life within planetary and social boundaries with words, stories, metaphors, associations, images, and experiences that people can recognize, feel at home with, and desire. Design could complement spoken and written stories with “imagery” based on scenarios, prototypes, and models, but also with experiences from interacting with prototypes in real-life situations. The hope is that this could not only be part of creating new perspectives and understandings of our world, but also of what an alternative or “other kind” of life in this world could be. So words and language matter, and it is easy to fall in the trap of using the words of one’s adversary. In social innovation, many change makers, unconsciously or not, use the language of the establishment, for example, using terms such as ‘growth’ and ‘business model.’ Also, the use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ makes it seem natural that the activity should be commercial and for the market. I, myself, became aware of how I had fallen into this trap when a student disliked that I spoke about business models, a word I had not used a couple of years before, but began to use when teaching service design. In a blog post in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Kloos and Papi (2014) reflect on the vocabulary used in nonprofit evaluation: “Our main concern is that the predominance of managerial and scientific discourse is crowding out nonprofit voices” they write and continue, “When talk turns to ‘randomized controlled tri- als’ and ‘social return on investment,’ without discussion of ‘collaboration,’ ‘participation,’ and ‘lessons learned,’ the real purpose of nonprofit work gets lost in translation” (ibid.). This way of using the vocabulary of the establishment has also made it easy for the establishment to take over and set the agenda in large parts of the social innovation field and thereby neutralize the critical and transformative aspect of social innovation.

The Common Cause Reports

In this thesis I argue that the important agents of change in the transition towards a world where we can survive and thrive are engaged

237 citizens and civil society organizations that becomes a social movement. Therefore, I will now examine how the concept of frames is addressed by civil society advocates. The Common Cause (2015) network consists of different individuals and civil society organizations that want to foster an understanding of the role frames and values have in shaping society’s responses to pressing social and environmental issues. Their goal is to create a more sustainable, equitable, and democratic world through addressing global problems such as poverty, climate change, ecosystem degradation, and economic inequality, which they also refer to as “bigger than self” problems (Crompton 2010, 8). To be able to do this, “we need an empowered, connected and durable movement of citizens” (Holmes et al. 2011, 1). In finding solutions to these challenges it will be of no use to appeal to people’s fears or greed. Instead, they recommend focusing on the values that motivate people and are strong driving forces behind our attitudes and behaviors. Particular focus should be on fostering “intrinsic” values, such as care for others and concern of the natural world, and to acknowledge the importance of the frames that embody and express these values. We also need to examine how our actions help to strengthen or weaken values and frames. This is much in line with the aims of my thesis. The first report, “Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values” (Crompton 2010), departs from the fact that responses to these “bigger than self” challenges from civil society organizations have been incommensurate with the scale of the problems. Therefore, civil society organizations must champion some long-held “but insufficiently esteemed” cultural values “while seeking to diminish the primacy of many values which are now prominent” (Crompton 2010, 5). Referring to global problems as “bigger than self” problems is one way to distinguish them from problems that depend more on an individual’s self interest to solve. Relying on facts when people make judgments and decisions is also insufficient. “Emotion is often far more important” (ibid, 8), Crompton writes with reference to George Lakoff. “Indeed, if facts conflict with a person’s values, and thereby pose a threat to aspects of a persons identity, these may well be dismissed” (ibid, 26). He references a large body of research which suggests that values have profound impact on an individual’s motivation to express concerns about bigger-

238 than-self problems and adopt behavior in line with these concerns. “This entails that factors which contribute to shaping values at a cultural level should be of central ethical concern, and should be a primary focus of public scrutiny and debate” (ibid). Crompton makes a distinction between intrinsic values that include, for example, a sense of community, affiliation to friends and family, and self development, and extrinsic values which are more contingent on the perception of others and include envy of “higher” social strata, and the admiration of material wealth and power. “Intrinsic values are associated with concern about bigger-than-self problems, and with corresponding behaviors to help address these problems. Extrinsic values, on the other hand, are associated with lower levels of concern about bigger-than-self problems, and lower motivation to adopt behaviours in line with such concern” (ibid, 10). Intrinsic values are also related to life goals like “community feeling,” which includes “concerns for assisting ‘people who need it, asking nothing in return,’ for doing things that ‘will make people’s lives better,’ and for striving to ‘help the world become a better place’” (ibid, 28). To translate these discoveries into practice, Cromp- ton suggests focusing on strengthening intrinsic values relative to extrinsic values because “encouraging intrinsic values both strengthens those values associated with greater concern about bigger-than-self problems and suppresses the extrinsic values known to undermine such concern” (ibid, 35). But how are values shaped and strengthened? Values are learned, argues Crompton, and people attach greater importance to values held by people around them, like family, teachers, cultural role models, and through media consumption and commercials. Also, public policy and institutions affect people’s understanding of what is “normal” and shape cultural values.

So it seems that cultural values are shaped in important part as a result of collective decisions about how society is organised. Moreover, they can exert profound influence over our responses to bigger-than-self problems, often without conscious awareness. The implication of this is that business, public agencies, government and, of course, civil society organisations, must take responsibility not just for the direct ‘material impacts’ of their ac-

239 tivities (what they achieve ‘on the ground’), but also the impacts that they have on dominant cultural values. (ibid, 36)

But, Crompton argues, how cultural values are shaped is often neg- lected in public debate, even though there is no such thing as “value neutral” policy. This makes it possible for particular interest groups to influence cultural values in ways that promote their particular agenda without public scrutiny. I will later relate this to the social incubator process and the concept of governance. According to Crompton, this raises questions regarding the need for processes that ensure “that both the way in which particular values come to dominate, and an understanding of the social impact of these values, commands adequate public scrutiny and debate” (ibid). It also raises questions about what role should “civil society organisations have in openly and transparently advocating values that, according to the evidence, will underpin public support for the changes that they hold to be important” (ibid). I think that both of these questions are relevant to take into consideration when discussing the function of a design thing as a democratic platform. After describing the influence of values on people’s motivation to engage with bigger-than-self problems, Crompton introduces frames that he defines as “constructs that activate and strengthen particular values culturally” (ibid, 40). He states that frames offer a broader perspective than values, “while including them” (ibid., 46).

Whereas values arise in response to the questions ‘what do I think is important?’ or ‘what do I think is right or wrong?’, frames embed values in the question ‘how do I understand the world?’. Frames and values are thus closely related, because a person understands the world in part through those things that he or she thinks is important. (ibid.)

In developing frames, both Crompton, and Darnton and Kirk refer mainly to George Lakoff. Crompton (2010, 41) states the importance of frames in the framing of public issues, to see the same facts or events from different perspectives, with reference to Schön’s example of the framing of low-income neighbourhoods that I will return to below.

240 Deep frames and surface frames In frame theory, one makes a distinction between deep and surface frames. Deep frames, Crompton explains, are cognitive structures held in long-term memory that contain particular values. They are relatively stable, but not unchangeable. Lakoff has described the distinction and connection between surface and deep frames:

Surface [or cognitive] frames are associated with phrases like ‘war on terror’ that both activate and depend critically on deep frames. These are the most basic frames that constitute a moral world view or a political philosophy. Deep frames define one’s overall ‘common sense’. Without deep frames there is nothing for surface frames to hang onto. Slogans do not make sense without the appropriate deep frames in place (Lakoff, 2006, 29 in Crom- pton 2010, 42).

To better understand the difference between deep frames and surface frames, I cite a longer quote from Lakoff’s colleague, Joe Brewers (2007), analysis of “war on terror.”

So where is the deep frame in this example? It is not the frame for war or the frame for terror, since we can see that they are surface frames. Remember that the deep frame is the most basic frame that defines our moral worldview. It is not apparent directly in the surface frames of war and terror, but is in the way that our response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 has been framed.

Our response in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks was to talk about treating the terrorists as an international police problem. This is the deep frame that organizes the situation into a context where moral issues are defined. If we had continued to frame the situation as a police problem, we would have focused on things like gathering evidence, sending spies into terrorist organizations, and arresting criminals to be tried in the Inter- national Court. It is a deep frame because our moral purpose is defined as catching criminals to protect our communities. The moral values associated with this deep frame are protection, responsibility, collaboration, and so on.

241 Instead of applying the deep frame of police problem to the terrorist attack, the Bush administration and right-wing message machine bombarded us with a different frame. They chose to frame the situation as a military problem. They immediately started talking about the “War on Terror” and organized public discourse around the frame of war. When they did this, the surface frame for war restricted our discussions to issues related to war: mobilize an army, engage in military battles, “smoke out” our enemy, and so on. (Brewer 2007, no page)

From this example we learn that the deep frame tells us what kind of situation we are dealing with and that the surface frame reinforces the deep frame and clarify the details of the deep frame. Later, I will try to apply surface and deep frames in analyzing the incubator process. There, I will consider a term like “job creation” as a surface frame that activates the deep frame of “market,” “market economy,” or a “market problem.” Public policy has a deep impact in shaping dominant public values and dominant deep frames. Brewer and Lakoff has divided public policy into material policy—that is “the nuts and bolts,” what is done in the world to fulfill policy goals, and cognitive policy—which is about the values and ideas behind policy goals that will affect both the public and the media so it is perceived to be common sense and widely accepted (Crompton 2010, 43). Frames influence how people think, communicate, and act. Therefore, frames have been used as effective vehicles for promoting cultural values. “It is cru- cially important to understand the power of frames, and how these are used, if the inevitable and ongoing processes by which particular frames are activated and embedded is to come under public scrutiny,” Crompton writes (ibid.). He points out how political elites contribute to strengthening particular deep frames through political discourse and most of Lakoff’s work deals with the political aspects of framing. Later, I will relate this to the concepts of governance and agonism and how a design thing can function as a democratic platform where the construction and use of frames can be exposed and debated. In further exploring deep frames, Crompton describe pairs of opposing frames which I find useful in this thesis: self-interest and

242 common-interest frames, and elite governance and participative democracy frames. Starting with self-interest and common-interest frames, Crompton states that people are both concerned about themselves and of other people and other living things. Recent research has challenged the assumption that we are biologically self-interested; on the contrary, empathy for others is a basic human attribute. The- refore, the self-interest frame has to be perpetuated through social institutions and public discourse, and through economic discourse, in particular. “At a certain point, a discourse like self-interest simply becomes naturalised, and is taken for granted,” states Crompton (2010, 48–49). “If that is the case, then any attempt to challenge it probably needs to be done openly and directly by explicitly ac- tivating the common-interest frame by means of common-interest discourse. Indeed, as we have seen, for any approach to be ethical, this process must be transparent and reflexive.” The elite governance and participative democracy frames deal with how people view the role of government in public decision making and are most relevant in this thesis. The elite governance frame is based on the view that people cannot solve their own problems, and therefore, political power and decision-making must be performed by elites. The political world is thus structured as a top-down hierarchy. “One mechanism for managing democracy is to deflect public agency into the marketplace – with an emphasis on being ‘good consumers’ rather than ‘good citizens’” (Crompton 2010, 55). The assertion that “Civil society organisations are unaccountable and their influence should be narrowly circumscribed” can be recognized in governance literature and in our own experiences from the incubator case. The participative democracy frame is based on the assumption that citizens are part of the collaborative decision-making process and develop a collective sense of the ideals to which they wish to aspire. In this frame, civil society organizations are an opportunity for people to self-organize, express collective aspirations, and push forward community interests. Crompton writes that many civil society activists perceive a lack of accountability in political processes and cites as an example Rob Hopkins, the co-founder of the Transition Network, who sees a fracture between the public and politicians. There are two responses for civil society organization

243 to this fracture, according to Crompton. One is to focus narrowly on influencing political decision-makers directly through lobbying without much engagement of the public. The other response is to build political pressure through active citizen engagement and many NGOs work this way. Again, Crompton exemplifies with the Tran- sition Network and Rob Hopkins who foresees communities that have “set out [a vision of] where they want to go,” such that “a very dynamic interface is created between communities, local and national government” (Hopkins, 2008, 76 in Crompton 2010, 56). Crompton (ibid.) writes “[p]ursuit of such public commitment to participating in decision-making processes will also require engagement with political elites, because if decision-making is to become less centralised, this process can be expedited by political elites ce- ding some of their power.”

Putting frames into practice The main message from the Common Cause reports (Crompton 2010, Darnton and Kirk 2011) that I refer to here is to use the strategy of reinforcing positive frames as a way to address “bigger than self” problems. I will now turn to Darnton and Kirk (2011) and how they put frame theory into practice by developing and setting alternative positive frames for development practice. The act of finding new alternative frames to substitute negative frames can be seen as an act of reframing, something I will discuss more in relation to Schön and Rein. In Darnton and Kirk’s case, the reason to reframe development practices is to increase public engagement. According to them, the first step is to identify “development values” in specific frames and then activate and strengthen the values in their audience (ibid., 81). In order to identify the deep frames of the development sector, they arranged a conversation with senior NGO staff. George Lakoff and Joe Brewer have identified a series of deep frames that occur in many different situations and discourses, and they invited Brewer to identify the deep frames that resonated in their conversation. Brewer identified three oppositional pairs of deep frames that I will summarize here. I have already previously described the first pair, Elite Governance vs. Participative Democracy. The second pair is Rational Actor vs. Embodied Mind. The Rational Actor frame is the established model of human nature and asserts a world

244 filled with individuals who make self-directed choices based on rational analysis like “cost-benefit calculations to maximise ‘utility’” (ibid.). In the Embodied Mind frame, reasoning comes from human interaction with the physical and social environment. “It is equally important that rationality is not separated from other elements of humanity, in particular emotions and moral values” (ibid.). The third pair is Free Market vs. Shared Prosperity. “The Free Market frame presumes that the world is filled with individuals seeking to maximise their self-interest” (ibid.). These free and competitive individuals create wealth through “industrious” efforts. The Shared Prosperity frame, on the other hand, presumes a world filled with support systems often referred to as “commons” that is owned by, and available for, everyone. Wealth is created through shared infrastructure like schools and transportation systems which empower people to cooperate on a societal scale. Darnton and Kirk suggest practitioners in the development sector to engage the “Embodied Mind frame” and not the “Rational Actor Frame”; the “Shared Prosperity frame” and not the “Free Market frame”; the “Participatory Democracy frame” and not the “Elite Governance frame” (ibid., 88). These deep frames are also interesting for this thesis, and I will discuss them both in relation to the incubator case and to my proposal for a design thing. The Shared Prosperity frame is relevant in discussing other alternative forms of economies, and my colleague, Anna Seravalli (2014), has explored the concept of “commons” and alternative production in her thesis. The Participatory Democracy frame is relevant in relation to participatory design, design things, and our experiences of governance networks in the incubator case. To prescribe a set of positive deep frames is relatively easy because they are morally charged and closely linked to values, states Darnton and Kirk (2011, 88). To decide which surface frames one should use to foster positive values is more difficult because surface frames are much more related to particular situations. But in the same way as with the deep frames, they choose oppositional frames; firstly, they choose some current, problematic, and negative frames, and then they choose alternative positive frames that could replace the problematic ones. For example, the surface frame that the word ‘charity’ presents is problematic because it evokes the “moral order

245 deep frame with its connotations of unequal power relations” (ibid., 90). The public also has a limited understanding of what ‘charities’ do, and therefore, the need to reframe these organizations exists. As alternative frames to ‘charity,’ they proposed ‘justice’ and ‘fairness,’ and as alternative to the ‘charities’ frame they suggested ‘movements’ and ‘NGOs.’ (ibid., 94). Finding current and alternative surface frames is not easy and when found, the alternative frames are more “speculative” (ibid., 102) and need to be debated and tested in practice in real situations. Also, the process of finding new frames is not a task for experts, but should be “understood as a journey of debate and deliberation, involving a range of stakeholders and audience groups. New frames should emerge from these stakeholders talking and thinking together” (ibid., 94). I think that moving this process of finding current negative frames and replacing them with alternative positive frames to a design context fits well into Schön’s conversation with the situation, a process of naming, framing, and reframing.

Frames and Social Movements

Framing is also used in social movements, which have been researched by Benford and Snow (2000). In the mid-1980s, social movement scholars started to view social movement actors as “signifying agents actively engaged in the production and maintenance of meaning for constituents, antagonists, and bystanders or obser- vers” (ibid., 613). Social movement researchers conceptualize this signifying work, or meaning construction, as “framing” (ibid., 614). Benford and Snow claim that this denotes active and processual phenomena that implies agency. It is also “contentious in the sense that it involves the generation of interpretive frames that not only differ from existing ones but that may also challenge them” (ibid.). The products of this framing activity are referred to as “collective action frames” (ibid.). Benford and Snow write that the frame concept mainly used in social movement research derives from Goffman. As frames, collective action frames also perform an interpretive function by simplifying and condensing aspects of the “world out there,” but in ways that are “intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to

246 garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists” (ibid.). They define collective action frames as “action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization” (ibid.). Collective action frames are not aggregations of individual attitudes and perceptions but “constructed in part as movement adherents negotiate a shared understanding of some problematic condition or situation they define as in need of change” (ibid., 615). Important to note is that a social movement often consists of various organizations with their own frames that may lead to frame conflicts. Benford and Snow state that two features constitute collective action frames: core framing tasks and discursive processes. They refer to core framing as diagnostic framing, prognostic framing and motivational framing. Through these core framing tasks, movement actors could attend to the interrelated problems of consensus mobilization, wherein agreement is facilitated, and also with action mobilization, where action is fostered with the aim of “moving people from the balcony to the barricades” (ibid.). When discussing diagnostic framing, that is problem identification and attribution, they point out that many studies focus on the development and ar- ticulation of “injustice frames” (ibid) where a victim is identified. But, they also found that not all collective action frames contain an injustice component. Prognostic framing involves the articula- tion of a proposed solution to a problem. This involves the “what?” question, as in—what is to be done? As with all framing activities in collective action, prognostic framing takes place between the various organizations. The last of the core framing tasks, motivational framing, has a mobilizing function which includes the construction of a vocabulary of motive that “provide adherents with compelling accounts for engaging in collective action and for sustaining their participation” (ibid., 617). Snow (2004) describes three functions of frames: focusing, ar- ticulation and transformation. First, he (ibid., 384) describes how collective action frames function like picture frames by focusing attention and specifying what in our sensual field is relevant or not relevant, what is ‘‘in frame’’ and what is ‘‘out of frame,’’ in relation to the situation we are addressing. Second, frames also function as ar- ticulation mechanisms by tying together various specified elements

247 of the situation, “so that one set of meanings rather than another is conveyed, or in the language of narrativity, “one story rather than another is told” (ibid., my italics). This relation between frames and stories being told, which story we use to give meaning to the world, is something I will explore further in my proposal. It will make a difference if we address our situation through the story of Conven- tional Development or through a story like Great Transition. Here, the third function of frames that Snow brings up can help us, their transformative function where frames alter the meaning of objects in a situation and their relationships to the actors involved in the situation. “Thus collective action frames not only perform an interpretive function in the sense of providing answers to the question ‘‘What is going on here?’’ but they also are decidedly more agentic and contentious in the sense of calling for action that problematizes and challenges existing authoritative views and framings of reality” (Ibid., 385). But, one may ask, how to deal with disparities in collective action and collaborations between various actors? As Schön and Rein (1994, 33) have stated regarding institutional action frames, they do not usually consist of a single, coherent, and overarching frame and members of a single institution may frame a situation differently. Snow (2004) also brings up this complexity and hybridity in the character of action frames. He states “movement ideologies and collective action frames often include strands of multiple cultural ideologies or clusters of beliefs and values” (ibid. 399). He exemplifies with how the framings of important historical movement leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King were based on mixed sources. Gan- dhi’s guiding principles “satyagraha” and “ahimsa,” which evolved into “what can be construed as a mobilizing master frame for much of the world, were based on a mixture of beliefs derived from Hin- duism, Buddhism, and Christianity, and his spiritual mentors included Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, and his mother” (ibid., 400). Martin Luther King blended “strands of Gandhism, Christianity, and the US Constitution into a powerful ‘rights’ master frame. In a similar way, the Chinese democracy movement was grounded in “a blend of ideas about democracy and freedom along with traditional Chi- nes cultural ideologies or narrations associated with Confucianism, communism, and nationalism” (ibid.). This hybrid character of col-

248 lective action frames “appear to constitute innovative articulations and elaborations of existing ideologies or sets of beliefs and ideas, and thus function as extensions of or antidotes to them” (ibid., 401).

Frames in Sustainability and Resilience Theory

I have already touched upon the use of frames in sustainability when reviewing the writings from the Common Cause network. I will now go back to the lack of frames in sustainability that Lakoff has brought up. Lakoff (2010a) develops this argument and introduces the concept “hypocognition” which means the lack of ideas we need: “We are suffering from massive hypocognition in the case of the environment. The reason is that the environment is not just about the environment. It is intimately tied up with other issue areas: economics, energy, food, health, trade, and security. In these overlap areas, our citizens as well as our leaders, policymakers, and journalists simply lack frames that capture the reality of the situation” (ibid., 76). Lakoff cites as an example how the concept of “environment” in itself is framed as something separate from us, while we are an inse- parable part of nature. “This separation is so deep in our conceptual system that we cannot simply wipe it from our brains. It is a terribly false frame that will not go away” (ibid., 76–77). He also brings up the concept of “environmental action” with its focus on individual actions like changing light bulbs, driving less, and eating organic. But, according to Lakoff, the most important thing is missing: political action. “To an enormous degree, governmental action outweighs and shapes individual actions. When we think of the environment, we should be thinking of political involvement. But politics is not in the Environment Frame” (ibid., 77). Another “deep truth” that Lakoff finds hard to discuss because there is no established frame for it in people’s minds, is that the economic and ecological “meltdowns” have the same cause, “namely, the unregulated market with the idea that greed is good and that the natural world is a resource for short-term private enrichment,” and that both are systemic (ibid.). “We have to think in global, systems terms and we don’t do so naturally. Here hypocognition is tragic. We lack the frames we need” (ibid.).

249 Lakoff examplifies this lack of frames with Michael Pollan needing to invent the terms “sun-based food,” which is locally and organic grown, and “oil-based food” which is food produced with fertilizers, pesticides, and transportation and which is also the most common food that we consume. Lakoff states that frames become reified in institutions, industries, and cultural practices: “Once reified, they don’t disappear until the institutions, industries, and cultural practices disappear. That is a very slow process” (ibid.). But as examples of how frames are beginning to be changed, Lakoff points at the concepts “regulated commons” and “new economics” (an economics of well-being). These perspectives are in many ways “directly counter” to the “narrowly imagined concept of economic growth” (ibid., 78). Finally, among the recommendations to environmental organizations, Lakoff stresses the importance of providing a structured understanding of what one is saying, not by only giving facts, but more by telling stories that exemplify one’s values and rouse emotions. “Language is needed, imagery is needed, conceptual frames and metaphors are needed: whatever will communicate the significance of the truth” (Lakoff, 2010b, 15). In doing my cross reading between design, social innovation, and resilience theories, I also found the frame concept in the anthology Collaborative Resilience (Goldstein 2012). In their chapter, Bullock, Armitage, and Mitchell (2012) tell a story of building resilience in forest-based communities in crisis in Northern Ontario, Canada. Here, frames are linked with social and double-loop learning in “shadow networks” and the authors use frame analysis to examine shifting perspectives on the crisis. In this case, a shadow network, which later became the Northeast Superior Forest Community Corporation (NSFC), was made up of an informal group of town officials and their advisors who “facilitated learning and mobilized resources as a critical first step in establishing a more formal collaborative forum to increase community resilience” (ibid., 309). According to the authors, the NSFC case offers an ideal study of “social group frames regarding problem definitions, solutions, and forms of power in an emerging social learning setting” (ibid.). The ambition of gaining increased local control of forest resources revealed uneven opportunities to influence planning and management between dominating (e.g., the forest industry) and marginalized so-

250 cial groups (e.g., First Nations). “The mix of experts, consultants, practitioners, and lay people provides further opportunity to assess power differentials” (ibid.). The authors emphasize the importance of shadow networks and social learning in emerging collaborations because early problem and solution definitions can have a lasting influence on the following collaboration and organization. When discussing the links between social learning, double-loop learning, and social framing, they lean on Argyris and Schön, and Gray among others. They define social learning as “the iterative action, reflection and deliberation of individuals and groups engaged in the sharing of experiences and ideas to collaboratively resolve complex challenges” (ibid., 309). In social learning, actors build shared meaning through social framing, which in turn provides a basis for collective action. Social learning theorists distinguish between two types of learning. Single-loop learning is seen as an instrumental type of learning where an actor is concerned with changing skills, practices or actions that affect an outcome “without changing basic values and norms” (ibid., 315). Double-loop learning, on the other hand, is seen as conceptual learning that leads to “more fundamental changes to underlying values, norms, and objectives that in turn cause change in strategies and action” (ibid.). In this case, I think one can say that single-loop learning belongs in the more conservative Conventional Development camp and that double-loop learning will support the transition and reorganization of society. Double-loop learning enables reframing and the establishment of new routines for action. Consequently, collaboration between actors is crucial in double-loop learning and reframing, but with this kind of collaboration, follows the potential for frame conflicts and dominant framing by those with power and influence. Therefore, one of the main tasks in an “agonistic” design thing will be to deal with frame conflicts, power relations, and dominant framing. As Lakoff and others have made clear, learning and framing is never value-free or neutral, it is always politically charged. Bullock, Armitage, and Mitchell (2012, 316) exemplify this with what they call “critical” political ecology, where pluralism of perspectives on environmental issues is crucial. “In this way, the struggle is as much about whose worldview

251 will dominate as it is about institutional control and material needs” (ibid., 317). In the NSCF case, two different positions emerge among the stakeholders. The dominant view of the forest industry was that “changing economic forces have driven the few large companies that control the most of fiber supply in Northern Ontario to scale back operations or close” (ibid., 314). In this view, “outside” forces caused the industry collapse. In the opposite view held by many local residents and forest social groups, “internal” resistance to change was the main problem and therefore solutions needed to build upon changes to the structure of the regional forest economies and power relations which limit community resilience. How did these different views, or frames, emerge? To answer this question, Bullock, Armitage, and Mitchell conducted a frame analysis (building on Schön and Rein among others) where they identified key frames and contrast perspectives in the development of the NSFC case. They tracked collective frames “to see which ones emerge as alternatives within a socially constructed discourse” (Bullock, Armitage and Mitchell 2012, 321) and they looked into the problem frames (diagnostic) and solution frames (prognostic) used by the actors. The NSCF case started with the formation of a shadow network called “The Mayors’ Group” who began to collaborate for developing alternative solutions to common problems. This group consisted of local government organizations with links to selected advisors and consultants, “i.e., academics, media, and business people” (ibid., 322). But one important stakeholder was missing, the local First Nations who developed their own group. “Unsatisfied with their exclusion from the NSCF decision making, and seeing opportunity for more effective collaboration based on First Nations’ traditional resource tenure and the capacity of non-aboriginal communities, First Nations indicated that they would intervene in project plans unless they were appropriately engaged” (ibid., 324). As a result, one First Nations representative became a NSCF voting member. The shadow network had been successful in gradually developing trust between actors and in developing a common vision. The authors describe how this alternative vision emerged through the con-

252 cepts of diagnostic and prognostic frames (as Benford and Snow have also brought up). They describe diagnostic, or problem definitions frames, as “peoples’ understanding of the problem situation as well as what has caused the problem, and the frames often target who is seen to be responsible for the problem” (ibid., 325). Rather than accepting the diagnosis and proposed solutions of the industry, the shadow network “pressed to identify more fundamental causes of the overall problem and, through double-loop learning, developed their own nuanced understanding. A change in the vision and policies surrounding forest tenure were judged to be at the heart of the matter” (ibid., 326). This reframing of the “real problem” contained “a lack of local control” and shifted the focus from “solving the problems of the current forest industry to redefining community relationships with forest ecosystems, and to how they ought to be managed and used in order to benefit northern populations” (ibid.). With the problem reframed and redefined, the authors turn to solutions and prognostic frames through which people identify preferred strategies and tactics for solving problems. “Possible solutions depend on how the problem is framed” (ibid., 327). As seen, local control was considered to be the root of the problem and therefore, the shadow network considered increased local control as part of the solution. Local actors expressed the lack of local control as, for example, limited access to fiber that in turn hindered innovation. Therefore, the shadow network focused on developing local talent and solutions rather than attracting outsider industry investors. The NSCF case is interesting in relation to the incubator case, as it in many ways resembles a design thing. It is an example of how a heterogeneous and agonistic constellation of actors do not have to be co-opted by a powerful actor, as in the incubator case, but can be successful in dealing with power relations, including marginalized actors and in reaching a common vision. Therefore, I use the NSCF case as a complement to our own experiences from the incubator when developing my proposal for a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse.

Frames in Design Theory

Donald Schön’s use of the frame concept develops over the years, as

253 does his use of the term ‘design.’ It develops from something specific for designers and traditional design problems toward something involving many disciplines working on societal problems. In an article for Design Studies titled “Problems, Frames and Perspectives on Designing,” Schön (1984) departs from architectural design practice and connects framing with design experiments. When a designer makes a move, he bases that on a normative framing of the situation, a setting of problems to be solved. Whether he likes or dislikes the back talk of the experiment is based on his appreciative system “with its likings, preferences, values, norms, and meanings” (ibid., 132). But one designer’s appreciative system, what he likes or dislikes, may differ from another’s and may lead to a “conflict of frames and perspectives” (ibid.). As we will see, these frame conflicts will involve more disciplines (a designing system) and other kinds of problems as Schön develops his view on frames. In the book, Frame Re- flection (1994), the object of design is not a building, but in one of the cases, a programme for homeless people which generates frame conflicts that Schön and Rein suggest to be pragmatically resolved by frame reflection, a central function in design rationality. As seen, it is in describing how a practitioner (designer) sets a problem that Schön (1987, 4) introduces the concept of framing. “Through complementary acts of naming and framing, the practitioner selects things for attention and organizes them, guided by an appreciation of the situation that gives it coherence and sets a direction for action” (ibid.). This also brings us into who is setting, or framing, the problem because as Schön (ibid.) says, depending on our disciplinary backgrounds, organizational roles, past histories, interests, and political or economic perspectives we frame problematic situations in different ways. He describes how, in a situation regarding malnourishment among children in developing countries, a nutritionist may frame it as a problem of optimal diet, an agro- nomist may frame it as a problem of food production, and a demo- grapher may see it as a consequence of population growth, and so on. This relates to Lakoff and Brewer’s example of “war on terror,” and how one may frame a terrorist attack as a police problem or a military problem. As a consequence, the difference of professional (or ideological, in Lakoff and Brewer’s case) identity and perspective may lead to debates about how to solve the problem in situations

254 where many and different actors are involved, as is the case and focus in this thesis. “Debates involve conflicting frames, not easily resolvable – if resolvable at all – by appeal of data. Those who hold conflicting frames pay attention to different facts and make different sense of the facts they notice. It is not by technical problem solving that we convert problematic situations to well-formed problems; rather, it is through naming and framing that technical problem solving becomes possible” (ibid., 5). Related to the act of naming and framing is the idea of seeing something as something else and the concept of metaphor. “When a practitioner makes sense of a situation he perceives to be unique, he sees it as something already present in his repertoire” (ibid.). In this way, a familiar situation can function as a precedent or a metaphor for an unfamiliar situation. Metaphor comes from the Greek word “meta-pherein” which means “carrying over.” Schön (1993, 137) uses the term metaphor to refer both to a product, “a perspective or frame, a way of looking at things,” and a process “by which new perspectives on the world come in existence.” In this process, which he calls generative metaphor, a frame or perspective from one domain of experience is carried over to another so that we can see things in new ways. Schön uses seeing-as and generative metaphor in both design-specific contexts and in social policy contexts. The article (Schön 1993) I will now review is set in a social policy context, but most of the arguments and examples are the same as in The Re- flective Practitioner (1995) and Frame Reflection (1994). Schön (1993) argues that social policy has more to do with problem setting than problem solving, an argument that has been repeated from a design perspective by Blyth and Kimbell (2011). Consequently, we need to know more about how social problems are framed and set. Schön explains that problem settings are mediated by the stories people tell about troublesome situations and that “the framing of problems often depends upon metaphors underlying the stories which generate problem setting and set the directions of problem solving” (Schön 1993, 138). He argues that we already think about social policies in terms of “certain pervasive, tacit generative metaphors” (ibid., 139) and that we need to be critically aware of this and in this way become aware of conflicting frames in setting social problems. “The participants in the debate bring diffe-

255 rent and conflicting frames, generated by different and conflicting metaphors” (ibid.). Schön proposes “frame restructuring,” which is similar to the making of generative metaphors, as a way to tackle frame conflicts. To explain the making of generative metaphors, Schön uses two examples, one technological and one social. In the technological example, a group of product development researchers used the generative metaphor “paintbrush as a pump” to consider how to improve the performance of a new paintbrush. The metaphor came from a researcher who said “a paintbrush is a kind of a pump.” By seeing a paintbrush as a pump, the researchers saw A as B, where A and B before were seen as different things. But not all metaphors are generative and the researchers had also used the term “masking” without any progress. Paintbrush-as-a pump was a generative metaphor in the sense that it generated new perceptions, explanations, and inventions, writes Schön. In the other example, Schön looks into the use of metaphors regarding discussions concerning social policy on housing. Here, the problem-solving perspective has been dominating and problems have been assumed to be given. But problems are not given; we construct them in an attempt to make sense of complex and troubling situations. Schön argues that problems are constructed by the different stories people tell about a situation and uses two stories about urban housing as example. Each story represents a different view of the situation and each story names different features and relations. The first story is told from the expert planners’ view, which sees a once-healthy community becoming diseased by the decaying condition of the housing stock and suggest to replace the slum with a newly designed area. This story is based on terminology, or metaphors, like “community,” “blight,” “health,” “renewal,” “cycle of decay,” and “integrated plan” (ibid., 146). The second story is told more from the perspective of the community and here the suggestion is not to replace buildings or dislocate residents but rather to reinforce and rehabilitate what is seen as a “natural” community. Here, the story is based on terminology like “home,” “spatial identity,” “patterns of interaction,” and “informal networks” (ibid.). “Each story places the features it has selected within the frame of a particular context – for example, of blight and the removal of blight; of natural commu-

256 nities, their threatened dissolution, and their preservation” (ibid.). These kinds of stories described by Schön (ibid., 147) as diagnostic/prescriptive stories help us take the “normative leap” from data to recommendation, from fact to values, and from is to ought. The naming and framing of the housing situation proceeds via generative metaphors where, in the first story, the situation is seen as a disease which must be cured, and in the second story, the situation is seen as the threatening disruption of a natural community which must be protected or restored. In the first story, houses need to be torn down, redesigned, and rebuilt; in the other story, a community needs to be preserved. Schön (ibid.) writes, “Each of these generative metaphors derives its normative force from certain purposes and values, certain normative images, which have long been powerful in our culture.” For example, we abhor disease and strive for health, and we have an affinity for the “natural” and distrust the “artificial” (ibid., 147-48).

A situation may begin by seeming complex, uncertain, and indeterminate. If we can once see it, however, in terms of a normative dualism such as health/disease or nature/artifice, then we shall know in what direction to move. Indeed the diagnosis and the prescription will seem obvious. This sense of the obviousness of what is wrong and what needs fixing is the hallmark of generative metaphor in social policy. (ibid., 148)

But, Schön writes, something that seems obvious may, after reflection, be mistaken. Therefore, we must be aware of the generative metaphors that shape our perceptions and upon which we base our problem-setting stories. This is not easy, as generative metaphors often are tacit. Also, it is important to be aware that one situation can be described by many different and, even conflicting, stories. In this way, it becomes apparent that we are not dealing with “reality,” but with “various ways of making sense of reality” (ibid., 149). As a consequence, we must be more aware of the various stories we tell and the realities they represent. “Indeed, it is through storytelling that we can best discover our frames and the generative metaphors implicit in our frames” (ibid.). This sentence is central to my argument that we need various perspectives and stories in the conversation with the situation, both to describe how things are and

257 how they could be. Thus, we not only need the stories of ordinary citizens, civil servants, and business managers, but we also need stories from cultural and social movements like The Dark Mountain Project and the Transition Network who critique dominating frames and ways of making sense of reality, and introduce new systems of frames and then reframe reality. When we reflect on our problem-setting stories and their generative metaphors in this way, our diagnoses and prescriptions appears less obvious, and instead, we become involved in critical inquiry. In summing up his argument thus far, Schön states that problem setting matters, and that we set problems through the stories we tell, but we must reflect on the problem-setting processes and the frames we use. This frame awareness will most likely bring us into frame conflicts, and these frame conflicts are not problems that can be solved by ap- pealling to facts. According to Schön, adversaries in frame conflicts may not disagree about facts because they look at different facts. In the same way, frame conflicts often take the form of dilemmas because adversaries are involved in a conflict of ends that are incommensurable. “Ends are incommensurable because they are embedded in conflicting frames that lead us to construct incompatible meanings for the situation” (ibid., 151). These dilemmas are often expressions of societal divisions, regarding, for example, class or ethnicity.

Rhetorical frames, action frames, and metacultural frames Schön and Rein (1994) note that policy controversies are based on conflicting action frames. Action frames, which they define as “frames that inform policy practice” (ibid, 32), operate at different levels of specificity and they distinguish three levels of action frames: policy frame, institutional action frame, and metacultural frames. A policy frame is a frame an institutional actor uses to construct the problem of a specific policy situation. Schön and Rein (ibid., 33) give the example of how problems in low and middle-income housing mainly was framed in terms of “preserving” the city’s healthy housing stock which led to prioritizing the rehabilitation of the housing stock. But this policy left out aspects such as the income level of the occupants and the availability of affordable housing. The institutional action frame is in regard to “the beliefs, values,

258 and shared perspectives held by particular institutions and interest groups from which particular policy positions are derived” (ibid., xiii). Schön and Rein explain that “An institutional action frame is the more generic action frame from which institutional actors derive the policy frames they use to structure a wide range of problematic policy situations. As agents of thought and action, institutions possess characteristic points of view, prevailing systems of belief, category schemes, images, routines, and styles of argument and action, all of which inform their action frames” (ibid., 33). They further state that “Institutional action frames tend to be complex and hybrid in nature. They do not usually consist in a single, coherent, overarching frame, but in families of related frames” (ibid.). In this way, the same institution may frame different situations according to different frames. Also, individual members of an institution may hold frames that are only loosely coupled to the institution’s action frames; For example, front-line workers or “individuals closer to street-level operations tend to see problems and respond to them differently than individuals closer to the agency’s top and center” (ibid.). Institutional action frames are local expressions of what Schön and Rein call metacultural frames (ibid.). Metacultural frames are “the broadly shared beliefs, values, and perspectives familiar to the members of a societal culture and likely to endure in that culture over long periods of time, on which individuals and institutions draw in order to give meaning, sense, and normative direction to their thinking and action in policy matters” (ibid., xiii). “The oppositional pairs disease and cure, natural and artificial, and wholeness and fragmentation belong to the realm of metacultural frames. Met- acultural frames, organized around generative metaphors, are at the root of the policy stories that shape both rhetorical and action frames” (ibid., 33–34). Schön and Rein exemplify with how the cultural metaframes “nature and nurture” are used in the policy domain of crime. “The nature frame lends itself to prescriptions that favor restraint and segregation of criminals, swift and sure punishment, and (at worst) attempts to control the reproductive behaviour of people who are believed to carry the wrong kinds of genetic material. The nurture frame suggests policies that remove or mitigate environmental factors presumed to be conductive to criminality or other

259 forms of social pathology” (ibid., 34). Schön and Rein shift between the terms metacultural frame and cultural metaframes. Later in the book, they introduce more frames, namely, the cultural metaframes market frame, social welfare frame, and social control frame.

Policy controversies and frames To better understand Schön and Rein’s use of frames and their connection to design, I will review the case in the book Frame Reflection that I think is most relevant to this thesis. The case concerns the issue of homelessness in Massachusetts in the 1980s. It is a story how bureaucrats and advocacy groups struggled to create a programme (the design object) for the homeless and how they saw homelessness through “the lenses of conflicting interests and action frames” (Schön and Rein 1994, 129). It is a story about “cooperative policy design undertaken by a network of individuals who are able, at crucial moments in the design drama, to bring to their roles high degree of reflective inquiry. They did this in a prevailing climate of antagonism, instability, and political pressure” (ibid.) In the early 1980s, the number of homeless increased, but types of people who were homeless changed. They were no longer the usual stereotypes such as alcoholics and bag ladies, but now they were also families with children. Consequently, the naming of the problem became politically controversial. In Massachusetts, a coalition of support groups deliberately lumped the different homeless populations under one name “as a vehicle for political organisation and public pressure” (ibid., 133). They managed to push the newly elected governor Dukakis to act, and he created three forums as the coalition had advised: “The main actors in these forums were the advocates, the local charitable and nonprofit organizations who made up the existing shelter system, and various members of the legislative and executive branches of state government” (ibid., 135). But soon disputes erupted, and one of these disputes concerned who the homeless were and what kinds of problems they had. One of the main actors in this story, Ellen Bassuk, “claimed they were a new population, radically different from the unattached, middle-aged alcoholic men” (ibid., 139). For her, homelessness was mainly a problem of mental illness, but for the advocates of the homeless, it was an issue concerning the absence of homes.

260 In parallel with this dispute was another between the two state agencies: the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) and the Executive Office of Community Development (EOCD). DPW saw homelessness “as an opportunity to fill the poverty gap” (ibid.) and EOCD saw homelessness as a housing problem. These disputes were based on conflicting institutional action frames and conflicting underlying cultural metaframes. Schön and Rein divide these metaframes into the market frame, the social welfare frame, and the social control frame. These frames are generally present in controversies regarding issues like poverty, deprivation, and deviance. The market frame is based on the idea that supply responds to consumer demand. According to this frame, the state’s response to failing markets should be restorative. “In the case of housing, the state may restore markets by supporting the supply of housing” (ibid., 142). Economists favor the market frame. According to the social welfare frame, markets are imperfect and a humane society must provide the needy with resources that enable them to survive and become socially integrated in larger society. In this view, the state has an obligation to satisfy individuals and families who stand in need of shelter, services, and housing subsidies. The social control frame is based on the idea that individuals must comply with societal norms. In this frame, the best way to tackle a social problem is to change the behavior of “problem people” (ibid.) After a while, the actors in the coalition saw that the causes of homelessness were multiple and interactive, which increased the complexity of the programme design. But the designers came to an agreement on a programme rationale based on a view of homelessness as a “multidimensional human services issues” (ibid., 147). The designers distinguished three typologies of homeless people, all with different causes. First, the economic homeless, who had “dropped out of the market” (ibid.). Second, the situational homeless, who suffered from family turbulence, domestic violence, or personal dis- organization. Third, the chronic homeless, the traditional population of “street people” like bag ladies and drug addicts (ibid., 148). The designers of the programme arranged a sequence of services for these typologies of homeless: emergency services like shelter, food, or clothing; transitional services like housing, social, and health ser-

2617 vices; and stabilization services such as access to permanent housing or employment. But the programme still had flaws. For example, the designers learned that a system that suited homeless individuals did not work well for the homeless families with children. This and other shortcomings made the conflicts persistent. In their conclusion, Schön and Rein see this story as a “drama of political contention” and a process of “cooperative antagonism in which each of the key actors saw homelessness through the lens of its own action frame” (ibid.). Schön and Rein also see this policy drama as a design conversation:

The designing system constructed a policy object, the statewide program, and sent it out into the larger environment, accompa- nied by verbal messages about the object’s meaning and intended use. But the object was picked up and interpreted by actors in the larger environment—homeless families, social workers, advocates, and landlords—who constructed their own meaning for it and used it in their own ways. They talked back to the policy designers, challenging their intentions and assumptions, and the designers listened. (ibid., 159)

The actors in the Massachusetts story were engaged in a design-rational inquiry where they first planned the statewide programme and, thereafter, detected flaws in the design and tried to correct them. It was a reflective design conversation where “some of the actors listened to the back talk generated by their moves, reflecting on and learning from the results of their designing, and they tried to understand the conflicting action frames and interests that threatened to bring their policy-making process to a halt” (ibid., 160). This case also resembles what happens in a design thing, and I will therefore relate it and the preceding NSCF case to both the incubator process and my proposal for design thing addressing societal collapse.

Design rationality and frames As we have seen in the case above the idea of a societal conversation with the situation and the idea of design rationality has now expanded from concerning material artefacts to concern policy con-

262 troversies. In Frame Reflection (Schön and Rein 1994, xi) addresses “issues such as poverty, crime, environmental protection, the Third World, and abortion.” These kinds of issues are much in line with the challenges that the practitioners of social innovation address. Therefore, Schön and Rein’s argument is highly interesting in a thesis that explores what design practice has to offer in situations regarding social innovation, sustainability, and resilience. The main elements in this argument, the gathering of actors with complementary or contesting perspectives, and the controversies that may occur when they try to address and solve an issue is also highly relevant in relation to the concepts of long-term infrastructuring and design things. Regarding the long-term perspective, it is interesting that all the cases referred to in the book are developed over very long periods of time, from around ten years to up to thirty years. This feeds into the discussion that the idea of the design “project” as a short- term engagement over a period of a couple of months is ill-suited for societal issues (e.g., Blyth and Kimbell 2011). Schön and Rein see the policy-making process as a kind of design process. “We see policy making as a dialectic within which policy makers function as designers and exhibit, at their best, a particular kind of reflective practice, which we call design rationality” (Schön and Rein 1994, xi). But, again, as in Schön’s previous work, the departure point is the presumed difficulty to combine reflection and action. If there is reflection on practice in policy making then it is at the lower levels such as “policy practice and policies themselves” (ibid., xiii) that policy making consists of: “But when it comes to higher-level reflection—by which we mean reflection on such ‘invisible essences’ as the beliefs, values, and perspectives implicit in policy struggles—this assumption is frequently called into question” (ibid., my italics). Here, I think it is precisely these “beliefs, values and perspectives” that Diamond (2011), Crompton (2010), and Raskin et al. (2002) bring forward as crucial in addressing societal transformation that one needs to work with in a design thing. Schön and Rein order these objects from low to high by their level of ab- stractness and distance from concrete situations:

1. Policy practices, such as regulation, screening, and verification;

263 2. Policy itself, conceived as a set of rules, laws, prohibitions, entitlements, or resource allocations 3. The policy-making process, including its debates and struggles 4. The particular positions and accompanying arguments held by advocates and opponents in policy debates and struggles 5. The beliefs, values, and perspectives held by particular institutions and interest groups from which particular positions are derived (we can call these institutional action frames) 6. The broadly shared beliefs, values, and perspectives familiar to the members of a societal culture and likely to endure in that culture over long periods of time, on which individuals and institutions draw in order to place meaning, sense, and normative directions to their thinking and action in policy matters (we shall call these metacultural frames). (Schön and Rein 1994, xiii)

But, Schön and Rein believe that there exists reflection in action among policy practitioners, and demonstrate this through the cases in the book and that these policymakers build their practice on what they call design rationality:

We believe it is helpful to view policy practice as a kind of distributed designing, undertaken by multiple actors in the policy environment, and to think of policy rationality in terms not only of rational choice, or even rational politics or negotiation, but of a more encompassing kind of rationality, inclusive of higher-level reflection, that we shall call “design rationality.” We shall argue that when controversies are situated in messy and politically contentious policy arenas, they may actually lend themselves, through design rationality, to pragmatic resolution. (ibid., xviii)

Schön and Rein (1994, 166–172) develop the concept of design rationality by departing from three layers of complexity: the first layer of complexity is “the simplest case of designing”; the second layer of complexity is “the communicative-political design drama”; and the third layer of complexity is composed of “frame differences, frame conflicts and frame reflection.” At the first level of complexity, design rationality involves the designers listening to the back talk

264 from the materials, which leads to new opportunities or problems, “design rationality involves reflection – on materials, seeing/moving/ seeing, unintended effects, emergent intentions, and the form and character of the evolving object” (Schön and Rein 1994, 167). In the second layer of complexity, the design process becomes social and “distributed among multiple actors–designers, would-be designers, recipients of the designed object, and other stakeholders. Each of them is in conversation with the evolving object and with the larger situation in which the other actors play their parts” (ibid). Ac- cording to Schön and Rein (ibid, 168), designing is a social process in two ways: first, the designer becomes a “designing system,” a coalition of actors, individual, or institutional. The interactions within the designing system may be cooperative or antagonistic. Second, the designing system sends its object out into a larger environment, a larger arena, where other actors see, interpret, and then respond to it. “The social design process now becomes a drama enacted in an arena—an image that captures policy design as well as the collective design of such artifacts as buildings or industrial products” (ibid.). Here, Schön and Rein attach themselves to a perspective on design that resonates well with the Participatory Design tradition I will depart from in this thesis as well as concepts like infrastructuring and design thing (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010) or designing networks (Jégou and Manzini 2008). They argue that a social design process builds on communication, “sending and receiving messages in the form of words and actions. These messages include design moves and responses to the object in situations of use” (Schön and Rein 1994, 168). This communication—or conversation—is now not only limited to the designer and its materials, but also includes both humans and nonhumans. It is important that the communication is reliable in the sense that participants should be able to “test the meanings of the messages they receive” (ibid). This communication could also include external “public opinion, whose shifts may change the meanings constructed for the object and for the values and constraints that determine how the object can or should be shaped” (ibid.). The involvement of different actors and opinions in the design process makes it political, both internally among the actors in a designing system, and externally in its relation to the larger environ-

265 ment. “The designing system is a coalition of actors who have their own interests, freedoms, and powers” (ibid.). But, if a coalition frag- ments because of disagreements, “the designing system becomes an array of antagonistic parties whose interactions no longer qualify as designing” (ibid.). Schön’s and Rein’s suggestion to deal with threatening antagonism is what they call “double designing” in order to avoid design moves that threaten the coalition. Here, I believe that the concept of design things, where antagonism is turned into agonism, could be a way to deal with political contest without trying to avoid threatening design moves, but rather, to encourage them. The conversation with the situation also becomes political when a designing system communicates with the outside world: “When an object moves across this boundary, the back talk delivered from the policy environment to the designers may carry messages of protest and rejection” (ibid., 169). This can lead to negotiations or the formation of new design coalitions. Also, changes in the wider context can affect the meaning of the elements in the design process which may, in turn, open up policy windows, the detection and correction of design flaws or the perception of new meanings and policy intentions (ibid.). Also, at the second layer of complexity, reflection is a crucial aspect of design rationality, but the object of reflection now includes “the designing system’s communication with other actors in the policy drama: the messages sent and received, the interpretations constructed for them, and the tests of such interpretations” (ibid). The constructed meaning for the policy object may also trigger controversies that were unintended by the designers. At the third layer of complexity, designing has become even more complicated “by issues arising from the actors’ conflicting action frames. Contention enters into the policy design drama because the actors are more or less autonomous individuals and institutions with their own freedoms, powers, and frame-generated interests” (ibid., 170). Schön and Rein argue that there are four ways of dealing with contention: by its continuation or escalation, by a marketing strategy, by negotiation, or by co-design where the “contending parties become members of a reformed designing system for the purpose of redesigning the policy object. In co-design, the cooperative side of their cooperative-antagonistic relationship prevails” (ibid.). In

266 co-design, frame reflection becomes a crucial element in design rationality, something that Schön and Rein explain through the case of homelessness in Massachusetts, which I will summarize below. The designers may initially reflect on the changing situation, and reframe the problem to take into account their new understandings. In the homelessness case, the actors’ gradual awareness of certain new features of the policy situation expressed itself in a shift of metaphors. “At first, the actors spoke of ‘stopping the bleeding’; later, they began to speak of homelessness as a ‘bottomless pit,’ a ‘self-re- constituting problem,’ and a ‘black hole’” (ibid., 171). Over time, this reframing converged into a shared view of the policy situation. The designers may also reflect on blockages in the policy-making process. Through reflecting on the frames the actors brought to that drama and speculating “on moves that might reconstitute the design coalition” (ibid.), the actors can unblock the policy inquiry. Final- ly, the designers may reflect on the policy object and its associated practices, seeking to understand the frame conflicts that underlie their dilemmas and controversies. “Co-design depends upon the ability of at least some of the actors to inquire into the intentions and meanings of other actors involved with them in controversy; and it is here, as we have seen, that situated frame reflection comes into play” (ibid.). From this, Schön and Rein stress that the members of a designing system should reflect on the meanings that underlie policy back talk: “Through such reflection they may become aware of controversies, in the light of which they can redesign the policy object or reframe the values and purposes build into their formulation of the policy problem” (ibid. 171–172). After describing the three layers of design complexity, Schön and Rein are ready to outline what they see as the basic elements in the underlying structure of design rationality which are present in all three layers:

1. There is always a process of making something out of materials, and under conditions of uncertainty and complexity. 2. This means that intentions are always, to some degree, emergent. The designer must be able to form new intentions on the basis of her discovery of the evolving nature of the design situation in which she is engaged.

267 3. The designer is always in conversation with the design situation. Design rationality is always, in part, a function of the conduct of that conversation, as the designer seeks to grasp the meanings of his moves, and of others’ responses to his moves, and to embody his interpretations in the invention of further moves. 4. There is always a process of problem setting and solving, which can be evaluated in terms of its adequacy to the emerging intentions, values, and interests of the designer and other stakeholders in the design, and by reference to features of the design situation discovered through design inquiry. (ibid., 172–173)

What is added in Schön and Rein’s (1994, 173) description of design in relation to Schön’s previous work is the second and third level of complexity wherein, at the second layer, “designing takes the form of a cooperative-antagonistic drama, design rationality become communicative and political” and, in the third layer, “communicative interactions are complicated by frame conflicts, [and] design rationality expands to incorporate frame reflection.” Also, when actors with conflicting frames engage in the co-design process, their different ways of perceiving, interpreting, and valuing a situation “tend to be revealed by their design moves” (ibid., 178).

This is very much like what goes on in an architectural design studio, where different designers can reveal, by their visible design moves, both how they understand the design situation and how they interpret the meanings of one another’s utterances. In a design process, each party reveals his view of the object, and perhaps also his interpretations of the other’s messages. So long as the parties are jointly committed to making an object, they find it difficult to avoid in dealing with their differences of perception and interpretation. They are continually objectifying their differences. At the same time, the concrete situation, the materials, and the object in transition give the actors hooks on which they hang their attempts to invent adjustments that may resolve their differences–at the limit, synthesizing elements of their conflicting frames. (ibid.)

268 Frames Applied in this Thesis

One of my initial interests in this thesis work was the different perspectives, values, and worldviews of different actors that are gathered in a designing network (Jégou and Manzini 2008). Through my cross-reading of design, social innovation, sustainability, and resilience theory, I found that frames was a common and recurring concept in discussions regarding how to address societal challenges. In trying to grasp this concept, I have reviewed how it has been defined and applied in various fields such as design, policy design, social change, and resilience. It has not been easy to make a constructive synthesis out of this and the risk of getting lost and misunderstan- ding the different interpretations of the concept is large. Neverth- eless, I find the concept generative and will select some aspects of it that I can use in both analyzing the incubator case and in my proposal for a design thing. The different types and applications of frames that I found useful are as follows:

• Surface, deep, and metacultural frames • Action and collective action frames • Frame conflicts, frame reflection, and re-framing • The use of metaphor and stories in framing

First, how would I define frame? To me, a frame is something that influences how I experience, understand, and construct the world. A frame consists of associations, values, assumptions, and ideas that are materialized through the words, phrases, and stories we use, but also through our actions and relations with other humans and nonhumans. For example, the deep frame “free market” that Lakoff and Brewer use consists of many associated values, assumptions and ideas, but also of more concrete roles, locations and actions. In the free market frame, we are assumed to be greedy and selfish, we produce and sell stuff and services, we have roles and relationships as sellers and buyers, we are located in mines, factories, shopping malls and bank offices, and both nature and other people are resources for generating more stuff and economic growth. Also, if, as Lakoff argues, framing is about using the right words to express your worldview,

269 then we have already failed if we depart from a frame like “economic growth” in the attempt to reach a life within planetary boundaries. Furthermore, frames can be individual, but most are socially constructed. The first types of frames that I use in analyzing the case and in my proposal are surface and deep frames. According to Brewer, surface frames are the mental structures and associations that a word or phrase evokes, whereas deep frames define our moral worldview. A deep frame influences how we interpret a situation and how we organize a response to that situation. He exemplifies with the phrase “war on terror,” where both war and terror are surface frames that tell us that terror is our enemy that we must fight with military action. The deep frame in this example is the choice to treat terror as a military problem, and not a police problem, which would have meant other types of actions and actors involved in the response. Deep frames define the general relationship to the situation by telling us “what kind of situation we are dealing with” (Brewer 2007). I will now transfer this way of defining and applying surface and deep frames to the incubator case and how the trade and industry actors framed the situation. In their view, the issue of social exclusion should be addressed with the creation of new jobs within the market economy. Consequently, phrases like “new jobs” or “job creation” are surface frames that activate the deep frame of “free market.” From their perspective, this was a market problem and not a participatory democracy problem, which was a dominating deep frame among the workshop participants. I discuss this further in the chapter where I analyze the incubator process. Similar to Lakoff and Brewer’s concept of deep frames is Schön and Rein’s concept of metacultural frame. Metacultural frames are “the broadly shared beliefs, values, and perspectives familiar to the members of a societal culture” (Schön and Rein 1994, xiii). We can see the close relationship between metacultural frames and deep frame in Schön’s and Rein’s metacultural frame ‘market’ (ibid. 143) and Lakoff and Brewer’s deep frame ‘free market.’ I also find action and collective action frames promising to work with in a design thing, although I will not apply them in a more elaborate way, neither in the analysis of the incubator process nor in the proposal. I propose working with frames as a boundary con-

270 cept that unites designers, social innovators, resilience thinkers, and other change makers in exploring common societal challenges. I also propose the use of frame reflection, frame restructuring (or reframing), and generative metaphors to create new collective action frames as main functions of a design thing. Moreover, I propose the use of design fiction to function as a tangible story that can support the collective reframing and construction of new understandings of our world.

271 REFRAMING THE FUTURE WITH STORIES

In the planetary transition, reacting to historical circumstance is insufficient. With the knowledge that our actions can endanger the well-being of future generations, humanity faces an unprecedented challenge—to anticipate the unfolding crises, envision alternative futures and make appropriate choices. The question of the future, once a matter for dreamers and philosophers, has moved to the center of the development and scientific agendas. (Raskin et al. 2002, 13 my italics)

If, as I will be assuming, we want a society with good long-term survival prospects and offering high quality of life to all (goals that I lump together as quality survival), can we articulate and evaluate defensible and distinctly different alternative ways of attempting to create such a society? Even if it takes 50 years to get there? (Cocks 2012, 192 my italics)

In the previous chapter, I described how frames are revealed and evoked by words and stories. The stories we tell about ourselves and the world we live in will influence how we think and act regarding the future and which trajectories of inquiry we choose. I also described how several researchers brought up the importance of working with our cultural values, and the need to strengthen “intrinsic” values to tackle “bigger than self problems.” As we will see also in

272 this chapter, several researchers argue that changing cultural values will have an important role in the transition to a more sustainable and resilient world. The use of stories is also central in the Transition Towns Move- ment. “We need new stories that paint new possibilities, that reposi- tions where we see ourselves in relation to the world around us, that entice us to view changes ahead with anticipation of the possibilities they hold, and that will ultimately, give us the strength to emerge at the other end into a new but more nourishing world,” states Rob Hopkins (2008, 14-15). The use of scenarios and visions also perme- ates the energy descent action plan in Transition in Action: Totnes and District 2030 (Hodgson and Hopkins 2010) where they make use of many images of Totnes in the past. They also present visual journeys of different locations in the town; for example, Heath’s Market, which back in the 1970s was a market garden, but now is a parking lot, and their hope is that by 2030 it will have transformed back to an urban farm. This kind of imagery is very thought-pro- voking and convincing in that not all solutions will be found by looking forward. In their visioning work, they also use fictive newspaper articles describing life in the future (Hopkins 2008). In this chapter, I explore the relations between the stories we live by, and how we chose to view and respond to our future challenges and opportunities. I will depart from the scenarios and stories told by scientists and researchers. Two different scenario storylines will be in focus: Conventional Development and Great Transition (Ra- skin et al. 2002). The space between these two scenarios will become the design space that I explore in this thesis. I will also look into how one network of writers, The Dark Mountain Project, uses stories to critique the cultural values of our civilization with the aim of reframing reality. I conclude this chapter with a look into the new interest in design fiction and discuss the potential of complementing the now-dominating “hard” design fiction with what I have tentatively named dark and soft design fiction in a design thing. The use of stories in design is nothing new. Just think of all the design manifestos that have served as the background for many design movements; likewise, so has the use of fiction, like in William Mor- ris’ book News from Nowhere (1890), which according to Wikipe- dia, (2014) combines “utopian socialism and soft science fiction.”

273 According to Design Historian Christina Zetterlund (2011, 49), Morris describes in News from Nowhere a “socialist craft utopia,” and also a diversified designer role which both reflects a vision of a particular way of life and acts as a political agitator that “formulates the function of design in a future egalitarian society.” Another way of using stories in design is through scenarios: “Sto- ries about the future are often conveyed through scenarios where one imagines or enacts how activities and experiences in the future could be different from today” (Brandt, Binder and Sanders 2013, 165–66). The use of scenarios for describing possible futures has also been central in the work of Jégou and Manzini ever since the book Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Life (2003) was published. They state that to imagine the future, one needs to look at the present to see signs of what could happen, the signs of possible futures (ibid.). Then one selects and gives coherence to one or another set of signals and defines an image of a world, or part of it, as it would be if actually realized. Through “scenario building,” one is bringing the signals into “focus and making clear their implications, thereby facilitating a choice that allows us to work towards the most desirable looking possible future with a greater probability to success” (ibid., 17). We need new perspectives of our future and the stories that make new imaginations tangible. We need new concepts and terms that can replace ingrained “business as usual” words like growth, progress, and expansion. Some alternative concepts which express new perspectives that have emerged over recent years and that I will use in this thesis are planetary boundaries, safe operating space, and transition. The first two tell us that instead of eternal growth and expansion, we must start living within the boundaries of earth’s supporting capacity. The transition concept tells us that to be able to reach sustainability or live within planetary boundaries, we have to change direction and reorganize society instead of continuing in the same direction. I will now look into the role of stories in different scientific scenarios.

Scenarios and Stories in Science

The importance of narratives and the creation of new narratives

274 about the state of our world and future possibilities are brought up by different actors. The Australian Academy of Science brings up narratives in the report “Negotiating our Future: Living Scenarios for Australia to 2050, Volume 1” (Raupach et al. 2012). The aim of the report is to investigate ways to asses multiple pathways into the future and find ways to negotiate a pathway which implies “to discuss and agree on a shared course in the face of difference in values and perceptions” (ibid., 3, my italics). This exploration and negotiation of pathways is much in line with what I imagine goes on in a design thing addressing societal collapse. And as we will see, the importance of values, perceptions (frames), and stories, which I discuss in previous chapter, is also brought up in this report. The authors define scenarios as “internally consistent narratives about the future” (ibid., 40). With the help of scenarios, one can “investigate alternative plausible outcomes of possible uncertainties and surprises in the future by varying these factors systematically among alternative storylines with a clear and consistent logic” (ibid.). They (ibid., 29) discuss how to think rationally about the future by asking four questions: first; what are the strong forces or trends that are likely to shape our future world?; second, how do we handle the inescapable reality that the future is uncertain, contested, and ultimately shared?; third, how do we deal with the tension between the objective and the subjective in approaching the future?, and fourth, how do we define a future that is safe in the sense of being resilient to shocks? That the “future is uncertain and contested” is something we recognize in Schön’s (1995, 14) description of design situations as “complex, uncertain, instable, unique, and containing value conflicts.” But dealing with uncertainty is hard, and the authors suggest that one needs to ensure one has enough adaptive and transformative capacity to handle any kind of challenge that appears: “This is why these capacities are keys to survival and prosperity in a rapidly changing world” (ibid, p. 32). As we recall, adaptive and transformative capacity are key characteristics of a resilient system. The future is also contested in the sense that different people and organizations emphasize different views of the future leading to different choices about pathways to explore: “The- se choices embody value judgements expressed through subjective rather than objective statements” (ibid.). These value judgments are

275 based on convictions which are expressed through narratives and “deep stories.” Michael R. Raupach (2012) stresses the importance of cultural aspects and narratives. With narratives, he means “inner stories that express conviction” (ibid., 206). Narratives encapsulate our experience, knowledge, and values about the world and motivate our actions. When narratives are shared among a group, they contribute to cultural and social cohesion. According to Raupach, narratives are more than fictional tales, they “set our hearts on fire” and guide us in shaping our destinies (ibid.). Here, he touches on a function that Snow also brings up when exploring framing processes and social movements. Snow (2004, 393) states that social movements not only affect structural or cultural change, but also change the “hearts and minds” of people and many of the great movements in the past, such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage or the termination of child labor, were unthinkable without reaching the hearts and minds of people and changing their view of reality. Raupach (2012) believes that today we experience a collision between two great narratives; one that advocates expansion and growth, and another that departs from the insight that we live on a finite planet and advocates sustenance. Raupach writes that the expansion and sustenance narratives should not be considered as objective evidence or knowledge, even if they could be based on research or knowledge, but rather as stories “that encode the values of people seeking to act on their convictions” (Raupach 2012, 208). The expansion narrative argues that the continuation of economic growth is essential to maintain and improve well-being. The sustenance narratives stress the deep connection between humans and the natural world, and the need for sustaining the fragile life-support system on the planet. These two narratives are very similar to the Conventional Development and Great Transition scenarios that I discuss in this thesis. To overcome the locked positions between these two narratives, we need new narratives that may help us in the transition to a society where we live within the planetary boundaries and improve well-being at the same time, Raupach argues. Narratives are not static; instead, they evolve, adapt, and transform by going through a process of diversification, selection, and amplification. Diversifi-

276 cation is about the development of a wide “meme pool” of narratives: “The arts, the natural and human sciences have important roles to play here along with professions such as journalism” (ibid., 211). Selection is to do with framing the goal and the narratives that support it, and amplification is about strategies for interaction and dialogue: “Some parts of the existing pool of narratives are repelled by other narratives in immune-style reactions thus preventing their spread and amplification. Can these parts adapt while maintaining the integrity of the overall narrative”? (ibid.). In this case, we recall the strategy of the Common Cause Network to bring forward the stories and frames which strengthen those (intrinsic) values which have been suppressed or dominated by the values of the establishment. Raupach believes that the new narratives will include elements from both the expansion and sustenance narratives. A way of combining the best elements and creating shared narratives is through the use of living scenarios.

By living scenarios we mean shared, ongoing explorations of how the future might unfold, leading to evolving visions that are plausible (consistent with natural laws), acceptable (consistent with aspirations for human well-being) and workable (agreed to the extent necessary for action). Rather than being preordained and specified futures, living scenarios are maps of the future that can be reworked, adapted and, if necessary, transformed. Living scenarios allow for flexibility and ambiguity; of necessity, they are refashioned in response to changing circumstances. They reflect a rich diversity of opinions, values and aspirations, to identify envelopes of possibilities shaped by the intersection between aspirations and realities. They are tools for achieving an accepta- bly coherent vision of the future, and a set of pathways towards it. (Raupach et al. 2012, 1 my italics)

Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014) also apply scenarios and narratives to allow us to be able to imagine a resilient global future. They state that the shortcomings of forecasts have made scenarios a more-valuable tool in sustainability science as a way to illuminate contrasting possibilities. Well-constructed scenarios can be helpful

277 in clarifying future dangers and opportunities and can contribute to a better understanding of our situation and lead to wise action. To be able to embrace global social-ecological futures, comprehensive scenarios are needed instead of simply focusing on one or two social or environmental issues. The authors suggest that scenarios be created as forecasts, “where current trends are assumed to continue into the future,” or as backcasts, “where pathways are delineated from the present to meet a pre-determined vision of the future” (ibid. 125). They see backcasting as especially useful because it generates scenarios that radically diverge from baseline trends. “However, most backcasted scenarios use visions of the future that are limited to aggregate descriptions of technological outcomes, such as greenhouse gas emissions, rather than rich narratives that explore the coupled nature of social-technical-ecological systems” (ibid., 125, my italics). It is with “rich narratives” that I believe not only designers, but also artists, filmmakers, and writers can contribute to make these scenarios more tangible and alive. Even though the rest of the paper deals with a new framework developed by Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014, 125) for creating “diverse and comprehensive global scenarios”, these scenarios are presented in the form of pie charts and tables that hardly make any sense outside the scientific community. This is a pity, because their aim “to explore alternative development pathways, including the possibility of fundamental structural shifts in values and institutions, which can achieve broad social-ecological goals in the future” (ibid., my italic) is much in line with the shift in values and reframing of reality that the Common Cause Network, among others, advocate. What is missing with these kinds of facts and figures scenarios is the everyday practice of, for example, people living in transitions towns or practitioners of “Green DIY” (Wakkary et al. 2013). How can one judge their lifestyle in relation to these scenarios? And, how can they help make the scenarios of desirable futures real? In their paper, Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014) build on the archetypal scenario storylines developed by the Global Scena- rio Group (GSG) from which also I have picked the scenarios of Conventional Development and Great Transition. The GSG scenarios were published in 1997 (Gallopin et al.) in the form of three

278 world-end states referred to as “Conventional, Great Transitions, and Barbarization” (Hunt et al. 2012, 742). Since then, more than 450 “seemingly disparate scenarios” had been published until 2011 (ibid, 741). Of these, a subset of more than 160 scenarios had their narratives based on the structure of the GSG scenario archetypes (ibid.). These sub-scenarios have names like “Markets First,” “Big is Beautiful,” “Technogarden,” “Global Commons,” “Green World,” “Survivor,” and “Fortress Europe” (ibid., 744).

“The Great Transition”

“Business-as-usual” is a utopian fantasy—forging a new social vision is a pragmatic necessity. (Raskin et al. 2002, 29)

A term that is inevitable when researching and discussing sustainability, resilience, or our future on this planet is transition, for example, as in transition towns or the phrase Great Transition. According to transition management theory (Fisher-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009), persistent societal problems require transitions: that is fundamental changes in structure (physical and economic infrastructure, and institutions), culture (values, norms and perspective), and practice (production routines, behavior, and ways of handling). I first encountered the word ‘transition’ when reading about the Transition Town Movement. Then I found it in the title of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) report, “The Great Transition: A tale of How it Turned out Right” (Spratt et al. 2010). The subtitle of that report also caught my interest as a way to present a narrative or scenario. Much later, I found out about the Global Scenario Group (GSG) and their report, “Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead” (Raskin et al. 2002). In this report, I found two different scenario storylines that I will use to explore the space between the story of industrial civilization and its decline, and the story of the unknown world ahead of us. These storylines are Conventional Development, which describes the continuation of industrial civilization and Great Transition, which imagines a world were people live with changed value sets that place quality of life, solidarity, and sustainability at the center of well-being. I will later discuss this spa-

279 ce between stories as a design space. First, I will summarize and review the Great Transition (Raskin et al. 2002) report, and then relate it to NEF’s report, “The Great Transition,” (Spratt et al. 2010). Lastly, I will discuss these stories and scenarios in relation to how advocates of the Transition Towns movement use stories in their visioning work. According to Raskin et al. (2002), current trends set the direction for our journey into the future, not its destination: “Depen- ding on how environmental and social conflicts are resolved, global development can branch into dramatically different pathways. On the dark side, it is all too easy to envision a dismal future of impoverished people, cultures and nature” (ibid., ix). Although many people have this dark view on our future, of which most tend to look away rather than confront it, it is not our destiny. In line with collapse researcher Jared Diamond, Raskin, and colleagues state that we have the power to both foresee and choose how to act to shape our future. Therefore, “a transition to a future of enriched lives, human solidarity and a healthy planet is possible” (ibid.). The matter of choice is crucial, and as Diamond claims, how a society perceives a challenge ahead of them will determine whether it fails or succeeds. At the same time, the future is unpredictable “because it is subject to human choices that have not yet been made” (Raskin et al. 2002, 13). To be able to make wise and informed choices about how to act, Raskin and colleagues suggest working with scenarios as a way to explore various long-range alternatives or, in design language, possible futures. They define scenarios as “stories with a logical plot and a narrative about how the future might play out” (ibid., 14). Scenarios build both on science, “our understanding of historical patterns, current conditions and physical and social processes” and “imagination to articulate alternative pathways” (ibid., my italics). According to Raskin and colleagues, three archetypal mindsets influences how we view the future: the evolutionary, the catastrophic, and the transformational.

• Evolutionists are optimistic that the dominant patterns we observe today can deliver prosperity, stability, and ecological health.

280 • Catastrophists fear that deepening social, economic, and environmental tensions will not be resolved, with dire consequences for the future of the world. • Transformationists share these fears, but believe that global transition can be seized as an opportunity to forge a better civilization. (ibid., 9–10)

Each of these worldviews represents a different world: “a world of incremental adjustment, a world of discontinuous cataclysm, and a world of structural shift and renewal” (ibid., 10). In their turn, these worlds have their own scenario storyline which the authors have named Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, and Great Transitions. Conventional Worlds (or Conventional Development) describes a continuation of industrial civilization. “The dominant forces and values currently driving globalization shape the future. Incremental market and policy adjustments are able to cope with social, economic and environmental problems as they arise” (ibid., 15). But, if the market and policy adjustments turn out to be incapable of managing these problems, it is possible that they will “cascade into self-amplifying crises that overwhelm the coping capacity of conventional institutions” (ibid.). We will then end up in the Barba- rization scenario in which civilization “descends into anarchy and tyranny” (ibid.). To be able to avoid this development, the authors advocate that we pro-actively choose to work towards the Great Transitions scenario that “envision[s] profound historical transformations in the fundamental values and organizing principles of society. New values and development paradigms ascend that emphasize the quality of life and material sufficiency, human solidarity and global equity, and affinity with nature and environmental sustainability” (ibid.). Before further elaborating on these scenario storylines, I think it is interesting to recall Tainter’s (2006) historically based scenarios for societies which have succeeded or failed: the Roman model (adding complexity leading to collapse), the Byzantine model (resiliency and recovery through simplification), and the European model (sustainable problem solving based on increasing complexity subsidized by new resources). Here, I think one can discuss the Roman and European model in relation to Conventional Worlds and Barbari-

281 zation, and discuss the Byzantine model in relation to Great Tran- sitions. The Byzantine model involved transition as it abandoned “long-established traditions of government and society” (Tainter 2006, 98). Going back to the GSG scenarios, the authors divide each of these scenarios into two sub-scenarios. Conventional Worlds is divided into market forces and policy reform. Barbarization is divided into breakdown and Fortress World, and finally, Great Transitions is divided into Eco-communalism and New Sustainability Paradigm, see figure below:

Worldview Antecedents Philosophy Motto

Conventional Market Smith Market Don’t worry, Worlds optimism; be happy hidden & enlightened hand

Policy reform Keynes Policy Growth, Brundtland stewardship environment, equity through better technology & management

Barbarization Breakdown Malthus Existential The end is gloom; coming population/ resource catastrophe

Fortress world Hobbes Social chaos; Order through nasty nature of strong leaders man

Great Transi- Eco-communa- Morris & Pastoral Small is tions lism social utopians romance; beautiful Ghandhi human good- ness; evil of industrialism

New sustaina- Mill Sustainability Human bility paradigm as progressive solidarity, global social new values, evolution the art of living

Figure 8. Archetypal Worldviews based on Raskin et al. 2002, 17

282 Market forces describes a world driven by global markets and where environmental and social concerns come second. Market forces build on market optimism and the belief that markets will solve economic, environmental, and social problems. In the policy reform scenario, governments take action to reduce poverty and strengthen environmental sustainability. Here, the belief is that markets need strong policy guidance to tackle social and environmental problems. Breakdown describes a world where conflict and crisis become out of control and institutions collapse. And finally, Fortress World describes a world in which authorities and the privileged responds to threat of breakdown by creating isolated and protected enclaves for the elite. The sub-scenarios of Great Transitions are, of course, the most interesting. Eco-communalism envisions a world based on “bio-re- gionalism, localism, face-to-face democracy and economic autar- ky”(ibid., 15). The authors find the predecessors to this scenario in William Morris, which is interesting from a design perspective, the small-is-beautiful philosophy of E. F. Schumacher and the traditio- nalism of Gandhi. But the authors keep a critical stance to this scenario and its localism. “While popular among some environmental and anarchistic subcultures, it is difficult to visualize a plausible path from the globalizing trends today to Eco-communalism, that does not pass through some form of Barbarization” (ibid.). Instead, they advocate the New Sustainability Paradigm, which “would change the character of global civilization rather than retreat into localism” (ibid., 15–16). This scenario is rooted in global solidarity, cultural cross-fertilization, and economic connectedness and strives for both a humanistic and ecological transition. When developing and evaluating the different sub-scenarios, market forces, although dominant today, come out as a dangerous alternative. “Significant environmental and social obstacles lie along this path of development” (ibid., 23). Rather than shrinking, it is a big risk that today’s unsustainable processes intensify and crosses critical thresholds that would radically transform many ecosystems. This view is confirmed by Gerst, Raskin and Rockström (2014) that, as we seen, use the GSG scenarios in relation to the Planetary Boun- daries concept and social targets as The Millennium Development Goals. Commenting the Conventional Development scenario the au-

283 thors write that five of seven planetary boundaries are transgressed by 2025 and by the end of the century, “all but one boundary is transgressed” (ibid., 129), see figure 1 on page 23.

Despite the potential for catastrophic impacts and social un- rest, society relies on unprecedented technological change and market adaptation to replace degraded ecosystem services and mend social tensions. Down this path, the real danger looms: as gathering crises overwhelm incremental responses, development veers toward darker futures, even a descent into societal breakdown, and civilized norms erode. (Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström 2014, 129)

According to Raskin et al. (2002, 28), the market forces scenario would imply a “cosmic gamble.” There is little scientific foundation for that the market would be able to tackle neither environmental nor social challenges: “The unfettered market is important for economic efficiency, but only a fettered market can deliver on sustainability. Environment, equity and development goals are supra-market issues that are best addressed through democratic political processes based on widely shared ethical values and informed by scientific knowledge” (ibid., 29). The message is that if we continue playing the market forces game, the risk if we lose is that we end in the Bar- barization scenario. The authors argue that these scenarios are useful to identify early warning signs to be able to act on them. These warning signs, “environmental degradation, climate change, social polarization and terrorism” (ibid., 25) combined with the spreading of the gated communities in Fortress World sounds very much like a description of the state of the world in 2015. So, if the market forces option seems to be a bad choice, what about the other Conventional Development sub-scenario, policy reform? In this world, equitable growth becomes the prevailing philosophy of development strategies and two kinds of equity are pro- moted, between rich and poor countries and within countries. In the policy reform scenario, political leaders seek a balance between those who want no change (market forces advocates) and those who seeks more fundamental shifts in development values (Great Tran- sition advocates). The market is still the main engine for economic

284 growth but is now constrained by globally negotiated targets for environmental sustainability and poverty reduction (ibid., 39). Although the policy reform scenario shows that wise policies can “in principle” lead to increased environmental sustainability and reduced poverty, “the required pace and scale of technological and social change is daunting” (ibid., 40). Also, there is a lack of political will for introducing such reforms, as the values such as consumerism and individualism underlying market forces remain dominant. “It seems that overcoming the dissonance between rhetoric and action will take fundamental changes in popular values, lifestyles and political priorities that transcend Conventional Worlds assumptions”(i- bid., 41 my italics). Policy reform describes a world that seeks to mitigate environmental and social problems but the authors ask, is it desirable? Would there be room for individual and social exploration?

Policy Reform is the realm of necessity—it seeks to minimize environmental and social disruption, while the quality of life remains unexamined. The new sustainability paradigm transcends reform to ask anew the question that Socrates posed long ago: how shall we live? This is the Great Transitions path, the realm of desirability. (ibid., 41)

So, both sub-scenarios of Conventional Development, market forces and policy reform, with their trust in the market, technological change, and policy, seem to be insufficient. The missing piece is working with “a values-led shift” (ibid., 47) toward an alternative vision of the future, which is the underlying principle in the Great Tran- sition scenario. “A Great Transition would go deeper to the root causes that shape society and the human experience. These ultimate drivers include values, understanding, power and culture” (ibid., 49 my italics). The ultimate drivers of the Great Transition are more stable and will take more time to change than the proximate drivers of economy, technology, population and governance underlying Conventional Development which are responsive for more short- term intervention. The ultimate drivers depend on gradually changing cultural and political processes. “They define the boundaries for change and the future. The Great Transition project would expand

285 the frontier of the possible by altering the basis for human choice” (ibid.). Expanding the “frontier of the possible” is in line with Rau- pach’s (2012, 211) “meme pool” of narratives or Westley, Goebey, and Robinson’s (2012, 14) “reservoir of alternatives.” Translated into design language, this would mean expanding the design space. But who will be driving this change? The authors mention four major agents of change: intergovernmental organizations, transna- tional corporations, civil society and engaged citizens. Scaled down to the local level and with the actors in the incubator case in this thesis, this would be: the municipality or other local government organizations, trade and industry, third sector or civil society organizations and ordinary citizens. The driving agents in the scenarios vary; in the market forces scenario, the driving agents are global corporations, market-enabling governments, and a consumerist public. In policy reform, the government takes the lead in aligning markets with environmental and social goals. In the Great Transition scenario, civil society and engaged citizens “become critical sources of change for the new values” (ibid., 49). This statement is interesting put in relation to the incubator process where civil society was excluded. I will discuss this further when analyzing that case. The authors state that civil society organizations fill major gaps in public policy. By mobilizing stakeholder groups they bring a diverse set of viewpoints on the problems. They also increase public awareness about issues, but most importantly they inject “ethical and normative voices into the political arena” (ibid., 53). Further, civil society has its downsides and shortcomings. One is its “dark side,” in the form of criminal and terror organizations, “perverse forms of NGOs that also use modern information technology, but to spread violence, hate and fear” (ibid., 52). Another is the uncertainty of whether or not civil society will be able to unify enough force to be able to redirect global development. But, according to Raskin et al. (2002, 53) the “underlying engine” in the Great Transition scenario is an engaged and aware public who “animated by a new suite of values” emphasize quality of life, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability. “Where political will is lacking, civil will drives the transition forward” (ibid., 54). The Great Transition scenario envisions a profound change in the character of civilization, the authors state. This transition

286 of the whole society will imply a set of sub-transitions regarding values and knowledge, demography and social relations, economic and governance institutions, and technology and environment. The crucial role of changing values has already been stated many times and there is no space for describing the other areas closer, except within the economy and institutions that are relevant in this thesis. In the Great Transition scenario the economy becomes “a means of serving people and preserving nature, rather than an end in itself” (ibid., 61). This will mean changing the behavior and practices of people, businesses, and governmental institutions.

As people aspire to sustainable living, purchasing patterns would reflect ecological sensitivity, consumerism would abate and travel patterns would shift toward mass transport. People might increasingly share their time, through voluntary and non-profit work, and their income, through voluntary donations and support for redistribution through taxation. (ibid., 61)

Again, such a scenario, along with the mention of “minimum basic income” (ibid., 62) is very interesting to relate to the incubator process and how one frames activity and work. As with many publications about future scenarios, the Great Transition report ends with and draws together its arguments in a scenario. This one is dated 2068 and is written in Mandela City. It describes four phases starting with Market Euphoria, Interrup- tion and Revival 1990–2015, The Crisis 2015, and Global Reform 2015–2025 from which I will make a longer quote:

The clear lesson of the Market Euphoria era was that footloose market-driven globalization was simply not viable. The government-led post-crisis reorganization restarted economic growth and tamed environmental impacts, while bringing up the bottom of the social pyramid. But by the mid-2020s, Global Re- form was losing momentum as the will of political leadership waned, governance became enfeebled and the dream of sustainable development was threatened. Another crisis loomed on the horizon.

287 A growing global coalition of individuals and organizations came to the conviction that reform was not enough. Fundamental notions were challenged—that endless economic growth could be harmonized with ecology, that consumerism could coexist with a sustainability ethic, and that the pursuit of wealth was the path to the good life. The coalition mushroomed into a planetary mass movement for basic change. Sometimes called the Coalition for a Great Transition, it was more popularly known by the name we use today, “The Bouquet,” which of course referred to its icon and its slogan (“let a thousand flowers bloom”). The coalition included civil society in all its stunning diversity—spiritual communities, Yin-Yang, networks of special-interest organizations. All parts of the world community were represented—communities, nations, regions, river basins—in a kind of spontaneous global assembly from below. The basis of their unity was a common set of values—the rights of all people to a decent life, responsibility for the well-being of the wider community of life and the obligations to future generations. The project for more just, more ecological and more fulfilling ways of life was not to be denied. (ibid., 84)

Finally, the Great Transition phase begins in 2025 and is still going on when the retrospective story is written. A prerequisite for this vision is that “the dream of a post-scarcity society that could provide enough for all became a practical possibility” which, in turn, sparked a cultural revolution and the emergence of a post-materialist ethos (ibid., 86). I will end this summary with another longer quote from the scenario:

Increasingly, people took pride in living lives that were rich in time, and sufficient in things. The cultivation of the art of living displaced consumerism as the pathway to happiness and status. The anachronisms of the past, such as im- mense private vehicles with a thousand gadgets, found a home in museums of cultural history, not in people’s lives. The sense that individuals are responsible for what they consume was pervasive. The values movements touched sympathetic chords throug-

288 hout the world and were amplified by the discussion forums and rapid global communications on digital networks. The “equal participation” movement that has contributed so much to the openness and accountability of political and institutional processes today drew its inspiration both from anti-poverty activists and from earlier civil rights movements. But sympathy alone does not always translate into action. It was the globalization of civil society—the proliferation of global networks and alliances of Value-Based Organizations (VBOs) dedicated to action—that provided the staying power for permanent change. This was a simple but fundamental transformation in world history—the willingness of people, individually and in groups, to take responsibility for solving problems themselves. This phenomenon has become a defining characteristic of the current era. (ibid., 87)

The Great Transition report was written thirteen years ago. Is it still valid? Yes, according to two recent papers that return to the original GSG scenarios (Hunt et al. 2012, Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström 2014). As already mentioned, Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström conclude that down the path of Conventional Development scenario “the real danger looms” (ibid., 129). The authors state that policy reform scenario is more promising and would result in more rapid economic development in poorer countries and economic gains are distributed more equitably internationally. It would also lead to a decreasing world population and a rapid transition in energy-related technologies and land use practices (ibid., 130). The result of the Great Transition scenario is that global income becomes far more equitably distributed, a global basic standard of living gets established where all countries approach a kind of “quality” driven development. “Thus, Great Transition describes a world that successfully stays in Earth’s operating space, meets widely-held social targets, and provides a high quality of life to all” (ibid.). Of course this may sound to good to become realized and the authors state that the social agency to accomplish such a systemic shift is not yet on the world stage, “indeed it is difficult to imagine a Great Transition without the emergence of a vast cultural and political citizen movement for one” (ibid., 131). Nevertheless, they mean that the important message is the widespread three-part value shift it envisions:

289 1. The re-definition of well-being as fulfilment rather than consumption. 2. The strengthening of an egalitarian ethos that stimulates efforts to eradicate poverty and create more equal and cohesive societies. 3. The recognition of the fundamental importance of a stable Earth system for human resilience and well-being. (ibid.)

Also, Raskin (2014, 3) returns to the scenarios in a recent keynote talk where he states that today we live in all three scenarios to a varying degree and that “the big picture takeaways from the old scenario analysis endure: the deepening peril of Conventional Worlds, the real risk of Barbarization, and the possibility nonetheless of a Great Transition to a future of enriched lives, social cohesion, and a healthy planet.” He also still claims that the change agent of the Great Transition is a vast and inclusive “global citizens movement.” He says that this movement is the “missing actor in the drama of transition” (ibid., 7). But the question is if we in the international Transition Network and the wide range of alternative movements regarding concepts like commons, co-operatives, degrowth, social solidarity economy, peer-production, sharing and collaborative economy (Bollier and Conaty 2015) can see parts of this movement emerging? But these alternatives have not yet converged to a “movement of movements” (ibid.)

Above, I have summarized and reviewed the GSG report “Great Transition.” Now I will look into NEFs report “The Great Tran- sition – A Tale of How it Turned Out Right” (Spratt et al. 2010). This report also contains a scenario, this time describing the world in 2050 and starting by looking back to 2009. A part of it describes an average, working urban-dweller’s day in the UK.

With less time spent working in the formal economy and more flexibility over when we work, the choice is ours – take the kids to school, go for a run, read a book. With a new focus on real wealth and well-being, previously overconsuming rich countries have now cured most cases of the twin evils of work addiction and unemployment. The huge debts and

290 interest payments that kept us chained to our desks have been designed out of the system by new forms of credit and ownership, for land, homes and other big ticket items. Because we’re more content, having more time for ourselves, friends and family, we need less income too for the false consumerist promise of buying happiness. More flexible working practices have made it much easier for us to work part-time, take sabbaticals and tailor where and when we work. We’re using technology cleverly to make for smart work. Those of us choosing the early morning run enjoy fresh air in our lungs and clear paths as dramatic reductions in traffic have transformed city air and streets – the result of a successful shift to mass transit systems and the new popularity of walking and cycling. (Spratt et al. 2010, 9–10)

As we see, the GSG and NEF scenarios have much in common but the NEF scenario is slightly richer and more detailed. The main message of the reports is basically the same: we can not carry on as we are, we have to find another way “where we live within the limits of the natural world and more fairly with each other” (ibid., 4). To achieve this, we need to rethink much of what we take for granted; that is, we have to reframe reality. The NEF report also focuses on improving well-being and quality of life. In line with the short-comings of the GSG policy reform scenario, the NEF authors also argue that “financial regulation, taxation and welfare policy, or reducing our carbon intensity” will not be enough, “none of these changes will come about without the will and desire of the people” (ibid., 15). Therefore, we need to talk about values and rediscover values which have been there all along. Spratt and colleagues stress that their scenario and the values of people expressed in it is just one out of many possible futures and value sets: “In our sketch, people value their time more than their income, and so institutions and working practices make it possible for them to chose to spend more time with their families, in their communities or pursuing their interests” (ibid., 16). This is also much in line with the GSG scenario, but, as I will bring up in the discussion, also in the work of many other authors (e.g. Coote 2015, Coote, Franklin and Simms 2011, Holmberg et al. 2011, Sanne 2012).

291 If the first part of the NEF report is a scenario of the world in 2050, the second part describes how to get there. Among these, Gre- at Localisation argues that decisions are best taken locally and advocating local production. The argument that local self-sufficiency in some areas, “combined with regional, national and international trade in others” (ibid., 6) is more nuanced than the critic of the localism in the GSG Eco-communalism scenario. It is also in line with Hornborg (2012, 2013) who also advocates localization and brings forward the idea of a bi-centric economy which divides the market in two spheres of exchange, one local and one global, with separate currencies. The Great Reskilling connects to the issue of local production, which will require that we relearn many skills that we have forgotten or do not value today. This could also mean that many citizens that today have skills in craft or agriculture would be attractive on the labor market again. To take a local example, in Malmö, we have many immigrants with traditional skills in building who are unemployed because they do not fit in with industrialized building jobs. Likewise, some young entrepreneurs started a local jeans production and needed both tailors and seamstresses. “It turned out to be even easier than we had imagined finding qualified people to handle the production. The textile industry has mainly moved its production abroad, but plenty of qualified seamstresses have moved to Malmö and Sweden. Unfortunately, it’s been hard for them to find work. We want to help change that” (Nerdy by Nerds 2014).

The Dark Mountain Project

Remember the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odys- sey where an ape picks up a bone and throws it away and the spinning bone transforms into a spinning spaceship; the picking up of a bone and using it as a tool can be seen as a starting point for human civilization. With the development of technology and the discovery of fossil energy, mankind has become so powerful and ever expanding that we not only threaten to kill other species, ecocide, but also ourselves. Visions of the future have always been a theme in fiction, whether it is mediated by text, film, acting, or other art forms. These visions could be utopian or dystopian. In 2009, Dougald Hine and Paul

292 Kingsnorth initiated The Dark Mountain Project (2015), a network of writers, artists and thinkers “who have stopped believing the stories our civilization tells itself. We see that the world is entering an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unravelling, and we want our cultural responses to reflect this reality rather than denying it”. In “Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto,” Hine and Kingsnorth (2009, no page) challenges “the last taboo”—the myth of civilization. The myth of civilization is made up of stories about human centrality and maste- ry over nature, “to which we no longer belong” (ibid.). To be able to break with this myth we need new stories and what they call “uncivilised writing.” Uncivilized writing offers “a nonhuman perspective” that attempt to stand outside the human-centered bubble and reconnect with what we once were—“highly evolved apes” and part of nature (ibid.). It is through stories that we weave reality, and humans have always lived by stories, states Hine and Kingsnorth (2009). But today, the deep truths about the world, “old tales by which generations had made sense of life’s subtleties and strangenesses” (ibid.), told by sto- rytellers and poets have been replaced by the “serious stories told by economists, politicians, geneticists and corporate leaders.” But these stories are not considered as stories but as “direct accounts of how the world is,” facts and truths. They are all supporting the engine that drives civilization: “the myth of progress” (ibid.). Hine and Kingsnorth believe that the roots of the crises we experience today lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. “We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilization: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’” (ibid.). In this way one can say that the Dark Mountain Project addresses the ultimate drivers of change, culture, belief and values; the drivers that Raskin and colleagues point out as crucial in the transition into a new world. Hine and Kingsnorth (ibid.) believe it is the responsibility of artists of all kinds, not only writers, but also painters, musicians, poets, “makers of things,” “dreamers of dreams” and designers (!) to begin the process of decoupling with the myth of civilization. They mean that ecocide demands a response, and that response is too important to leave to neither politicians or economists, nor activists

293 or campaigners—for this task, artists are needed. I would also claim that this making of new stories and reframing of the world is the task of new democratic platforms like hybrid forums and design things. The Dark Mountain Project is not concerned with fantasizing about catastrophe, Hine and Kingsnorth state. “It is concerned with being honest about reality; something which most of us, as human beings, find painfully hard” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2010, 4, my italics).

When you accept this vision of the future – and it seems that a growing numbers of people do – then questions inevitably arise: what do we do with our lives? How does this change our choices, and assumptions on which those choices are made? What kinds of action still make sense? And, deeper still, there is the question which underpinned the manifesto: what stories do we tell ourselves? Because a civilisation is built on stories: when its self-belief falters and its myths are no longer believed in, its end is probably inevitable. All around us, as well as the signs of our ecological and economic decline, are signs that we – modern industrial civilisation, the liberal democracies, the market economies, the rich – have stopped believing in our own stories. Without meaning or purpose, even cornucopia is not enough to live for. (ibid. my italics)

As The Dark Mountain Project experiments with “other ways of speaking and doing” (Graugaard 2014, 149) they both critique the “ideological language” and “systems of frames” (2010a, 72) of industrial civilization and contribute with new “systems of frames” that help us to understand and discuss the world in an other way. They reframe reality. I am unable to conduct an exhaustive review of the writings of The Dark Mountain Project, but, in their first anthology, Dougald Hine (2010) writes about an author that, for him, embodies the “uncivilised writing” in their manifesto—John Berger. “He is a novelist, an art critic, an essayist, a storyteller, but when I picture him with the tools of his trade, it is holding a scythe” (Hine 2010, 78). The reason Berger holds a scythe is that he, at the height of his career in the 1970s moved to a French mountain village in the Haute Savoie region, “in a valley too steep for mechanical farming and therefore among the last enclaves of peasant life in western Eu-

294 rope” (ibid.). As a way of paying the rent, Berger helps the farmers harvest the hay in the field above his house—with a scythe! Living a life in a remote village is, of course, the opposite of civilized city life. The nature of the uncivilized referred to in The Dark Mountain Project “goes beyond the city limits: the physical, the psychological, and the political boundaries within which the illusion of humanity’s separation form and control over ‘nature’ can be sustained,” writes Hine (ibid., 79). Berger’s move to a French mountain village had nothing to do with an “idealised notion of rural life” but, disappointed with the cultural and political hap- penings of the 1960s, he was seeking a “deeper understanding of hope,” Hine explains (ibid., 81). Berger, who typically writes about the experiences of people living tough lives—prisoners, political dissidents or Palestinian families—was, in the 1970s, working on a book about migrant workers whose lives in the cities were hel- lish. He understood that most of these men were sons of peasants and wanted to write about peasant life. Consequently, he moved to the village to participate in the life of the community, which meant learning about their work. The old peasants became his teachers, as the young ones had moved. Hine (ibid., 79) quotes Berger: “I learned to tap a scythe, and I learnt a whole constellation of sense and value about life.” Hine argues that Berger’s achievement has been to ground himself in the peasants’ way of living, which has given him an “ability to see and name things which other commentators take for granted” (ibid., 78). Hine also brings up another theme in Berger’s writing which addresses the mysterious side of life that has been wiped out of the myth of civilization, “his sense of the presence of the dead” (ibid., 79). In writing about human experience through the lives of peasants and migrant workers, and through encounters with the dead, Berger attempts to “test what can be believed against what must be endured”(ibid.). In this testing of reality, Hine “suspect[s] there is more insight into what will endure when (or where) the certainties of our way of living fail us” (ibid.). In Berger, Hine sees a man who is committed to the question of how to live and how to live well, and who explores this question from the perspective of those living outside the walls of the rich and privileged in the civilized world. But Berger is not interested in

295 advising people in the rich world who fear the collapse, Hine writes. He quotes Berger:

You cannot imagine the fatigue and the hardening. No one would wish that traditional peasant life continued exactly as it is. One would wish it to change. But change how? Is the answer simply progress? Does anyone still believe progress solves everything, eliminates all problems and contradictions? The fact is that progress, as it dawned in the Enlightenment and developed in the nineteenth century, has not paid off on all its promises. And now, a culture, the culture of peasants, a culture that might help us reassess ‘progress’– this culture is simply being eliminated, or at least allowed to disappear. (Berger quoted in Hine 2010, 93)

In the peasants’ experience of survival and endurance there is the potential for resilience. Berger sees the peasants as a “class of survivors” and “history’s last best hope” (Hine 2010, 94). And for Hine, the peasants’ “capacity for wresting meaning from the uncontrollable” is at the heart of the cultural challenge they laid down with The Dark Mountain Project (ibid.). I am not able to justify the writings of Berger and Hine, but I hope I have been successful in pointing out the necessity of bringing in perspectives and experiences other than those dominating the “civilized” world today. Most likely, in the perspectives and experiences of this “class of survivors,” one can find some clues to what qualitative survival might be in the prospect of collapse.

Up until this point, I have kept traditional artefacts and design objects at a distance and expressed my scepticism toward progressive technology, but technology is not wrong per se; it is more that our relationship with it and our use of it is problematic. Technology and artefacts will definitely be a part of a resilient society, but most likely in another way than it remains today. Therefore, I think a crucial task of design in the future will be to create a new and deeper relationship with artefacts and our use of them. I will develop this thought with the help of the scythe. The scythe has been a recurring artefact during my research. It is

296 not only Berger who holds it in his hand, but also Tony Fry (2009, 79) cites the scythe as an example when discussing rematerialization and the substitution of motor powered machines like a brush cutter with human labor wielding a scythe as “it actually does a better job.” A more poetic description of a deeper relation with a scythe is by Hines’ colleague, Paul Kingsnorth (2012, no paging). Kingsnorth is a skilled and experienced scythe user, who owns a collection of this ancient tool and also teaches the skill of handling one to begin- ners. He tracks the origin of this curved cutting tool back to “at least ten thousand years, to the dawn of agriculture and thus to the dawn of civilizations” (ibid.). In the 1970s green thinkers called this kind of technology “appropriate technology,” “a phrase I would love to see resurrected,” writes Kingsnorth (ibid.) and, of course, one can accuse Kingsnorth of being nostalgic here. Kingsnorth had met this critique when writing his book Real England, in which he describes how “human-scale, vernacular ways of life in my home country were disappearing victims of the march of the machine” (Kingsnorth 2012, no paging).

Still, if I’m honest, I’ll have to concede that the critics may have been onto something in one sense. If you want human-scale living, you doubtless do need to look backward. If there was an age of human autonomy, it seems to me that it probably is behind us. It is certainly not ahead of us, or not for a very long time; not unless we change course, which we show no sign of wanting to do. (ibid.)

But it is in Kingsnorth’s description of working the scythe that I think we can find the necessary new relationship to not only artefacts, but also to nature.

Mowing with a scythe shuts down the jabbering brain for a little while, or at least the rational part of it, leaving only the primitive part, the intuitive reptile consciousness, working fully. Using a scythe properly is a meditation: your body in tune with the tool, your tool in tune with the land. You concentrate without thinking, you follow the lay of the ground with the face of your blade, you are aware of the keenness of its edge, you can hear

297 the birds, see things moving through the grass ahead of you. Eve- rything is connected to everything else, and if it isn’t, it doesn’t work. Your blade tip jams into the ground, you blunt the edge on a molehill you didn’t notice, you pull a muscle in your back, you slice your finger as you’re honing. Focus—relaxed focus—is the key to mowing well. (ibid., my italics)

How will the design world respond to The Dark Mountain Project’s call for an uncivilized art? Uncivilized design? It definitely challenges the whole notion of human-centered design. Hopefully, many will respond to this call. Here is mine. I interpret the aim of The Dark Mountain Project to be very much in line with the need for changing worldviews, re-framing reality, and finding new stories and imaginations to live by and which are the aim of this thesis. My suggestion for “uncivilized design” will be a design thing whereby diverse actors, both human and nonhuman, use various design approaches to challenge the stories we live by and stake out new trajectories of inquiry. Here, I think a new sort of design fiction could have a role.

Design Fiction and Speculative Design

Could there be a design fiction injecting social innovation, not with fantastic “whiz-bang” (Sterling 2009) objects, but with imaginaries of resilient, or post-civilization, everyday life situations and practices emerging from new value sets, desires, and ways of living? Of course, artefacts will still exist, however, not as the main focus for design, but rather more as an element of new or old practices. Could this design fiction also reflect the need to change the “what and how” (Redström 2013) of design practice itself? Could there be a design practice where neither artefacts, nor humans are at the “center” or focal point? Could there be a “uncivilized” design practice that “accept the world for what it is and to make our home here, rather than dreaming of relocating to the stars, or existing in a man-forged bubble and pretending to ourselves that there is nothing outside to which we have any connection at all” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009)? Before addressing these thoughts, I will look into the role of narratives in Participatory Design. Brandt, Binder, and Sanders (2013) discuss how the tools and techniques in participatory design prac-

298 tice depend on the participants telling, making, or enacting. The need for telling activities that may support the bridging of the gap between different knowledge domains goes back to the early days of Participatory Design. For example, design researchers in the Ut- opia Project developed design games and mock-ups to support the telling of stories and the sharing of knowledge between typograph- ers and designers. Ehn (1993, 70) discusses how the use of design artefacts like prototypes, mock-ups, and scenarios help designers and users to “see new aspects” of an already well-known practice or situation. In this way, design artefacts are helpful when exploring the tension between tradition (what is) and transcendence (what could be). This tension between tradition and transcendence is at the heart of design, states Ehn. In his case, it was a question of whether or not the new design should support traditional graphi- cal production or introduce a completely new service like desktop publishing. In my case, this tension between “what is” and “what could be” is manifested in the “tense” space between Conventional Development and Great Transition. I also consider dark and soft design fiction to be a design artefact which serves the same function as prototypes, mock-ups, and scenarios—to help the participants in a design thing “see new aspects” of, or reframe, a situation. However, in my case, new aspects mean not only new possibilities, but also, and to a higher degree, it concerns the limitations and dangers of reaching near-planetary boundaries or crossing tipping-points. Brandt, Binder, and Sanders (2013) bring up telling activities that are more focused on expanding the dialogue between users and designers through introducing a change perspective which casts new light on the well-known. Such activities could be the future workshop (Jungk and Müllert), the use of foreign metaphors (Ken- sing and Madsen) or “provotypes” (Mogensen). All these activities employs the “what if…?” question to produce a kind of “estrang- ement of the familiar” that “makes it easier for the participants to talk about experiences in a way that is also comprehensible for others” (Brandt, Binder, and Sanders 2013, 153). Particularly interesting for me is the use of fictional inquiry and imaginative places in participatory design, introduced by Christina Brodersen, Christian Dindler, and Ole Sejer Iversen. In fictional in-

299 quiry, designers use a fictional narrative in a workshop situation. According to Dindler and Iversen (2007, 216), the core idea of fictional inquiry is to “temporarily change or bypass existing socio-cultural structures in a given practice.” Fictional inquiry allows participants and designers to “legitimately ask odd questions that would otherwise be inappropriate” (ibid.) In this way, the participants can imagine possible futures without being limited by current constraints and problems. Dindler and Iversen (2007, 218) describe how the fictional inquiry technique builds on several existing participatory design techniques like scenarios, probes, generative tools, and drama. They state that fictional inquiries can be used with the purpose of staging the design situation, evoking ideas for the future, and evoking and initiating organizational change. In workshops, they have used fictional narratives like “Mission from Mars” and “The King of Atlantis.” Through the narratives one also introduces a “fictional frame” that helps the participants to do an “imaginative leap” beyond the existing world (ibid., 231). “The leap, however, is not one of detached imagination, but a product of future users exploring how the world could be” (ibid.). For me, this leap is a way of reframing the world or a design situation. I find the use of narratives in fictional inquiry inspiring and useful; however, I aim beyond the exploration of new technology and organizational change. For me, it is more interesting when narratives open up exploration of other kinds of societal organization and how that influences changes in everyday life practices—where technology is an element, but not the main focus or departure point.

Design fiction

I do not make any distinction between fiction and reality. I do not believe in reality—I see it as a capitalist fabrication as much fiction as any fiction. (Neil Spiller 2013)

Design fiction is a fairly new concept that is starting to gain increasing attention by design researchers in recent years (Hales 2013, Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Christensen 2013, Wakkary et al. 2013, Kaye and Dourish 2014). According to Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Chris-

300 tensen (2013), the practice of using fiction as a technique for experimenting with alternative models for society and criticizing existing ones has been used by designers since the advent of modern design: “The ability to use design fiction for speculating about alternative presences or possible futures is at the core of design practice. What is new is that it is now claimed to be a viable road for producing valid knowledge in design research” (ibid., 341). According to Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Christensen, the term ‘design fiction’ appears for the first time in Bruce Sterling’s book Shaping Things (2005), where he writes:

I’ve been writing “design fiction” for years now. Design fiction reads a great deal like science fiction; in fact, it would never occur to a normal reader to separate them two. The core distinction is that design fiction makes more sense on the page than science fiction does. Science fiction wants to invoke the grandeur and credibility of science for its own hand-waving hocus-pocus, but design fiction can be more practical, more hands on. It sacrifices some sense of the miraculous, but it moves much closer to the glowing heat of technosocial conflict. (Sterling 2005, 30)

Let’s reflect on this paragraph. I think the “practical, more hands on” character of design fiction involving techno-social conflict of the future and that we now need to be able to tackle our societal challenges will connect well to the new narratives of “quality survival” (Cocks 2012). Sacrificing the “miraculous” seems sad, but hopefully, the “search of the miraculous” (which happens to be the title of a documentary film by Malmö skateboarder Pontus Alv about the construction of DIY skateboard parks) could be redefined into forms other than the visions of fantastic artefacts (ray guns and time machines) that go hand in hand with the dreams and myths of constant progress and growth found in the usual narratives of industrial civilization. In an interview, Bruce Sterling describes design fiction:

It’s the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change. That’s the best definition we’ve come up with. The important word there is diegetic. It means you’re thinking very

301 seriously about potential objects and services and trying to get people to concentrate on those rather than entire worlds or political trends or geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories. (Bosch 2012)

Continuing to track the origins of design fiction, Wakkary et al. (2013) claim that the earliest use of the term was by Julian Bleecker at a conference in 2008. Bleecker, in turn, was inspired by the paper, “Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction alongside Ubiquitous Computing” by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell (2013) and originally published in 2008. Bleecker describes his view on design fiction in a blog post:

Design Fiction is making things that tell stories. It’s like science-fiction in that the stories bring into focus certain matters-of-concern, such as how life is lived, questioning how technology is used and its implications, speculating bout the course of events; all of the unique abilities of science-fiction to incite imagination-filling conversations about alternative futures. It’s about reading P.K. Dick as a systems administrator, or Bruce Sterling as a software design manual. It’s meant to encourage truly undisci- plined approaches to making and circulating culture by ignoring disciplines that have invested so much in erecting boundaries between pragmatics and imagination. (Bleecker 2009)

Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Christensen (2013, 342) write that a common denominator in most design fiction is that they can be described according to “a basic rule of fiction, an imaginary, sometimes even impossible ‘what if’-scenario. These scenarios are fictitious worlds that give utopian or dystopian images of a possible future that we as humans could end up in – or be challenged by.” So far, the focal point in design fiction could be both potential objects and whole worlds. For me, to primarily focus on fictitious worlds and relate them to archetypal scenarios like what we find in Conventional Development or Great Transition is more interesting than starting with potential objects. Here, Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Christensen differ from their colleagues in the HCI community who mostly depart from digital artefacts as their cases are more ex-

302 perimental and utopian. In their paper, Knutz, Markussen, and Rind Christensen explore the relation between fiction and experiment and how these “fictitious worlds” provided through design fiction set up conditions for experimenting with and prototyping possible futures in design practice and design research. In design practice, the experiment is primarily used to construct images of future realities rather than present realities, but are the cases they exemplify really fictions? The first case is Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, which will represent the “Perfect City.” The second case is Archizoom’s No- Stop City, representing the “Critical Experiment.” The third case is the free city of Christiania in Copenhagen representing the “Social Experiment.” The fourth case is the Atelier Van Lieshout micro-state AVL-Ville representing the “Anarchistic Experiment.” The fifth case is about Michael E. Reynold’s buildings made of recycled material called Earthships representing “Experiments with sustainability.” The sixth, and final, case is 5.5 Designer’s project Protofarm 2050: The Guide to Free Farming representing “Experimenting with Eco-structure.” All these cases tell stories and challenge convention, but with the exception of No-Stop City and Protofarm 2050, they are more present realities, though alternative and radical in character, than possible futures. With that stated, they could still work to provoke input in a design process.

Speculative Design Some design researchers who have explored the narrative, critical, and visionary aspects of design are Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. I find their work (Dunne 1999, Dunne and Raby 2001, 2013) both inspiring and problematic. Their idea of critical design as a “parallel design activity that questions and challenges industrial agendas” (Dunne and Raby 2001, 58) and their explorations of the more poetic, mysterious, and dark sides of everyday life with artefacts has been much needed. At the same time, it is problematic because they limit the range of their projects to galleries and books. I also found that their projects are too far from people’s everyday lives, despite that is their point. Also, they only open up for reflection on how things could be, but leave it to someone else, if anyone, to realize it. Which, again, seems to be their point. The same goes for their book, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Dun-

7 303 ne and Raby 2013); I find it both inspiring and irritating. Neverth- eless, it works as a tool to both ground and develop my thoughts on the use of fiction in a design thing addressing societal collapse. It is also very interesting to read with the ideas of frames, values, fictional inquiries, GSG archetypical storylines, and ideas coming from The Dark Mountain Project in the background. Dunne and Raby’s (2013) argument already becomes problematic from page one: “There are no more visions. We don’t know how to fix the planet and ensure survival. We are just hopeful.” They continue and state that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism. “Yet alternatives are exactly what we need. We need to dream new dreams for the twenty-first century as those of the twentieth century rapidly fade” (ibid, 2). They have a point here, as we can exchange dreams with stories and as Eisenstein, Hine, and Kingsnorth and others have pointed out, we need to find new stories. But I disagree with them in that there are no visions, alternatives, and suggestions for how to both survive and thrive, from which new stories could be created and new dreams dreamt. That is to deny the work of resilience researchers, transition activists, new and feminist economics researchers and many others (e.g., see Hickey 2012, Shareable 2015). Material for new visions and new dreams exists out there. The problem is that there is a big thing (frame) in the way, stopping this alternative knowledge, these visions and dreams from becoming the elements from which a new world could be created. That thing is called Conventional Develop- ment, and as we have seen, there are people out there, e.g., the Com- mon Cause network, Lakoff, and Brewer, who develop strategies, e.g., strengthening alternative values and frames to weaken the grip of Conventional Development. With that said, I still think there is a lot in Dunne and Raby’s work which could be useful in removing Conventional Development out of the way, as they have been attack- ing conventional design in the service of the market before. I will borrow from their work in proposing a complimentary kind of design fiction or speculative design. But this approach would be much less spectacular and artificial than theirs and more down to earth and organic, more in line with the stories coming from transition towns, dark mountaineers, and new economics. This design fiction is not for the gallery but needs to be closer to the everyday practices, challenges, and politics facing citizens, civil servants, entrepreneurs,

304 and politicians here today, but still be able to imagine a world radically different than that of today. Dunne and Raby (2013, 2) state that the view of design as problem solving and design’s inbuilt optimism regarding its ability to fix things is troublesome because it channels “energy and resources into fiddling with the world out there rather than the ideas and attitudes inside our heads that shape the world out there.” They claim that many of our problems are “unfixable and that the only way to overcome them is by changing our values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour” (ibid. my italics) To me, this sounds like working with our values and frames and the argument that technical rationality is not enough but that we need to reframe reality and find new frames and strengthen the values that are in line with ideas of a life where we can both survive and thrive. As an alternative to design trying to solve unfixable problems, Dunne and Raby suggest speculative design as a way to “open up new perspectives” on our wicked problems and to act as a “catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to our reality” (ibid.). They argue that we need more pluralism in design, not regarding style, but regarding ideology and values. This is also in line with how I think the use of design fiction in a design thing addressing the prospect of societal collapse could function. Dunne and Raby (2013, 12) distance themselves from the research field that initially was mine, in their words, “social and humani- tarian design,” as it is seen by them to “operate within the limits of reality.” They are not interested in experimenting with how things are now, “making them better or different,” but with how things could be (in theory that is the aim of all design). They are interested in “unreality”: ideas and ideals. Fine, but I think we have to expand the idea of unreality beyond the realm of the dreams of life with spectacular technologies. For example, the idea of a three-day working week or visions of life within planetary and social boundaries are as unreal as many of today’s techno-centric design speculations. For them to become reality, we need changed minds. The tension between alternatives within the realm of reality or unreality becomes evident when Dunne and Raby (ibid., 37) bring up the idea of “voluntary simplicity,” where people work and consume less and have more leisure time. The interesting thing with “voluntary simplicity,” and what they state by referring to Eric Olin Wright

305 (2010) is that if the majority of people lived this way, the capitalist system would probably collapse. Now “voluntary simplicity” or “down-shifting” is not only an ideal or a vision, it is reality, as there are many people living in this way. Among them is Swedish researcher Jörgen Larsson, co-author of the book Rik på riktigt – En värdefull vardag är möjlig (Rich for Real – A Valuable Everyday is Possible) (Warberg and Larsson 2005) and the report Klimatom- ställning och det goda livet (Climate Transition and the Good Life) (Holmberg et al. 2011). This, I would call a realistic alternative, or a “real utopia” (Wright 2010) which challenges conventional development. But to complicate things, voluntary simplicity is also an element of a bigger picture—the Great Transition scenario—which is not yet real, although some aspects of it are definitely emerging as we see in the Transition Towns movement. As Gerst, Raskin, and Rockström (2014, 131) state, “it is difficult to imagine a Great Transition without the emergence of a vast cultural and political citizens movement.” The remaining question is what is the best way to change mindsets and activate this citizens’ movement? Is it through the strategy advocated by, for example, Crompton (2010) in working with values and frames, and strengthening intrinsic values such as those behind voluntary simplicity or through mind-opening speculative designs? Could these worlds—the world of social and environmental activists and the world of critical designers—somehow be merged? Could some form of design fiction be part of this? This is worth exploring. Dunne and Raby (2013, 57) use the term “functional fictions” for “imaginary but believable everyday situations” that could be used to explore and debate futures before they happen. But even if it is important to discuss both the opportunities and dangers with technological developments that are still in the laboratories, I think there is a rich source of imaginary challenges that need to be debated which are already reality. I think designers also should be part of exploring future situations where neo-fascist organizations rule or the rain never stops. Functional fictions could be used to explore and debate “quality survival” with or without spectacular technologies. We need not only imaginations of life with spectacular technologies, we also need speculations about life in a collapsing civilization and to start contemplating what that means for the design of our lifeworld.

306 Even if Dunne’s and Raby’s (2013) speculative design proposals depict future life situations where people mainly interact with spectacular technologies, they “start with laws, ethics, political systems, social beliefs, values, fears, and hopes, and how these can be translated into material expressions, embodied in material culture, becoming little bits of another world” (ibid., 70). I think this is also a good starting point for our inquiry into the challenges we face, starting with the big picture and casting ourselves back to explore which artefacts make sense. At the end of the book, Dunne and Raby address the systemic level and ask if “large-scale speculative design” can take a social and political role. Again, they distance themselves from the problem-solving focus of design thinking and social design, as speculative design focuses more on addressing values and ethics and giving form to the “multiverse of worlds our world could be” (ibid, 160). “If our values, mental models, and ethics change, then the world that flows from that worldview will be different, and we hope better” (ibid., 161). The problem with the critical and speculative designs of Dunne and Raby and their disciples is that they may contribute to loosen the grip of Conventional Development on our dreams and imaginations of how life could be, but they do not contribute with the “factors” and “fiddling with the world” that is required to live in another way. They do only half the job of turning “unreality” into reality. As Bradley and Hedrén (2014, 2) point out, we do not only need new conceptions, dreams, and imaginaries of how society could be organized in an alternative way, as there are “outright basic needs to immediately practice alternatives.” The same accusation of not contributing with solutions could be said about The Dark Mountain Project, but they do not escape into speculative artificial unreality, they try to face the world as it is and as honestly they can, with dirt on their hands. In the hard work of reframing reality, we will need them both. But artists and critical designers have their limits in going from changed minds to a changed world. We will also need designers and other actors that can actually change and build the new world out there, like the active citizens that took the theories and speculations of the Situationists and built a whole alternative world of it: the free town of Christiania in Copenhagen.

307 Life practices in fictitious worlds As stated, I have been sceptical about the technocentric view of contemporary design fiction and speculative design. But as I mention in the introduction, some design researchers (Pierce et al. 2013) are turning their attention to practice theory and practice as a unit of analysis and intervention. Practice has always been an important element in participatory design (Ehn 1993). Practice theory has also caught the attention of sustainability researchers (e.g., Holmberg et al. 2011). And practice is also the point of departure in a recent paper on collapse informatics (Tomlinson et al. 2013) and the use of design fiction in sustainable design (Wakkary et al. 2013). Andreas Reckwitz (2002, 249) defines practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge.” Wakkary et al. (2013, 23:5) state that practice consti- tutes our everyday life: “the way we cook, work, consume, inquire, maintain our health and home” and that practice “require artefacts” (ibid.). They state with reference to Reckwitz (2002) that practice is “doings with things.” In short, practices are “body/knowledge/ things-complexes” (Reckwitz 2002, 258). Wakkary and colleagues also refer to Shove, Pantzar, and Watson who state that practice is the composition of three elements: materials (“things, technologies, tangible physical entities”), competences (“skill[s], know-how and techniques[s]”), and meanings (“symbolic meanings, ideas and aspirations”) and that practices change when new elements are introduced, or existing elements are combined in new ways. From this, I will regard practice as routinized doings/interactions with things (in its double meaning as both artefacts and socio-material assemblies of humans and nonhumans). As collapse informatics deal with futures “at least a few decades away,” one can not only study and theorize current practice, but must find a way to “link today’s practices to tomorrow’s possible futures” (Tomlinson et al. 2013, 24:7). Working with longer time horizons is desirable, but when stating the importance of “keeping present and future constantly in play with one another,” I think they

308 fall in the trap of the future orientation of both most science and design and forget about learning from the past. As we have seen, both Tainter (2006) and Diamond (2011) have looked into how past civilizations have failed or succeeded according to how they handle progress and expansion and responded to challenges. Also Kings- north (2012) and Hopkins (2008) point to the importance of leaning from the past. In search for practices that are relevant to study in collapse informatics Tomlinson and colleagues (2013, 24:11) turn to groups of people who are “purposefully experimenting with practices and their associated technologies” in a way that may bear in a future of collapse. As examples, they mention “ecovillage communities” and “bright green families” who are “hyper aware” about the impact of their daily actions and purposefully attempt to live green lives (ibid.). They identify with how one of these ecovillage communities developed and built a “passive solar food dryer” out of an old refri- gerator as a “possible world artefact” (ibid.). This artefact served to dry food but also as an “object of contemplation of possible futures and assessment of the wider impacts of its use” (ibid.). Tomlinson and colleagues (ibid.) find that some of these practices exemplify what Fry (2009, 10) has called “redirective practice.” They exemplify with some contemporary eco-practices which strive for learning to live with less and more self-sufficiently. The first example is Bloomington Bike Project “in which community members who help build bikes from scrap parts for others are compensated by being given the resources to build bikes for themselves” (Tomlinson et al. 2013, 24:11). The authors see this practice as “redirective” as it presents an alternative to just throwing away an old bike and buying a new one. It also illustrates a practice that can make communities more adaptable to collapse in two ways:

(i) by creating skills needed to better adjust to possible collapse– that is eliminating reliance on newly manufactured things and (ii) by serving as an example of conservationist practice that may inspire others to adopt this re-directive practice–that is, creating working bikes from parts at hand, rather than supporting the practice of acquiring new things. (ibid. 24:11-12)

309 The example of the Bloomington Bike Project resembles many similar recycling, reuse, and rebuild projects around the world, often taking place in bike kitchens or other kinds of maker spaces (see, for example, Seravalli 2014). Another example of redirective practice brought up by Tomlinson et al. (2013, 24:12) is “suburban curbside farming.” This example of how conversion of farmland into suburban lawns is now reversed by returning lawns back to “small scale, local, organic, food gardening” (ibid.) is also a kind of activism inspiring others to do the same. It is also an example of adaptation to possible collapses as it ensures food safety through “ultra-local supply” (ibid.). Other examples that the authors mention also concern food and water supply, e.g., a grow your own consultancy, the practice of filtering water at home, and another example of suburban farming. Tomlinson and colleagues identify two groups of actors that could be interesting in practice-based collapse informatics studies. The first they call “purposefully marginal groups” (ibid. 24:14) who believe that a collapse is close and prepare themselves through devising different ways to meet it. Purposefully marginal groups act outside and challenge mainstream society but at the same time they can be a source of new ideas. Tomlinson and colleagues see in these marginal groups the “buds” of future practice. Among these are aquaponics that combine fish farming and hydroponic agriculture, dumpster di- vers, people living off the grid, zero waste and zero consumption lifestyles, and survivalists. The second group are “technofuturists” (ibid.) who envision technological developments relevant in a future collapse. Technofuturists are defined by the authors as actors who conduct hands-on experiments with new practices of design and ma- nufacture. They exemplify with the non-profit company Freedom- Box Foundation which advocates decentralized communication. They also see 3D printing technologies as promising in localizing manufacturing. Tomlinson et al. end their paper with some “fictional abstracts” for potential collapse informatics research projects. Among these, and from a practice perspective, I found Wisdom of Years most interesting. In this project, older members of a community could through video, pass on knowledge of practices that younger

310 people lack.

In their paper, Wakkary et al. (2013) explore the intersection of green practices, sustainable interaction design, and design fiction. They propose that design fictions can be “readily incorporated into practices in ways that transform those practices and hold implications for transformations of design as well” (ibid., 23:2).

We see design fictions as a designerly response to social practices in that rather than focus on social analysis and policies, designers engage in a material reflection that is based in making and doing, where scenarios, prototypes, sketches, and illustrations are materials of thought for design. Designers build corpuses of exemplars that are not prescriptions but actualized potentials that present opportunities and limits for design. (ibid.)

Wakkary and colleagues (2013) studied what practice elements (formulated by Shove, Pantzar, and Watson as competences, materials, and meanings), green DIY and everyday repair) consist of, and how these can form the basis for a design fiction approach. In their first example, they show how green-DIY enthusiasts have been inspired by vertical high-tech green walls and buildings (designed by Patrick Blanc and Stefano Boeri) and have designed their own, low-tech versions out of a wood pallet. Wakkary et al. (2013, 23:28) believe that green enthusiasts “see these design fictions as possible futures that are accessible for immediate reimagining and construction” and that they become a “source for interpretation and adaptation into a new and immediate DIY project.” They exemplify with the Home Farming design concept from Philips which stacks mini eco systems on top of each other. The comments from DIY enthusiasts were that anyone could do this and the design firm Conceptual Devices developed a DIY home version of such a home farm that could be put together by off-the-shelve materials available at, for example, IKEA. Here, the professional design firm took an intermediary role “between design fictions and sustainable DIY practices” (ibid. 23:29). They view this “hybrid or intermediary designer” (ibid., 23:28) as the model for a sustainable interaction designer.

311 In a third example, Wakkary et al. suggest that the designer take the role as a facilitator for a “collaborative practice between everyday people and designers” (ibid., 23:30) in a collapse informatics context. They discuss the Domestic Plant Guild Project by Norton, Stringfellow, and Laviola as a design fiction where infrastructures have collapsed so it would be difficult to grow non-native plants for food. But, through the use of plant guilds, which is a permaculture technique described as “a group of plants that mutually support each other” (ibid.), people could grow food locally “with less energy requirements and few resources” (ibid.). To create such plant guilds, one needs knowledge that could be provided by HCI tools. “In this case, the design fiction and the design solution revolve around the element of competence and how it is distributed” (ibid.). Wakkary and colleagues sees the use of design fictions as a way to bridge sustainable practices and interaction design. Interaction designers can become hybrid designers who work in a transparent way with open source strategies and DIY materials. Designers can also work collaboratively with DIY enthusiasts and ordinary people to create future scenarios. In this way, design fictions can be “transformative by introducing new practices and as a result new materials and competences that evolve and sustain practices” (ibid., 31). From this, I think that one task of design fiction in a design thing could be to explore what kinds of practices (routinized doings, interactions) along with what kind of things constitute qualitative survival in the future.

Dark and Soft Design Fiction

And what does one live best with today – technique fetishism or compost realism? Sverker Lenas (2010)

We will still live with artefacts in the future, both existing, but until now, not used that often, like the water pumps, water vacu- um cleaners and dehumidifiers we need to get rid of the water in our basements when flooded (as personally experienced), and new not-yet-invented and designed ones. Some resilient communities put a lot of trust in technology like solar panels and “portable wind tur- bines for USB devices” (West 2014) but also in a good old axe. But

312 maybe, for example “a farm for the future” (Hosking 2009) will do fine without most of our tools and help. The point I want to make is that I think designers need to reframe our relation with artefacts, as we need to reframe our relation with nature and with each other. Technology does not have to be progressive, and neither does life. As a complement to the “hard” side of design fiction with its focus on the artificial side of life and human interaction with new technology that dominates today, I would like to propose a “soft” design fiction that reconnects with the organic side of life and humans as part of nature. This design fiction is less cyborg and more monkey man. Technology and interactions between humans and artefacts will still be part of life in soft design fiction, but it will have lost its privileged position and no longer be the main focus of our aspirations, but rather treated as an occasional necessary element of everyday life. With this to some degree “uncivilized” perspective, soft design fiction would also be less science fiction and more “kitchen sink” realism or “compost realism” (Lenas 2010); one that is less rooted in new and complex technologies and more rooted in the ideas, insights, practices, and dreams coming from resilience and new economics researchers, transition town activists, dark mountaineers and people who has been forced to create new lifeworlds in collapsing societies like Detroit. I will now speculate a bit on some distinctions between conventional, “hard” design fiction and soft design fiction. Today’s notion of design fiction departs from science fiction. Here, science is mostly the hard science of the artificial and the results of academic or commercial high tech laboratories. But where is the soft science fiction? Yes, there is a literary genre called soft science fiction (see for example The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 2015) that, according to Wiki- pedia (2015), “explores the ‘soft’ sciences, and especially the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and so on), rather than engineering or the “hard” sciences (for example, physics, astronomy, or chemistry).” Soft science fiction is often more concerned with “character and speculative societies, rather than scientific or engineering speculations” (ibid., my italics). To include the soft sciences more in our design speculations would reflect recent developments in design where both the object of study and intervention have expanded beyond the original “hard” sciences of the

313 artificial. I think that design for social innovation, service design, design anthropology and the recent focus on practice is evidence that the object of design could be other than an engineered artefact, for example, an organization. Design is also increasingly discussed in new contexts like public policy and societal organization (e.g., Manzini and Staszowski 2013). Soft design fiction that speculates about society as whole could do the same job as hard design fiction speculating about future technologies. With that said, again, the traditional objects of design will not go away; what is changing is how we perceive and think about them. Through soft design fiction, we could begin to reframe our relation to the artificial. The literary and cultural references of conventional design fiction are well known, science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clark, and Bruce Sterling or in TV series like Star Trek. But, what could be the literary and cultural references of a soft design fiction? Except exploring the literary genre of soft science fiction and the emerging genre of climate fiction (e.g., Glass 2013), I think a good place to start searching is the cultural universe of The Dark Moun- tain Project or other cultural movements which address our societal challenges. For example, in the first issue of “Dark Mountain,” Ran Prieur (2010) discusses various kinds of popular fiction in which he thinks we can see the future. He dismisses science fiction as stuck in “the industrial age’s boundless optimism about machines” (ibid., 135), cyber punk does a better job with the insight “that more technology doesn’t make things cleaner–it make things dirtier” (ibid). The genre he favours is steampunk as it “shows a human-made world that’s messy and alive as nature, but the technological system is a crazy hybrid of everything from ‘stone age’ to ‘space age’ – thus refuting the very idea that we are locked into ages” (ibid.). The use of steampunk as design fiction and how it could work as a ”model for how to physically realize an ideological and imagined world through design practice” has been explored by HCI researchers Tanenbaum, Tanenbaum, and Wakkary (2012, 1583). I think that steampunk with its focus on cogwheel mechanics and craft offers a necessary counter story to the slick digitalized milieus in many design fictions. It could also be interesting to discuss differences in perspective and relation to artefacts. There is quite a difference in the spectacular artefacts inhabiting the worlds of both science fiction writers and

314 design fiction researchers and, for example, imagining John Berger tapping a scythe together with his peasant neighbours, “a class of survivors,” on a steep rural hillside. The perspective of soft design fiction would also affect what we consider as nonhuman and also invite other species, like the seabird with its stomach full of plastic. The presence of animals and how to involve them in design processes is beginning to be explored in design research (e.g., Ulv Len- skjold and Jönsson 2013). Soft design fiction could also help us to discuss “serious” research where, for example, a dead salmon gets some “embedded intelligence” so it can tell us—with the help of the Internet of Things—when it starts to rot in our fridge. Soft design fictions could ask other “what if…?” questions. Less “imagine life with this new technology,” and more “imagine life with a three-day working week”:

A ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life. (Coote, Franklin and Simms 2011)

A three-day working week may have radical consequences on our skills, aspirations, choices, and on our life practices. Consider the need of a bicycle. Instead of consuming a readymade bike, we may choose to make most of it ourselves in one of the in the future (maybe) ubiquitous maker spaces. With an affluence of time rather than material things, will there be any desire for “time saving” devices or modes of transportations like high-speed trains at all? Let us speculate on that also. As said, a three-day working week is as much “unreality” as many of the artefacts inhabiting design fictions and speculative design today, unless for the great part of the population who do not have a job at all and is considered a problem to be solved. I think these stories are highly valuable in a design thing aiming to address and reframe societal challenges in a way other than according to Conventional Development. I will call these fictional interventions dark and soft design fiction. Dark, because it faces the future without the rosy dreams and false hope of Conventional

315 Development, and soft, because the point of departure will be life and quality survival, not technology or the economy. I think the perspectives of the dark mountaineers or of the seabird with its stomach full of plastic, communicated through dark and soft design fiction could be crucial in our reframing of reality and contemplating which kinds of artefacts and lifeworlds we should design to be able to live within planetary and social boundaries to reach quality survival. In contrast to hard design fiction, which I consider to be in line with our current progress and expansion culture, a dark and soft design fiction could be part of an emerging “planet care culture” (Azar 2013, Holmberg and Nässén 2007) where we take care of what we have, like gardeners, and live within the limits of the planet in a circular economy. How dark and soft design fiction will function and in what form it will come in needs to be explored and I see this as a proposal for future design research. I will develop my thoughts about this as far as I can at the end of the thesis, but I think one crucial element of dark and soft design fiction is the interplay between fiction for design (that is narratives that inform or inspire design) and design fiction in the sense that we know it, through artefacts that tell stories.

Visions and Utopias

In this chapter, I have discussed the need of alternative perspectives, stories, and visions of the world. I will now finish this chapter with discussing the notion of utopia but not in the meaning of something unrealistic or unattainable, but in the meaning of alternative visions or dreams that are pragmatically attainable. Such a notion of utopia is brought forward by design researcher John Wood (2007, 3) who, with the concepts “attainable utopias” and “micro-utopias,” advocates “a more tentative, temporary, pluralised or truncated” version of utopia. This version builds on an interdependent network of local ”micro-utopias.” The need of visioning and critical alternatives in the form of utopias to meet societal challenges is also discussed in the anthology Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén (2014). The editors state that we need systemic change, but for that to happen, we not

316 only need “dreams, imaginaries, and experiments that are articula- ted and make the impossible seem possible,” we also need to “immediately practice the alternatives” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 2). Utopias can generally be defined as “radically different, better, or ideal society” but also as “spaces for speculation and critique in the interest of change” (ibid., 7). Utopia can also be practiced “either as temporary experiments with alternative social organization or on a more regular basis in intentional communities” (ibid.). Bradley and Hedrén bring forward the critical and experimental character of utopia. “A utopia should therefore not be regarded as a final plan for a general transformation, but instead as an indispensible source of inspiration, propelling desire, imaginative capacity, reflexivity, change, and expectations of a better society” (ibid., 8). They state that the most common motivation for engaging in utopianism is the lack of contemporary parliamentary politics to engage with alternative possible futures. One recurrent motivation when discussing utopia today is what many call the postpolitical, or apolitical, condition in which capitalism and neoliberalism have become the dominate, or only, alternative (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, Swyngedouw 2014, Wright 2010). In the postpolitical condition, environmental problems are solved with green technology sold on the market, in that way environmental problems “are transformed into an engine of innovation and growth” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 4). This belief, that the only way to solve problems is to develop new technology for the market, is in line with Conventional Development. In contrast to this condition of consensus and no alternative, I will look into the use of utopia by two left-wing thinkers, one that merged visioning and practical policy making in building the Swedish welfare state, Ernst Wigforss (b.1881– d.1977), and one that turns to utopias to, once again, make the idea of socialism a viable alternative, Erik Olin Wright. Ernst Wigforss was active as an ideologist between 1908 and 1974 and is considered to be the architect behind the Swedish welfare state. The former Prime Minister, Tage Erlan- der, called him “the foremost inspirer of the Swedish worker movement” (Nåsander 2013, 11-12 my translation). In proposing a possible future and exploring it through experiments, Wigforss’

317 idea of provisional utopias (provisoriska utopier) has strong similarities with design. His use of utopia was not in the sense of a totalitarian vision reached through blueprints or revolution, but rather a merging of vision and pragmatic trial and error. In an essay about provisional utopias from 1958, he defines utopia as “images of contemplated societal conditions, essentially differently constituted than those existing in reality” (Wigforss 2013, 170 my translation). He argues that we need imaginations as goals and guidelines in the deliberate efforts of changing society. With the term provisional, he means utopias that are not rigid- ly determined, but changeable. Timothy Tilton (1984, 46) writes that for Wigforss, all social life was a continuing series of experiments and that “human beings may never, even for short periods, be subordinated to utopian designs, but rather the designs themselves must be weighed against human experience and changing preferences”:

A provisional utopia, then, is a tentative sketch of a desirable future society. It serves as critique of existing social arrangements and as a guide to political action, yet it can and indeed must be revised in accordance with future experience. It originates, like all utopias, in a disgust with existing social ills and a desire to direct them. In fact, Wigforss writes, it is more a matter of providing guideposts away from the flaws of modern capitalism than direction toward a socialist utopia. (Ibid.)

This tentative and changeable character of provisional utopias is something we recognize from the idea of living scenarios, which are “maps of the future that can be reworked, adapted and, if necessary, transformed” (Raupach et al. 2012, 1). According to Tilton (1984, 47), provisional utopias are valuable in three ways: “they guide the work of social reconstruction; they make possible rational political debate; and they become a material force in the work of social transformation by enlisting the moral energy of citizens.” It is through the function of tentative sketches and formable imaginaries which are able to mobilize citizen engagement and political debate that I think the idea of provisional utopias would fit well within a design thing.

318 Erik Olin Wright (2010) shares with Wigforss the idea of merging utopian visioning with cautious and tentative implementation: “Incremental tinkering may not be inspiring, but is the best we can do” (Wright 2010, 7). He begins his book about real utopias with stating that there once was a belief that “another world is possible” and a belief in an alternative to capitalism that was called socialism. Today this belief is gone. His aim is to rebuild “a sense of possibility for emancipatory social change by investigating the feasibility of radically different kinds of institutions and social relations that could potentially advance the democratic egalitarian goals historically associated with the idea of socialism” (ibid.). With real utopias, he means “utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian destinations that have accessible waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practical tasks of navigating a world of imperfect conditions for social change” (ibid. 6). With real utopias he wants to overcome the division between visions and practical realities. The interesting thing with Wright’s real utopias is that they exist in reality, as “accessible waystations,” and he exemplifies with: participatory city budgeting, Wikipedia, The Mondragon worker-owned cooperatives, and unconditional basic income. This is where utopia is not in the unreal, like in Dunne and Raby’s speculative designs, but in the real. What real utopias offer are pieces of an alternative society that we can experiment with, debate, and cautiously piece together to a new society. These pieces are also parts of a new emerging story about “why we are here, where we are heading, what is important, and even what is real” (Eisenstein 2013). Both the idea of provisional utopias and the idea of real utopias have many similarities with design, not in the sense of blueprints, but rather in the sense of design’s explorative character, or as trajectories of inquiry towards possible futures. It also relates to the idea of metadesign (Binder et al. 2011) where design is a continuous process of re-designing that is never done. Going back to my tentative theory of change, I argued that we needed to connect visions of alternative societies with a social movement that “immediately practice[s] the alternatives” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 2). The question is if we in the transition movement can see an emerging citizen movement that creates real utopias and offers “accessible waystations”? The idea

319 of provisional utopias is also interesting to relate to the idea of deliberate transformational change in resilience theory. While transformational change is considered expensive, undesirable and socially unacceptable if initiated on a larger societal scale, it is more likely to happen if introduced on a smaller, local scale and in a sequential way (Folke et al. 2010). Again, this corresponds well with how, for example, local transition initiatives (Transition Towns) voluntarily transform their communities and aim at becoming resilient to be able to meet peak oil and climate change while the larger societal levels of governments are stuck in status quo.

320 321 322 PART IV: CLOSURE AND NEW BEGINNINGS

3237 WHAT’S GOING ON? IN THE CONVERSATION WITH THE SITUATION

If one puts Goffman’s question “What is it that’s going on here?” in the context of the incubator process, we find not only the exploration of what a possible future incubator could be, but also mutual learning and sometimes contesting perspectives and opinions. In analyzing what was going on in the incubator process, I regard it as a “design conversation” in line with Schön’s meaning. This conversation is influenced by many aspects, which I will try to capture through the concepts governance, agonism, frame, and generative metaphor. I will follow three trajectories regarding who, what, and how. The first is about democracy and who is able to participate in the conversation and make his or her opinion heard; it is about power, position, and relations. Here, I first use the frame concept to see how the participants framed participation. Later, I discuss this framing in relation to the concepts of governance, agonism, and the term powerful stranger. The second trajectory regards what issues we want to address, what kind of problem do we deal with, and what we consider designing and how we decide that? Here I will use the concept of frames and frame reflection. The third is closely related to the others and concerns how the incubator should be organized and function. In this trajectory, we will see how the generative metaphor of the incubator as something “out there,” instead of

324 being situated inside a central building, will help the participants to reframe the incubator as distributed over many existing resources. To recapitulate, a design conversation can be seen as following these steps: the designer, or in this case, design collective, makes a first attempt to name and frame the situation, the designer then makes a move into the situation with the intention to change it, the situation talks back, the designer appreciates the back talk, and finally the designer reframes the situation. This process is iterated until the designer is satisfied with the outcome. I will also consider infrastructuring (Björgvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren 2010) – the building of long-term relationships and matching of complementary resources – as a crucial aspect of design. I will look at this design conversation from three aspects.

1. Who was involved? democracy (governance, agonism) 2. Which design moves (interventions) did we make and what back talk did they generate? (infrastructuring, design material) 3. What was discussed? (issues, activities and functions) – stories and frames (naming and framing, generative metaphor, deep and surface frames, metaculture frame, reframing)

In a way, the incubator case is a typical frame conflict, as in the cases that Schön has presented (e.g., malnourishment, housing, homelessness) wherein different actors frame an issue (in this case, social innovation and social sustainability) and a design object (an incubator) differently. One major drawback in this case is that the two actors that were most in opposition to each other, the private sector and the third sector, did not get the opportunity to meet and confront each other’s frames. The strongest representative of the private sector, Uppstart Malmö, did not participate in the workshops (deliberately or not) and the third sector representatives were excluded from the decision phase, although they claimed their right to be the “builders and owners” of the incubator. In this way, the opportunity for frame reflection, conflict, and reframing was limited. In the case analysis, I will mainly use deep and surface frames, and generative metaphors. They have been previously introduced, but I will make a short recapitulation regarding deep and surface frames. From Lakoff’s colleague Brewer, I have learned that deep frames de-

325 fine our moral worldview and tell us what kind of situation, or what kind of problem, we are dealing with; for example, is a terrorist attack a police problem or a military problem? Surface frames clarify the deep frames. In trying to translate surface frames and deep frames into the context of the incubator process, I will consider a term like job creation a surface frame that activates the deep frame of free market or market economy, or it is a market problem. On the other hand, a phrase like “grant dependent” or “non-professional” would denote something outside the market economy. Consequently, deep frames, or our moral worldviews, have an important role in problem setting. But, as I am not trained in frame analysis, I will lean on some of Lakoff and Brewer’s deep frames as presented in Darnton and Kirk (2011): free market, shared prosperity, elite government, and participatory democracy as well as Schön and Rein’s metaculture frames of market and social welfare. I will begin with looking into what kind of frames the different actors brought into the conversation with the situation. First, I will look into the stories that became the starting point, e.g., the story of the need of an incubator as told by Stenquist, and the stories of the different initiatives and their needs. Second, I will look at which deep and action frames were at play. Third, I will look at which generative metaphors emerged during the workshop. The use of frames will also shift during the different phases of the incubator process; for example, the perspectives of the public and third sector will dominate during the workshops due to the absence of the trade and industry representatives. During the decision and implementation phases, the private sector perspective will dominate as the third sector was excluded. In the following, I will try to grasp what was going on in the incubator process by looking into the initial framing of the situation and how that changed during the process through new input (information, design material, and design moves) and how the participants reframed the situation in response. I will look at both the framing at the workshops and the framing at the Trade and Industry Agency. The initial aim of the workshops was to explore what an incubator for social innovation could be; therefore, I will repeat Stigendal’s (2002, 85) definition of the social as “contexts of social relations, activities and competences.” He argues that people in relationships

326 with each other are the prerequisite for a society, and that the object of the social sciences—the social world—consists of people, relation, and activity/creation. But, as Stigendal writes, since the 1950s, the dominating view on activity and creation has been limited to mean work as gainful employment, which also is almost the only way to become a member of society. According to this way of framing activity, if you do not have gainful employment, you are not part of society. Departing from this definition of the social, I will pay specific attention to how the different actors in the incubator process framed activity and work, but also participation and ownership, which has to do with our relations to each other. If the larger issue at stake is social sustainability and social innovation, then it is fundamental to ask, what kind of activities and relations can generate social innovation and sustainability? To summarize, in analyzing what was going on in the incubator process, I will look into how the various actors framed 1) relation, participation and ownership, 2) issues and activity, and 3) organization and functionality.

Who? Framing Relation, Participation, and Ownership

In this section, I review how the different actors in the incubator process framed relation, participation, and ownership. As I have found Lakoff and Brewer’s oppositional pairs of deep frames of “elite governance vs. participatory democracy” suitable in this context, I will use them as a kind of initial filter. The need to involve more perspectives and voices when discussing the future of Malmö can be traced back to Stenquist’s article in 2009; moreover, this stance suited our background in Participatory Design. As previously described, when we were awarded the commission to run a workshop series, our ambition was to mobilize stakeholders with various perspectives and complementary competences. I will now review how the participants in the workshops at Medea and in the following decision phase at the Trade and Indu- stry Agency framed and discussed participation, relation, and ownership. These discussions span over issues like identity, belonging, connections, and access. During the introduction of the workshops, Stenquist stressed the need for opening up the process, widening the discussion, and brin-

327 ging up further perspectives and ideas. This mirrored a core aspect of social innovation, which he said was to do things with people and not for them: “solutions must come from the people.” This should also be a guiding principle for how the incubator should work. La- ter, during the workshop, he developed this thought; “The central issue is about power and control. The City of Malmö, like many municipalities, is used to generating ideas, ‘we implement solutions, we are experts and we can’” (Stenquist 2011). He suggests that this does not work anymore, and that the public sector needs to connect with other actors, but that is a long and tricky process.

What we do now is to build some sort of platform for such a dialogue. Both politicians and civil servants need to transform their thought system. What we need to discuss is how we create the forums where this could happen. This forum (the workshop) is a first attempt, but it must happen so much more. (ibid.)

As I will describe in more detail later, all the initiatives addressed the issue of participation in society with their activities. One issue regarded identity and ownership in organizations that operate in the borderland between third and public sector, or start in the third sector but becomes a public service, like Gnistan/Kaninhotellet. One senior civil servant commented that there is freedom in being independent; one does not have to contact eight bosses to take initiative. The representative of the women’s cooperative Yalla Trappan thinks that the municipality can be a great support, but that everyone is anxious about rules and public procurement: “Yalla Trappan is run by women who never had a job, so if one should take that away from them and make it public, then it is not they who run it anymore. Then you lose the initiative and the participation.” One representative of Miljonprocessen wondered about which kinds of actors should be in the incubator and asked Stenquist what he thought about actors whose activities would not earn money. He exemplified with RGRA, which he thought did not fit in the SoCap (social capital markets) context, and Feed’us. Stenquist replied that when they were discussing the incubator, they had actors like Herr- gårds Kvinnoförening and Feed’us in mind, actors who in first hand generate value for society.

328 The Miljonprocessen representative later expressed that he was tired of being a “reference person,” yet not allowed to take part in the rest of the process. Stenquist replied that they were trying “to build some kind of entrance into the public system together with other actors, not least, the private sector and the third sector. We have to create some kind of structure for how we jointly develop ideas like this.” A third sector representative from the Glokala Folkhögskolan said that he experienced consensus regarding whether there should be a social incubator, “then we as actors, must be the owners and the municipality has to let go of power. We need to have leading roles and run it.” Stenquist confirmed this: “That’s the direction in which we are trying to go.” Regarding relations between actors, one participant asserted that the “real enthusiast” was dangerous for the civil servant. The “real enthusiast” challenges the municipality and the civil servant and sometimes does a better job. Civil servants, particularly on a lower level, do not appreciate that. As mentioned before, the relations between the public and third sector dominated the discussion during the workshops. During the two first workshops, there seemed to be a consensus that there was a need to involve many actors and that the social innovators should be part in building and running the incubator. One of the initiatives, Miljonprocessen, explicitly offered to be part of the implementation phase. This consensus was confirmed during the presentations and discussions in the final workshop and exemplified through these quotes from some of the participants:

“It is important that everybody has the same opportunity.”

“We have to create a forum where all could act, but not in the same way.”

“We have to create a dialogue arena that everybody can participate in.”

At the final workshop, one civil servant also stressed that it was important that not only the “big elephants” (the municipality, the university, and trade and industry) could participate but also the so-

329 cial innovators. Their group had talked a lot about equality— equal partnerships and equal power relations. During the following phase at the Trade and Industry Agency, this way of framing relation, participation, and ownership changed. The first thing that happened was that the third sector was excluded from the decision phase. Now it was only “the big elephants” that were involved. Also, the way to frame ownership changed. This could be a consequence of the framing of activity. At the workshops, the participants discussed an incubator for social innovation and the activities of the initiatives and other social change makers. As seen below, these activities were not limited to running commercial businesses or waged labor, but could also, and more so, concern education or the creation of public opinion. But that was not how the politicians and the civil servants at The Trade and Industry Agency framed it. For them, the issue was about creating more jobs, an issue they thought trade and industry owned. According to one civil servant, the opinion within the municipality was that the most important way to prevent social exclusion was to get people into jobs. At the same time, during the workshops, the civil servant emphasized the importance of the actors “out there,” something he held on to during the next phase: “During the first meetings we had in the work group, I sketched the image of an incubator environment with all the actors out there. It is them who build this.” The one actor that did not participate in the workshops, but nevertheless will play a crucial role from now on in the process is Upp- start Malmö. What was their frame on participation and ownership? That is, of course, difficult to judge as they did not participate and share their view, but through documentation, their application, and newspaper articles, one can get a sense. To simplify, one can say that the “we” used during the workshops, meaning “we” the social innovators or participants in the workshops, during the next phase changed to mean “we Uppstart Malmö” or “we and our partners.” In a newspaper article, Olofsson and Astudillo (2013) wrote, “Now we are ready to raise the bar and set new goals. We want to set the new goals with the City of Malmö and our partners.” One could say that during the different phases of the incubator process, it changed from a more open and inclusive process at the workshops where the deep frame participatory democracy domina-

330 ted to a more closed and exclusive process at the Trade and Industry Agency where the deep frame elite governance dominated. I will elaborate on this and put it in relation to the concepts governance and agonism at the end of this chapter.

What? Framing Issues and Activity

In this section, I find Lakoff and Brewer’s deep frames of the free market and participatory democracy useful. I will also look at which metacultural frames are at play. As seen in the description of the case, much framing was already going on within the context of the Area Programmes regarding which issues to address. Their focus should be on: work and economic growth; security, participation and democracy; living conditions for children and youth; integration and a decreased social gap; and culture and leisure (all these were addressed during the workshops except economic growth). To be able to tackle these, the idea of the need of an incubator for social innovation came up. The initial framing at the workshops of the issue of an incubator for social innovation was in the form of Stenquist’s introduction, where he stated that there is a lack of places to which entrepreneurs with a “perspective on societal challenges” can turn to for support. He exemplified with Feed’us and Herrgårds Kvinnoförening. He also said that there was the need for a “sustainable structure” to address issues like jobs, health, security, and education, and to receive ideas from outside the municipality. One can interpret this framing of activities as the main focus was on activities of entrepreneurs with a “perspective on societal challenges” and less on the activities of traditional entrepreneurs within technology, business, or media.

Initial framing of issues and activities This initial framing was then complemented by the stories from the initiatives, the actors that the incubator was aimed at supporting. The representative of Gnistan/Kaninhotellet said that her main objective was to “Get parents out of their homes, help decrease unemployment and dependency on social welfare, so that more reach the labor market.” Regarding the future, she strives for contributing to sustainability, getting more people into work, and increasing the level of

331 grades in schools. One could summarize that her metacultural frame was sustainability. The issues she wanted to address were unemployment, social welfare dependency, and integration. The activity she wanted to address these issues with was the provision of a meeting place and pedagogical leisure activities for children aged six to four- teen. Also the metacultural frame of Feed’us could be said to concern social and environmental sustainability and the reduction of crime. The issue they wanted to address was “life on the streets” with its vicious circle of crime, drugs, and vandalism. The activity they wanted to address this issue with was the provision of a “change workshop,” a meeting place where youth could develop themselves through renovating and recycling old things. Another important activity and competence was their ability to reach out to youth whom established organizations or authorities were unable to get in contact with. Youth was also the target group of Miljonprocessen and their metacultural frame could be seen as “active” citizenship. The issue they wanted to address was increasing participation and integration in society and among the activities they wanted to use was arranging events that combined pedagogy, intercultural competence, and new technical solutions. The metacultural frame of Herrgårds Kvinnoförening could be seen as citizenship and integration. The issues they wanted to address were increased participation in society, personal development, women’s rights, and health. The activities they used for addressing these issues were education, crafts, cooking, and catering. The metacultural frame of Aluma could be seen as a sense of community for homeless. The issues they wanted to address were homelessness and the activity they used to address this issue was producing a magazine. The metacultural frame of Barn i Stan could be seen as change of public space and integration. The issue the wanted to address was integration and the activities they used, among others, was storytelling and urban farming. From this, one can see that almost all initiatives addressed the issue of participation in society, but few of them through an activity that could be considered wage labor or production for the market.

332 Aluma is the only one that sells a product and Herrgårds Kvinno- förening sell services, but the income goes to the association and not to employees with salary. What’s more, most of these initiatives could be organized as companies selling services, but that was not the main driver during the workshops. Thus, one could state that the dominating deep frame among the initiatives was “participatory democracy” and the weaker deep frame was “free market.”

Framing of issues and activity during the workshops Based on the discussions and presentations, I will now look into how the workshop participants framed issues and activities. One discussion during workshop two put the finger on the “other kind of work” (Stigendal 2012a, 34) that is not wage labor nor production for the market, for example, voluntary work within civil society, work that today is not acknowledged as valuable. When the representative from Herrgårds Kvinnoförening were asked if they wanted to start a commercial business, she told us about all the business opportunities that they had seen in their activities, but so far they had failed to turn them into businesses. Then she told us about the work they had been doing with addressing cultural traditions and values. She said that society had tried a lot of things to bring the women out into society, into work, Swedish language courses, or into school, but failed. “After a while, the women are back at home again. But we have succeeded in creating trust between the families and us. They still live in collectives and the group pressure is huge. There- fore we must create trust. That has taken ten years. Today, they can come to us and work without the men chasing them back. Now it is time for the second phase when they can come out and earn money. They shall learn how to contribute.” What was brought up in this discussion is that sometimes there is the need for “other kinds of work” that are not in the frame of activity as wage labor or commercial production. But, as researchers as Stigendal and Gibson Graham have argued, this other kind of work is an important prerequisite for wage labor and society. These are the kinds of activities that prepare individuals outside the labor market to become “job ready,” as an employment officer once put it. This kind of “pre-activity” is also interesting to connect to the idea of “pre-incubators.” If Herrgårds Kvinnoförening had tur-

333 ned their activities into a commercial business with employees, they would have been considered a success. But in terms of the work of “pre-paring” women to become a part of society, they are not acknowledged. However, according to Stenquist, the incubator for social innovation was aimed for the kind of activities that Herrgårds Kvinnoförening or Feed’us were doing and that generates a “profit” to society. During the discussion, it also emerged another group of issues and activities that could be considered as “other kinds of work,” for example the creation and sharing of knowledge, and the creation of public opinion and debate. These activities contain critique and challenge both established systems, practices, and power relations. They strive for changing systems and developing new structures. One participant who represented this view felt that it was the responsibility of third sector actors or “societal actors” to teach politicians how to evaluate the values that initiatives like Feed’us create. “We have to work with building knowledge. One has to educate the system in thinking new. We cannot sit here and sulk because they don’t understand,” she said. She meant that one should arrange workshops with politicians because it is they who can change the system. Again, the preceding discussion concerns another kind of activity than wage labor or production for the market and, therefore, needs another kind of support organization. This could explain why Tillväxt Malmö, to a large extent, has failed to address these kinds of activities. These activities were also mainly performed and advocated by the third sector. Consequently, the participants came up with the need of a support organization within the municipality equal to the Trade and Industry Agency which someone named “Civil Agency.” Activities like the creation of knowledge and public opinion also connect to the theme “People’s Movement 2.0.” During the third workshop, these “other” issues and activities were addressed in the different scenarios; for example, in scenario two, the incubator would provide free access to knowledge about “socio-economic accounts.”

Framing of issues and activity during the trade and industry phase As seen, the main opinion within the municipality regarding how to

334 decrease social exclusion was to get more people into jobs. This is in line with the view of Uppstart Malmö, whose goal it is to invest in companies so that they can hire more people. The keywords are business or business-like; in the decision document for the politicians, it says “It is further an important remark that the incubator shall work with business development, and not the mediation of grants to projects that are not business-like” (Malmö stad Stadskontoret 2011, 3). Also, the issue of jobs is considered to be “owned” by trade and industry. The logic is that to be able to tackle social exclusion, we need companies that compete on the market to be able to grow and employ more people. According to this logic, the issue of jobs is a market problem, and thus, the frame that is active is the deep frame free market, or Schön and Rein’s market frame. In the discussion, I will put the free market frame in relation to the issues of grants and grants dependency, and the deep frame, shared prosperity and the metaculture frame social welfare.

How? Functions and Organization of the Incubator

During the workshop, the participants moved from the idea of an incubator as a building with some employed advisors to the idea of a distributed network of support functions that could embrace the whole innovation chain, from supporting actors with immature ideas to financial support and to entrepreneurs with developed ideas and a business model. In this section, I will look into how the participants reframed the incubator with the help of different design materials and design moves, but also by using metaphors. The use of metaphors and reframing occurred mostly during workshop two, where the participants focussed on identifying different support functions of the incubator based on the experiences and challenges that where presented during the first workshop. Metaphors, or the “incubator as…” was also one of the central themes that we presented in the report (Ehn et al. 2011). There we brought up metaphors like “Inclustrator,” “Peoples Movement 2.0,” “Free Zone,” or the incubator as: “knowledge center” “liaison centra,” “think tank,” and “creator of public opinion.” I will now trace how these metaphors emerged in the conversations between the participants.

335 Many participants brought up the need for models other than traditional incubators with a focus on business models. The importance of public debate and that not all social innovations need to come in the form of companies was also discussed. One researcher said that it is common with hybrids between commercial companies and associations in the social sector. It is in this context that the business developer at Media Evolution initiated the discussion about the incubator as a distributed network model building on existing organizations and resources. Building on the cluster model of his own organization, in Schön’s (1995, 138) words “he sees it as something already present in his repertoire,” he sees some of the initiatives and organizations that are discussed at the workshops as potential incubators. He says that there are a lot of incubators “out there” and they need to be clustered together in some way. Also, by saying that Herrgårds Kvinnoförening and Barn i Stan are potential incubators, he also reframes them from seeing them as actors needing support to actors that could give support or develop an initiative. The view of the incubator as “out there” is the most generative metaphor that emerged during the workshops. For a metaphor to be generative, it needs to generate “new perceptions, explanations, and inventions” (Schön 1993, 141), and I argue that seeing the incubator as “out there” is generative. It triggers the participants in their naming and framing, and they come up with new names like “Clusterbator,” “Cluster of Incubators,” “Exubator,” “Inclustra- tor,” ”Broad Base Incubator” and new oppositions like “Cluster vs. Incubator.” They also discussed the idea of a mobile incubator in contrast to a fixed and central incubator inside a building. The idea of a distributed incubator can be connected to many other ideas that emerged. For example that a small company or an association could be hosting incubating activities or act as a “free zone.” Or the idea of a “liaison centra” that could connect the different incubators but also act as a knowledge center and creator of public opinion. The most important aspect of this emerging distributed network model is that it embraces the diversity and heterogeneity of the social innovation landscape in Malmö. After workshop two, we collected all insights and summarized them. From these insights and ideas we created cardboard cards with quotes and ideas, but also with dilemmas and issues that the parti-

336 cipants could discuss. On one of these cards the headline is “The incubator is out there!” with “(Boundaries)” beneath it. A reasoning text follows: “One can work more creatively and independently if one stands outside the municipality. What is lost when an initiative is brought in and becomes public? What is positive with joining the municipality? What are the alternatives?” On another card, the metaphors “Incubator as knowledge center,” “Incubator as creator of public opinion,” and “Broad base incubator” were gathered. On a third card, the quotes “The actors as builders of the incubator” and “We as actors must be the owners” were expressed with the following text “Miljonprocessen as a resource in public opinion, Feed’us as test example, not only participating in ‘step one,’ but also increasing visibility of smaller actors.” On a fourth card, it read: “‘Liaison centra’ the need of a place where all knowledge is gathered and where one can go to get guidance and contact with other actors. Liaison centra as a solid foundation, knowledge resource, collaboration between the resources of society. Creator of public opinion— change support structures. Knowledge about who is doing what in the city. Connect people in the city” A fifth card raised the question “Mobile incubator or everybody in one house? Important with the local? Associations are incubators. Could there be a company that is ‘run’ by the incubator where one can ‘try one’s wings’? New social companies or cooperatives that sits for a while in an established company to get support in developing. Make knowledge applicable in its context. Unique and local vs. general, franchising McDonalds. Business development for different levels and needs—flexibility. Cluster vs. incubator, meeting vs. growing.” Gathered together on cards, these metaphors, ideas, and dilemmas became a kind of design material that made them more explicit in serving as inspiration for the next phase when the participants would develop scenarios of the incubator. We also had cards with for example the word “Inclustrator” and an illustration of a network (see Figure 3). Also serving as a design material were short presentations of different international examples of social incubators or organizations that support social innovation. We also presented concepts like crowdfunding and social impact bonds together with shared spaces and the residency model of La 27é Region. I will now review how the four groups picked up the metaphors, ideas,

337 and design inputs described above in their scenarios. The first scenario was described as a cone where the entrance was a wider free zone populated with a lot of people, intermediaries, that could spot ideas, but also many incubators. This zone could be seen as pre-phase before an initiative reaches the established organizations of the trade and industry or the municipality, called “dressaged receivers.” One of the participants in the group stressed the need of a wide range of intermediaries to be able to provide for such a wide and complex perspective as possible. In the second scenario, the group brought up the concept of “crowd judging,” maybe triggered by our input, but also on their own example from the UK. They also brought up alternative ways of financing like crowd sourcing. They had gathered all functions centrally, but discussed the need of “mobile knowledge,” much competence in a caravan that could be moved to places where it was needed. This could have been inspired by our input regarding La 27é Region that is a mobile innovation lab. They also brought up the need to create awareness about existing support organizations. Regarding ownership the civil servant responsible for the incubator process stressed that it was the initiatives that owns the incubator. Finally, they brought up the role of the incubator as creator of public opinion and “Peoples movement 2.0.” In the third scenario, the group said that the incubator should not work as a central place where one sits for three years, like the existing incubator in Malmö – MINC. Instead, a central space could house an office, meeting spaces, and shared workspaces that one could use temporarily and here they referred to the “hot desks” at Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto that we had presented as inspiration. “The initiatives are out there and should not be gathered in a central node, instead they should remain in their environment and develop and grow there.” Therefore, the incubator should be based on a “resource pool” consisting of a network of existing resources in the city. Also, this group brought up the concept of “People’s Movement 2.0” and “People’s Education” and the need of a “Free Zone”. The fourth scenario was the one that held on most to the idea of a central incubator and referred to MINC. This group had picked up inspiration from new economic models like Social Impact Bonds,

338 Social Return on Investment and Crowd Funding, and the need of spreading knowledge and advise regarding these. They also referred to our input regarding Denokin in Bilbao and brought up the concept of “Free Zone.” It is not only the incubator that is reframed, but also the participants get new names and roles. In the same way as in one of Schön’s examples, where “Settlers are no longer ‘scavangers’ or ‘passive recipients of service’ but become parties to a contract with government,” both Herrgårds Kvinnoförening and Barn i Stan are no longer only seen as actors needing support, but also as actors that could give support or develop an initiative. Some are seen as “intermediaries,” while others are labeled “dressaged receivers” instead of civil servant or business developer. To summarize, the workshops could be seen as a process of naming, framing, and reframing, where most of the participants went from an idea of central incubator owned by the municipality or the trade and industry to the idea of a distributed incubator where also the social innovators had ownership. They also discussed functions beyond the focus on business, for example, as knowledge center and creator of public opinion. The generative metaphor “The incubator is out there!” became the title of our report and an image that would be used by different actors a long time after the process was ended. One civil servant said. “During the process we have said that this incubator is not for itself but for you out there. It fits well with the title of the final report “The incubator is out there!” because it is precisely the view that I have”.

Agonistic Design Thing, Governance Network and Powerful Strangers

During the incubator process, two types of networks have been active in producing the outcome: (1) the workshop network (which I will now characterize and discuss as a design thing), and (2) the Tra- de and industry network (with the character of an informal governance network). As we have seen, the only connection between these networks was the report and three workshop participants. What we have seen is also two networks that worked with different frames.

339 But the necessary and potentially generative frame conflict never happened as the two networks never actually met. I will now discuss this lack of confrontation from the concepts of agonism, governance and powerful strangers. If we begin with the workshops: We chose to set up this process as an agonistic design thing. The aim with gathering a group of heterogeneous actors was both to promote creativity and innovation through mutual learning, complementary knowledge and skills, and to promote democracy through a multiplicity of voices and “constructive controversies among adversaries” (Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren 2010, 48). To this multiplicity of voices we can now add multiplicity of frames and frame controversies as a prerequisite for democracy. If a framing process is successful it will lead to collective action frames. During the workshops—the design thing—there was a process of mutual learning and reframing of the situation going on, but the real agonistic struggle did not occur as some crucial representatives of the trade and industry never showed up. For example, I believe that if the trade and industry representatives had been present and openly communicated their agenda of job creation according to the market frame, this would have created a debate as many of the participants had other agendas and ideologies. In the next phase at the Trade and Industry Agency, a new network was taking over the process. I will characterize this as a governance network as it consisted of a small and elite group of which the members mainly had a trade and industry perspective. Characteristic of governance networks is also that they often exclude the third sector, which also happened in this case. I will characterize the new actors who had not participated in the workshops, even though many of them had been invited, as powerful strangers (Westley, Zimmerman and Patton 2007). The new actors in the trade and industry network are powerful in the sense that “they control larger portions of money, authority and access” (ibid, 99) and they are strangers in the sense that they never connected, confronted or collaborated with the other stakeholders at the workshops. If we apply the theoretical concepts of agonism and frames, confrontation can be interpreted both as agonistic struggle, a constructive controversy among adversaries with opposing matters of concern, and a frame controversy. But instead of confronting the

340 other stakeholders, the trade and industry network exercised their power, hidden and at a distance from the most important stakeholders—the potential social innovators, entrepreneurs, and front-line workers with knowledge from the margins—the actors the social incubator was originally intended for. The powerful strangers did never take part in the mutual learning process or share their framing of the problem with the other stakeholders. Consequently, neither an agonistic struggle nor a frame conflict occurred. According to the powerful stranger model above, confrontation is followed by a possible collaboration between the radicals and the establishment. If we again bring in the frames concept, this collaboration could have involved a process of reframing or frame restructuring and the creation of collective action frames.

Conventional Development or Great Transition?

As I have expanded the notion of sustainability and included the possibility of collapse, I will now discuss the two networks framing and conversation with the situation in relation to the scenario storylines of Conventional Development and Great Transition. But first, I must state that the trade and industry network is much easier to connect to a frame like “market,” while the workshop participants and civil society are much more heterogeneous and have many frames in play at once. I will argue that the governance network at the Trade and In- dustry Agency works according to Conventional Development and the sub-scenarios of market forces and policy reform. Firstly, as a governance network consisting of mostly actors from trade and industry, the municipality, and policy; it is a collaboration between the market and policy. Secondly, it is based on faith in the idea that “the hidden hand of well-functioning markets is the key to resolving social, economic and environmental problems” (Raskin et al. 2002,17). And lastly, the governance network works with proximate drivers (economy, technology, population, and governance) and short-term interventions. Even if the workshops’ network, the design thing, is much more heterogeneous and more difficult to classify, I would argue that much of their conversation and framing of the situation is in line with Gre-

341 at Transition. Firstly, in the design thing, there was the strong presence of civil society who, together with engaged citizens, are seen as important change agents in Great Transition. Secondly, instead of a belief in the market, one dominating deep frame during the design thing was participative democracy and discussions regarding people’s movement and creation of public opinion. This is in line with the need for a “vast cultural and political citizen movement” (Gerst, Raskin and Rockström 2014, 131) to foster the Great Trans- ition. Lastly, in the design thing, one worked more with the ultimate drivers of values, understanding, power, and culture. Having stated that, it is important to remind oneself that the governance network at the Trade and Industry Agency uses the market with the aim of social change, and given that it supports local jobs and, in some cases, local production, parts of it could be characterized as in line with Great Transition. But is it enough? The design thing must also be questioned; one cannot be sure that it would have worked toward transition if it had continued. However, the elements for such a change of direction were there. This is the important lesson for the setting up of future design things aimed at addressing the prospect of collapse.

Discussion

One explanation for why the incubator process was so easily hijacked and reframed and that the Innovation forum process was shut down could be that most politicians and civil servants did not understand the concept of social innovation—they did not have any frame for it. We can compare this with another complex phenomena, global warming. Lakoff (2010, 73) argues that in order to understand something complex, mere facts are insufficient; instead, “a person must have a system of frames in place that can make sense of the facts. In the case of global warming, all too many people do not have such a system of frames in the conceptual system in their brains. Such frame systems have to be built up over a period of time.” I think this is also the case with a concept like social innovation, as most people still lack a system of frames to understand what it is. With this in mind, I think that it could have been the task of both a social incubator and Innovation forums to create such a system of

342 frames. As seen in the report by Björk (2014a), the complexity and newness of social innovation can be one reason why Tillväxt Malmö did not address it more, even though they had promised to do so in their application. From this analysis, I thus suggest a frame for the Trade and Indu- stry network as one of “job creation within the market economy,” or Lakoff and Brewer’s deep frame of “free market.” This could be seen as a more specific view of activity and participation in society. However, I suggest that the participants in the workshops framed activity and participation in society much wider; it could mean various activities such as voluntary work, alternative education and social work, the creation of public opinion, etc. Therefore, I will name the frame of the workshop participants “active and participative in society,” or Lakoff and Brewer’s deep frame “participative democracy.” This frame could also belong more to the third sector and their various alternative, or “other forms,” of work and activities. For example Herrgårds Kvinnoförening fits well within the frame of “active and participative in society,” but as their activities not yet are fully commercial and not considered “professional,” they do not count and should not be paid for according to the “job creation within the free market” frame. These kinds of activities mostly depend on grants and therefore also belong to the deep frame, shared prosperity, and the metaculture frame, social welfare. One could say that the “job creation” frame regards wage labor as the only, or at least the main, way to be included in society and that the “active and participative” frame has more to do with “other” kinds of work as ways to be included in society. This fits well with the discussions and findings in the reports to the Malmö Commission and arguments within feminist economics. Stigendal and Östergren (2013) argue that one explanation for why the situation in Malmö is not worse is that the work done by cultural and third sector organizations has had a positive influence on people’s health, has increased their feelings of participation in society, and has created trust between people. Accordingly, they consider the possibility that the third sector has great potential for creating social sustainability and therefore “should be taken into consideration in many of the political decisions that aim at making the city socially sustainable” (ibid., 48 translated by me). Of course, jobs are one

343 way to bring social inclusion, but they are not the only way. Simi- larly, the market economy is one economic model, but not the only one. Therefore, it is of great importance that we start exploring the alternatives, the “other forms,” in our goal of re-organizing society to meet the challenges we confront. Connected to the “job creation” frame is the descriptive term “businesslike,” which is in contrast to “allowance” or “grant” which are more associated with the third sector by politicians, civil servants, and private sector representatives. In the decision document, it states, “It is further an important remark that the incubator shall work with business development, not mediation of grants to projects that is not businesslike” (Malmö stad Stadskontoret 2011, 3). This is an odd statement in light of the fact that most of the participants in the workshops worked with activities that were not businesslike. This frame is also present among the politicians at the City Hall. For instance, one civil servant described how the concept of social innovation was conceived as “Folk high school for how to seek public allowance.” If I bring this frame conflict into the future design thing concerned with the prospect of a collapsing civilization, I would suggest that one has to support the participants in reframing the situation from a established and limiting frame like “job creation within the market economy” to a much more open and formable frame like “active and participative within planetary and social boundaries.” This frame is not established and, therefore, has to be created. What is crucial in such a reframing is the bringing in actors with theories and narratives based in new and alternative economics. From the incubator case, we can learn a lot regarding how dominating frames, or “ideological language,” (Lakoff 2010) influences how actors both set and solve problems. Both in the incubator case and in the following Innovation forum process, we have seen how difficult it is to introduce new concepts and new framings of a situation. As a result, the challenge of reframing our situation and bringing in “other” perspectives will not be easy as actors with power and well-established frames will likely resist any attempt to reframe the situation and the construction of a new story. However, it must be done.

344 PROPOSAL—A DESIGN THING IN THE PROSPECT OF COLLAPSE

We will abide for a time in the space between stories. (Charles Eisenstein 2013)

Between the forced hope and gritted teeth of the activist worldview and the dark hopelessness of the apocalyptic narrative lies a space that is worth sitting in for a while. (Paul Kingsnorth 2014)

How can we present a proposal intended not to say what is, or what ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to “slow down” reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us? (Isabelle Stengers 2005, 994)

Take a Breather

Many times when I think about the state of the world, often on the way out of my apartment for a walk, I think that what the world needs now is a long breather—slow down, calm down, give all inhabitants and eco-systems on the planet a chance to recover and restore. This breather could also be an opportunity to contemplate and discuss which transformations and transitions are necessary,

345 but how? Is it possible to find a new direction with all the engines of Conventional Development on full speed? Do we have to crash first? Or is it what pro-cyclist Ian Boswell recommends for high- speed descending on mountain roads with hairpin curves: “Make sure all the braking is done before the turn.” How can we members of industrial civilization make a radical change of direction without missing the crossroads, crashing into the cliff face, or being thrown down into the abyss? How can we make a safe descent? How can we make a planned contraction and deliberate transformation rather than a forced one? I would like to propose a design thing which functions as an in- between space, “a space for hesitation” (Stengers 2005, 995), a space “to sit in for a while” (Kingsnorth 2014), contemplating the prospect of societal collapse and what it would mean to both survive and thrive in the future, and in the end, what will be needed to make the Great Transition. This design thing will be dedicated to the prospect of collapse in the sense that this possible future will not be considered to be an apocalyptic fantasy, but most likely, a future state of the world. However, contemplation is not enough. It must also be a space for challenging Conventional Development and imagining and experimenting with alternatives. This design thing should be a place for conversation with the situation where various everyday situations, issues, and proposals could be played out in different scenarios or worlds. Throughout this thesis, I have kept the traditional objects of design at a distance. But my aim is not to throw out the artefacts. To live a “life without objects” would be impossible. My aim is, rather, to reframe our relation to our companions in this world—both natural and artificial. I do this by proposing a design space where this reframing can occur. This design space is the space between stories that resides in a design thing. To enter the thing is to enter a space where the stories from our current world meet and confront the stories told by the inhabitants from other possible worlds. In this design thing, worlds collide and possibly even—merge. It may seem that I have made a long detour away from the case in this thesis: the exploration of what an incubator for social innovation could be. But in this chapter, I reconnect with the incubator process. Further, I recall that one of the themes that the participants of

346 the workshops brought forward was the need for a free zone where both mental and structural barriers could be challenged. This zone could also be a safe space for experimenting with ideas and roles, and challenging economic and juridical frames. Moreover, I would argue that the idea of a free zone goes well in hand with the function of a design thing as an in-between space for contemplating various prospects and alternative futures. In this chapter, I attempt to describe how such a design thing could be organized and function.

Functions of the Design Thing

I will now create an initial, tentative sketch of the contours of this design thing. In the same spirit as when Latour returned to the origins of the term and in an attempt to uncivilize the human actors, this thing will be staged as a circle somewhere in the wild. In less metaphorical language, this means it needs to be located outside the institutional buildings of the establishment and accessible for all inhabitants. The next step is to consider who will participate in this socio-material assembly. In line with the “different mode of humanity” (Gibson-Graham 2014, 39) wherein humans and nonhumans are all collections of the same stuff, this hybrid assembly will consist of various kinds of humans, other species, rare earth metals, and ancient as well as future artefacts. To make the thing complete, we will need a matter of concern—an object of worry—which in this case, is the prospect of a collapsing civilization. What will turn this gathering into a design thing is the conversation with the situation where the actors try to understand the situation through the act of naming and framing, and through changing the situation by different moves. In this initial process, the actors will reflect on each other’s stories and the frames they evoke. They will make new moves by using metaphors and new stories. Through this process of move–reflection–new moves, a new understanding of the situation emerges. In this new understanding, the participants will become aware of the lack of frames and stories that will then lead to the collective construction of new frames and stories. More- over, they will construct collective action frames and stake out new trajectories of inquiry and action. Ultimately, one of the most crucial tasks of the design thing is to contemplate which values, beliefs,

347 practices, relations, and artefacts we need to abandon, which we need to embrace, develop, or strengthen, and which we can combine into new hybrids. The aim of the design thing is to first imagine a common lifeworld and the relationships and practices belonging to it, then choose the economic system and technology that supports us in creating and sustaining this lifeworld. From now on, the world will be composed with actual human and nonhuman resources, not by virtual values.

The Transformationist and the Idiot

In the search for a mindset that I think designers willing to set up a design thing addressing such an uncomfortable issue as collapse will need, I first recall the three archetypal mindsets brought forward by Raskin et al. (2002): the evolutionist, the catastrophist, and the transformationist. I advocate a transformationist mindset, as it accompanies the Great Transition scenario. Transformationists share the fears of catastrophists that deepening social, economic, and environmental tensions will not be resolved by Conventional Development advocated by evolutionists and this, in turn, will have dire consequences for the future of the world. Transformationsists face the dark sides of our future. They do not look away or turn to the rosy dreams and false hopes of technological development and economic growth; neither do they give up or isolate themselves in protected enclaves for the strong and privileged like the catastrophists. Instead, transformationists “believe that global transition can be seized as an opportunity to forge a better civilization” (Raskin et al. 2002, 10). The other character or mindset which I think is necessary is the idiot. The idiot has wandered from Dostoevsky to Deleuze via Stengers (2005) to finally end up at Michael (2012), who moves the idiot into design theory. Stengers describes the idiot as a conceptual character:

who always slows the others down, who resists the consensual way in which the situation is presented and in which emergencies mobilize thought and action. This is not because the presentation would be false or because emergencies are believed

348 to be lies, but because “there is something more important.” (Stengers 2005, 994)

The idiot is idiotic not only because he claims that there is something more important out there, but also because he does not know what that more important thing is. Michael (2012, 536) sees in the idiot’s sense of something important but yet undefined, an opportunity for “inventive problem making” where an issue is reconfigured. In this case, the idiot is “as much a process as a figure.” Michael suggests that Speculative Design can serve as the idiot and “open up a space for a reframing of the issues, that is, inventive problem making” (2012, 539 my italics). The reason why I simply cannot let go of the idiot is that I understand the difficulties of even bringing up the subject of the collapse and the resistance it will meet from the advocates of Conventional Development. The experiences from the incubator process not only showed the lack of understanding of the concept social innovation among civil servants and politicians, but also it is considered to be challenging. So when the opportunity to go back to Conventio- nal Development and market forces arose, they took it. I can also remember the unease I felt taking part in one of the meetings at the Trade and Industry Agency where the Conventional Development actors—the powerful strangers—dominated. This was not the place for coming up with alternative ideas. So, I can just imagine the response if someone would rise up in such a forum and say: “There is something more important to discuss here.” The response would most likely be: “Don’t be an idiot!” But, our idiot in the boardroom differs from Stengers’ idiot in the sense that he has an idea about what the issue is. He will just be at a disadvantage because the story he tells is not as coherent and well established as the story of Con- ventional Development which has been ingrained in our minds for over one hundred years. The idiot may lack a system of frames, the words, associations, and imagery, and most likely the Conventional Development actors will lack them, to get his message understood and stick. Here, Lakoff (2010a) comes to mind. He argues that conservatives have built a system of frames in people’s minds through “ideological language” over a long period of time whereas progressives have not. Therefore, they have difficulties in communicating

349 alternatives. For example, when it comes to phenomena like global warming, many people lack a frame to make sense of it. Consequ- ently, when they suggest that there is something else to discuss, they are easy to dismiss as idiots because they lack the words to explain what that other “more important” issue is. So, we need the idiot and we need a design thing where the idiot can stand up and say, “There is something more important to discuss here,” without having a totally coherent story to anchor it to. Here, the design thing could function as a gathering that collectively creates a system of frames, like a language that suits the worldview of the idiot and then develops the idiot’s notion of something more important into a new story. However, I do not think we have to go as far as theoretical or fictional characters to find the idiots that will slow down the process of Conventional Development, reframe our challenges, and find new trajectories of inquiry. There are plenty of them among us. Just think of all the people who bring up inconvenient perspectives and issues and then are declared idiots. The idiot who, among advocates of growth, brings up the issue of degrowth. Or the idiotic idea of inviting the seabird with its stomach full of plastic and rare earth metals to the discussion. But again, unlike Stenger’s idiot, these idiots know what the more important issue is or at least have a clue, and they may actually have something to offer. The Dark Mountain Project may be considered idiotic as they do not offer any clear answers, but they definitely know what the issue is—and what they offer is a space for hesitation (Stengers 2005). The function of this so-called idiot in the design thing is to point out that there is a very unpleasant matter of concern which is “more important”—the prospect of the collapse of industrial civilization. According to Michael (2012, 536), the “idiot” is not just a character, but also some who should be considered as a “process or a sensibility that chronically seeks and engages this irritating absent– present other.” In this case, I think that this “absent–present other” could not only be issues, but also it could be other possible worlds which are brought into the design thing and engaged.

A Design Transformationist Approach

Not only do we need new utopian energy to nurture imaginative

350 activity, we also need the fundamental will to change, i.e., the utopian impulse… (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 9)

Taken together, the tranformationist and the idiot create the foundation for what I call a design transformationist approach. Desig- ners with a transformationist approach stand for “hope beyond hope” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009), which is not the same as the “don’t worry, be happy” optimism of design serving the market forces of Conventional Development. This hope lies not in saving industrial civilization, but in the trajectories of inquiry leading to “the unknown world ahead of us” (ibid.). Nevertheless, the world ahead of us is not totally unknown. As Eisenstein (2013) points out, we are aware of some of its threads, for example, “most things we call alternative, holistic or ecological,” the ideas presented in the GSG and NEF scenarios, and the alternative lifeworlds imagined and built by transition activists around the world. Other glimp- ses of possible futures are the “real utopias” that Wright (2010) brings forward. Taken together, they become a “reservoir of alternatives” (Westley, Goebey and Robinson 2012) from which a new world could be built. Design transformationists stand for imaginations that are both visionary and realistic and consider in parallel mitigation, adaptation, and transformation approaches according to the motto “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” (Blevis and Blevis 2010). Some characteristics of a design transformationist approach could be:

• To acknowledge that beyond the societal challenges that we address today, there are other “more important,” much more complex and unpleasant challenges approaching. • To acknowledge that we may be unable to reach sustainability or resilience according to Conventional Development. • In parallel, trying to avoid a collapse through mitigation and adaptation but, at the same time, exploring the alternatives that will be needed in the Great Transition into a new society and into a world where we can both survive and thrive together with both artificial and natural nonhumans. • Set up design things dedicated to exploring alternative lifeworlds for both humans and nonhumans.

351 • Invite actors representing both our current world, but also future worlds of collapse and transition.

The Design Thing as an In-Between Space for Contempla- tion

The case in this thesis has been the setting up of a design thing to address the issue (the object of worry) of social sustainability in Mal- mö and the exploration of what an incubator for social innovation (the object of design) could be. The idea of a design thing fits well with the need for new democratic arenas, whether they are called “knowledge alliances” or “hybrid forums.” I will now discuss what role a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse could have in relation to other kinds of democratic forums. The idea of an in-between space can be related to what William Bridges calls the neutral zone. Dukes, Williams, and Kelban (2012) bring forward Bridges’ idea and describe the neutral zone as “an awkward in-between time” (ibid, 236) where people need to let go of how things were and, thus, will “have dealt with the loss of past behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, hopes and fears” (ibid., 235) to be able to begin a new project or stage of life.

The neutral zone is usually chaotic, and there is often a desire to return to what is old and familiar. But this zone can also be a very creative time. A new beginning takes place when people are emotionally ready to do things in a whole new way. (ibid., 236)

To decide on what we have to let go of will be a crucial task of the design thing. As Diamond (2011) has stated, to avoid a collapse, one must consider abandoning certain core values which have become incompatible with survival. This will include beliefs; for example, the belief in the market economy and practices like commuting by car or traveling by airplane. However, as we dare to leave the old world, we need visions of the new world. Producing these visions of possible alternatives will be the next task of the design thing and hopefully the next task of design in general.

352 Big picture and long view One distinctive characteristic of this design thing is that it departs from the big picture and not one specific kind of technology, artefact, or issue. Instead of exploring possible worlds through the consequences of the introduction of a new artefact, this exploration departs from an imagined society or world to see what artefacts and technologies are desired and sensible. As a consequence, the design interventions come in the form of possible or speculative worlds or societies rather than possible or speculative artefacts. The conversation with the situation will explore life practices where we both survive and thrive in companionship with both human and nonhuman actors through the lens of concepts like a safe and just space for humanity or scenarios like Great Transition. A core question in the thing is, when we talk about the world or society, which world or society do we talk about? Do we talk about the current conventional world, the barbarization or Great Transition world? Or even another possible world not yet contemplated? Depending on the world and worldviews we choose, it will “change everything.” One important role of the design thing is to help the participants to position themselves—where on the map of the space between stories are we now? Are our projects, visions, and aspirations on the path of Conventional Development or Great Transition? What are the signs of a Fortress World or breakdown in our current world? Which paths or world do we want to work toward in the thing? Furthermore, working with big pictures, societies, and worlds could be a way to try out the viability and desirability of not only different kinds of practices or work, but also technological ideas like the In- ternet of Things or high-speed trains. There is a temporal dilemma in addressing the prospect of collapse. At the same time as there is an urgency and researchers stress that we have to act now, I think that it is a mistake to turn to the proximate drivers of change in Conventional Development, namely, sustainable problem-solving (Tainter 2006). Doug Cocks (2012, 193) stresses the need to “avoid short-termism when choosing paths.” A transition will require changes in values and frames, and that takes time. Moreover, I think there is a danger that designers may contribute to the postponement of necessary conversations about the risk of lock-ins or investments in unwanted paths if they do not consider

353 the long-term prospects. For example, Jonstad (2012) brings up the problems associated with high-speed trains. I also think that the In- ternet of Things should be viewed as a dangerous path and not only as some kind of salvation.

Democracy: participation, agonism, and power relations So the idea is to stage a design thing that gathers concerned humans and nonhumans to discuss the matter of concern: the prospect of a collapsing civilization. The aim of the thing is to reframe reality, formulate new collective action frames, and stake out new trajectories of inquiry. The design thing has many similarities with knowledge alliances (Stigendal and Östergren 2013) and hybrid forums (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2011) as it gathers formerly separated actors with various and opposing perspectives, experiences, and knowledge. Hybrid forums are hybrid because the actors gathered are heterogeneous, “including experts, politicians, technicians and lay persons” (ibid., 18) and because they address issues “at different levels in a variety of domains” (ibid.) which span from ethics to economies. This, or what Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe call “socio-technical controversy” (ibid.) fits well with the “complex and ill-defined mélange” (Schön 1987, 4) of economic, environmental, and political factors that face designers (and the rest of us) today. Hybrid forums are inclusive and demand that groups who are ignored, excluded, or reduced to silence have the right to express themselves and be heard. Hybrid forums are also the sites where the “pure” laboratory knowledge of researchers meets the “composite, impure, polluted realities” (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe 2011, 86) of research in the wild, knowledge produced by non-experts and ordinary citizens. In this way, hybrid forums have strong similarities with living labs. The design thing offers a space where the gathered actors can have a conversation with the situation, about the object of design, through the frames of a possible world or speculative society. In the thing, the frames of a possible world could temporarily replace the frames of the current world. The missing participants in the thing are the inhabitants of the possible worlds and their stories, their frames of the world. The task of the design thing is to bring in those inhabitants of possible future worlds and listen to their stories. What is it like to live in a barbaric world? What do you eat? What

354 is it like to live in the world after the Great Transition? What do you teach the kids at school? Without doubt, there will be conflicts in a design thing addressing the collapse. There will be frame conflicts about how to set problems, and there will be a battle regarding power relations as the already powerful advocates of Conventional Development will be challenged. As we have learned, civil society actors and engaged citizens are considered to be the main drivers of a transition of society, not politicians or business leaders. Therefore, the exclusion of this group should not be allowed to happen. Not only because of a democratic ideal where everybody should have a voice, but also because their voices are more important in this scenario. “Where political will is lacking, civil will drives the transition forward” (Raskin et al. 2002, 54). The most important actors in this design thing will be actors with a fundamental will to change, actors with “utopian impulse” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 9). One way to allow agonism to continue during the thing and not rush to reach for consensus and create collective action frames could be to allow subconstellations in the thing to break out and explore their ideas, stories, and trajectories of inquiry without being battled by their contenders or forced to compromise. Here, the notion of shadow networks offers one model.

The Role of Stories and Frames—Design Fictions

I imagine that stories and frames will have different roles during different phases of the design thing. In the initial stage, the actors will bring their stories and frames to the conversation with the situation. They will use these stories to name and frame the situation. Already today, many alternative presents can be found, such as collaborative consumption, commons and sharing economies, and the less developed and more radical “alternative nows” (Hickey 2012). For example, John Thackara (2014) recently brought up new examples of “work” that, when taken together, “tell a new story” in the framing of “work” or “activity” from the perspective of societal challenges:

In gritty Oakland, I learned that urban forests, living walls, and green roofs are being used to filter air, water and soil in and

355 around its ports. I also saw the ad for a ‘wildflower farm appren- tice’ to help a social enterprise trade wildflower seeds; that kind of work didn’t exist a few years ago. Neither did de-paving, food co-ops, river restoration, edible forestry, or pollinator pathways – but examples like these are cropping up all over. At multiple scales, this combination of social and ecological innovation adds up to living concepts of infrastructure. (Thackara 2014., my italics)

The kinds of work that did not exist a few years ago—any discussion regarding possible futures needs to take this into the consideration. This is “work” in the context of an emerging new world, not according to a collapsing industrial civilization. Examples of other kinds of work that tell new stories are “redirective practices” (Fry 2009) based on reusing, rebuilding, recycling and the various kinds of urban farming that Tomlinson and colleagues (2013) brought up. Even though there will be representatives of more alternative views present in the design thing, I think that most of the initial stories and framings will be grounded in how things are today. Therefo- re, I believe designers can have a role in bringing in new stories that will both help to strengthen promising alternatives and challenge all participants to take part in reframing the situation. It is here that different scenarios and design fictions can have a role. First, the type of scientifically grounded scenarios that have been discussed, like the Living Scenarios (Raupach et al. 2012), the GSG scenarios (Raskin et al. 2002), and the NEF scenarios (Spratt et al. 2012), or the idea of “A safe and just space for humanity” (Raworth 2012) can be helpful in reframing reality, but they need to become more tangible. Here, I believe that designers and scientists need to develop new means that enable them to determine if, for example, a new practice, is within planetary and social boundaries or not. Speculative design and design fictions offer a more detailed experience than the scientific scenarios. Design fictions offer new worldviews and alternative ways of framing the world. We can use them to have a conversation with the situation through the frame of a design fiction. Here, the idea of fictional inquiry (Dindler and Iversen 2007) could work as a designerly intervention in the thing to help the participants do an “imaginative leap” (ibid., 231) beyond

356 the existing world. But instead of a narrative like “Mission from Mars,” it could be a design fiction composed off various scientific scenarios or “real utopias” (Wright 2010). For example, one could see how the idea of a three-day working week combined with drastic limitations in energy might lead to an increase in the use of human-powered tools like the scythe. This could influence the conversation in the thing regarding everyday life practices and choices of economy and technology, which core values one need to abandon, and which values to strengthen. Creating new design fictions could also support the bringing forward of the design object. Finally, design fictions could also be used in the larger societal conversation with actors outside the thing, such as other citizens and politicians. In the preceding text, I have sketched the rough contours of a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse. As I have not been able to explore these ideas in the real world, I will now stage it in a fictive world to get a more detailed notion of how it could work if realized. This is my way as a non-designer to rehearse the future (Halse et al. 2010).

357 A CONVERSATION WITH THE FUTURE: A SPECULATIVE DESIGN THING

In May 2015, during what was called “Future Week,” concerned citizens of Malmö gathered in the city district of Sofielund to discuss the transition to sustainability. A local educational association called Studiefrämjandet, the Glokala Folkhögskolan, and the municipality arranged the event. But what the organizers did not know when planning it was that the Öresund Region and large parts of Nort- hern Europe in spring 2015 would be hit by a “perfect storm” in which certain environmental, economic, and social crises occurred simultaneously. A series of terrorist attacks followed by riots and clashes between right-wing and left-wing extremists at the beginning of the year was followed by severe storms which caused damage to both transport and energy infrastructure. The effects were increased by conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, which, in turn, led to an international energy crisis. Taken together, this caused the global flow of energy and goods which Northern Eu- ropean countries have become dependent upon to collapse. In Mal- mö, this meant that the citizens had to ration food for the first time since World War Two while simultaneously having to repair damage from the storms, the terrorist attacks, and the riots. Over a couple of weeks, normal everyday life was replaced by wartime life. Everyone had to focus on recovery.

358 It was with a feeling of shock and with the events of the spring fresh in mind that the participants of Future Week gathered. The worst-case scenario that they intended to discuss how to prepare for and avoid had already happened. However, this actually turned out to be a good thing. The usual activists and civil servants did not just turn up, they were now even more motivated. Some new faces also attended: conservative politicians, business owners, and ordinary citizens. The spring events had made them realize that business-as-usual was a dead end. People were increasingly realizing how vulnerable they and society as a whole had become and that society must be radically reorganized to be able to cope with future crises. The discussions during Future Week were lively and led to many new collaborations and projects. In a workshop about the eternal issue of how the private, public, and third sectors could collaborate in a better way, some participants raised the question of whether or not this was the moment for realizing the idea of knowledge alliances brought forward by the Malmö Commission in 2013. Others that had participated in the Social Incubator workshops in 2011 felt that this had been both a forum and a process worth a second trial. It was decided to commission the design researchers at the university to set up a design thing dedicated to the issue of building resilience and preparing for future collapse. It was also decided that this should not be a one-off workshop to discuss resilience, but rather the beginning of a prototyping process regarding how a long- term democratic platform for addressing future challenges to the well-being of all citizens in Malmö could be organized. One decided to call the process a transition thing, a deliberate hint at approaches from both the transition movement and design research. The design researchers should be responsible for setting up the process in dialogue with a small advisory group consisting of members from private, public, and third sector organizations. The design researchers began with sketching a process in four phases. Based upon the participant’s stories about here and now, the first phase should concern diagnosis and positioning. In this phase, the GSG development paths should be presented and the participants asked to position themselves according to where they are now and where they wanted to be. The second phase should concern

359 alternatives to the present and based upon “real utopias” and design fictions about possible futures. The purpose of these alternative stories should be to help the participants reframe the situation and begin to think about what could be instead of what is. At the end of this phase, the participants should divide themselves in constellations and begin exploring different trajectories of inquiry and the ideas which have emerged. In the third phase, the different constellations should break out of the design thing and set up living labs at different locations in the city and begin to explore the themes and ideas that had emerged in previous phases. In the fourth phase, the different constellations should return back to the thing where all participants can discuss different concepts and how they fit with the idea of general resilience in the city. They should also construct scenarios and stories to communicate to the wider public through exhibitions, collaborative media, and public debates. Regarding which back talk this would generate, new constellations and design processes are started. From the beginning, it was important to secure that the process could go on for a longer period of time, most likely for years. Therefore, it was important to have a core team with actors from all sectors who were able to commit themselves over a longer time and could secure both consistency and knowledge transfer—a continuous learning and relearning. This core team should be responsible for setting up new transition things and living labs when needed. One departure point when setting up the process was the insight that radical societal transformations would be needed to avoid collapse, or be managed in a better way if they occurred; this would be essential for creating long-term resilience. But this insight could not be forced upon the participants; it had to come from themselves. Therefore, the design researchers chose to focus on addressing ultimate drivers of change like values, worldviews, and power structures. They also realized that this was not only an opportunity to build resilience and adaptive capacity within the existing organization of society, but also, and to a higher degree, an opportunity to transform society into a world where all inhabitants could not only survive, but also thrive. Consequently, they decided to work according to Oxfam’s doughnut model for a “safe and just space for humanity.” The third pillar of sustainability—the economy—had to subordinate

360 itself according to the New Economics Foundation motto “as if people and planet mattered.” The first step in setting up the thing was to invite participants. The goal was to live up to local sociologist Mikael Stigendal’s motto of “governance with all” and create an arena that was as inclusive and heterogeneous as possible, allowing “constructive controversies.” But that is easier said than done and with the experience from the incubator workshops, the design researchers faced quite a few dilemmas. How could one invite already powerful actors without allowing them to hijack the process and return to business as usual? Could there be a way to match the will to change coming from civil society with the will to change coming from the powerful actors in the city? How could one find a way to involve the vulnerable and marginalized citizens? When the researchers looked back on the incubator process, they thought that to depart and organize the process from the experiences of local organizations, small businesses, and front-line civil servants with ideas for social innovations and societal change was not such a bad idea. In fact, as the idea of a just transition as well as the driving role of civil society and engaged citizens had become more prominent features in international discussions regarding social and environmental change, they decided to stress the inclusion of marginalized actors even more. One major factor behind social inequity in Malmö, and also behind recruitment to extremist groups around the world, is the exclusion of large parts of the population from society. Also, in many visions of a future resilient society, human labor was replacing machines and mass-production; consequently, society will need all the workforce it can get. However, marginalized populations should not only be included in society as workforce, but also, in a democratic spirit, they should be included as people with assets and voices that are important in the visioning and building of a new society. Therefore, it was decided to more outspokenly recruit citizens who were unemployed, but had skills in craft, cooking, farming, and construction work; in short, people with assets not valued by the “market.” This time, participants were invited from all city districts, as a collapse would concern everyone. Actors from private, public, and third sectors as well as academia and ordinary citizens should beco-

361 me the foundation of the thing. From the third sector, organizations focusing on social inclusion and justice, environmental issues, craft, cooking, recycling, education, culture, and sports were invited. They span from organizations working with raising awareness and building movements to organizations more focused on the hands-on creation of alternatives. Local groups working in line with transition, permaculture, and urban farming were naturally of the greatest interest. Invited from the private sector were small and medium companies that have been focusing on urban farming, circular economy, recycling, rebuilding and reusing, as well as traditional crafts like forging iron. Also, companies that run platforms for sharing and collaboration, food production and distribution, alternative and local energy production, health and active living, and clean technology startups were invited. Cooperatives and worker-owned businesses were prioritized. Also, bigger companies from sectors like construction and transportation that had showed interest in addressing both social and environmental sustainability were welcomed. Invited from the public sector were civil servants from different city districts and departments, both front-line workers and directors responsible for central planning. The civil servants spanned from what one could call public innovators and institutional entrepreneurs to more traditional administrators and decision makers. Some worried politicians also participated. The academics were a mixed bag of researchers from the fields of sociology, resilience, human ecology, economy, urban studies, and design. The last category of participants was non-organized, yet concerned and engaged citizens; some of them might be considered to be excluded from today’s society, but who have experiences and skills that would be most valuable in the transition to a more-resilient society. The last part of the preparation of the thing was to decide a location. The choice became one of the many empty commercial premises in the city center, a former fashion shop, as it was a neutral place, but also well known and easy for everyone to access. It was also a suitable location in the sense that it was easy to reach the wider public through exhibitions, talks, and debates.

So, in late autumn 2015, the first transition thing meeting took off as part of phase one. It gathered around fifty participants who wor-

362 ked in five groups representing each of the five city districts: north, east, south, west, and the inner city. As this phase should focus on diagnosis, problem definition, positioning, and identifying opportunities, it began with the sharing of how participants from different city districts experienced local community resilience in the wake of the recent disruptions and the breakdown of societal functions. The stories came from a wide variety of participants; the ordinary citizen who experienced difficulties in buying and preparing food, the civil servant who explained how nursing home personnel had difficulty communicating with elderly populations when telecommunications broke down, and they also had to work in the dark. The owner of a collaborative consumption platform told of how they, when the electricity was back, quickly set up a free function where one could offer somewhere to stay to people who had their homes flooded or get access to clothes and other items that had been destroyed. A bike kitchen founder described how they had been overloaded by people who wanted to repair their bikes when both public and private transportation became restricted by damages in infrastructure and the rationing of fuel. There were both sunshine stories and stories of confrontation because people are not accustomed to cooperating. Many stories centered on the difficulties in preparing food without electricity as most people had electric stoves. In this case, it became clear how areas with both old and new housing managed well as some apartments still had gas stoves. In these areas, people quickly organized a new way of preparing food collectively on the available gas stoves and ate together. In other cases, people used public facilities like school kitchens with gas stoves. But in areas where electric stoves were the only option, people had greater difficulty with cooking. Consequ- ently, they experienced more tension, and in some cases, violence. Here, one of the elements of a resilient system—diversity—becomes evident. If one crucial function breaks down, alternatives need to be there. Communities that had some shared interest or sense of commonality or that had many civil society organizations in the area, were able to cope better with tackling disturbances, as they knew each other better and were more used to organizing themselves and cooperating. Communities which lacked common interests, and where

363 people mostly took care of themselves or where they were isolated, showed to be more vulnerable and needed more time and help from outside to recover. The participants discussed this, and one of the first findings of the transition thing was the importance of commons and shared interests, but also localized decision-making and ownership. The first transition thing meeting was closed with the conclusion that most parts of the city were highly vulnerable, but that people were also highly willing to help each other out where a sense of community existed.

In the following meeting, the aim was that each group should position themselves in relation to the development paths of Conven- tional Development and Great Transition that the Global Scenario Group had developed. The groups should discuss where they were now and where they wanted to be. A researcher from Stockholm Resilience Centre was invited to present the model that Gerst, Ra- skin, and Rockström had developed; a model that merged the GSG scenarios with the planetary boundaries and social targets model. The researcher also introduced the Oxfam doughnut concept for a safe and just operating space for humanity. Even before the spring events, the design researchers had already collaborated with the resilience researchers to make the GSG scenarios and planetary boundaries concept more tangible and detailed through design fictions which told stories about everyday life in different scenarios and timeframes. Now they had the opportunity to test these design fictions in a real situation. But first, the resilience researcher presented the general GSG scenarios and planetary boundaries. The researcher showed how the development paths of Con- ventional Development and Great Transition were based on different value sets, worldviews, philosophies, and everyday life practices and how Conventional Development is a dangerous path toward a world almost impossible to live in. Great Transition is a more promising alternative; an alternative that could lead to a safe and just lifeworld. He also presented a third world end—barbarization—a collapsing world with social chaos and something the participants had experienced a glimpse of during the spring events. After this general presentation, the design researchers presented four short design fictions of everyday life according to the develop-

364 ment paths, one for each path set in 2050 and one for each path set in 2100. They showed differences in societal organization, economy, life practices, use of technology, and in relationships between humans and between humans and nonhumans. The design fictions clearly showed what everyday life could be like in different situations. This became very emotional when it came to the Conventional Development fictions, as many participants felt their children and grandchildren were speaking to them about having to live in a future world they had not chosen. On the other hand, many felt that the Great Transition fictions gave hope and that there are important choices to be made here and now. What both design fictions set in 2050 had in common were the initial changes in climate, changes that were unavoidable and now, for example, climate refugees were migrating across the globe in large waves, as large parts of Africa and Asia have become uninhabitable because of draught and disappearing fresh water sources. Thereafter, it was time for the participants to position themselves according to the two development paths. They were given tools for positioning based on everyday life routines and consumption patterns. In the first exercise, they used the statistics for an “average citizen” from their city district. This showed that the wealthy areas clearly were on the Conventional Development path, while the less wealthy areas began to approach the Great Transition path. After this, the participants had the opportunity to map themselves if they wanted. Again, most of the participants ended up on the Con- ventional Development path, but some that could be considered as transition activists, environmentalists, or down shifters, were closer to Great Transition. What surprised the participants was that the invited “excluded,” or marginalized, citizens actually ended up on the Great Transition path. One explanation for this was both their low income and consumption, but to a higher degree, their skills that were in line with low energy production (making by hand) and self-sufficiency. After the positioning, the participants were asked to map on which development path they wished to be. They could also position themselves in-between or near a path. Here, the design fiction scenarios helped the participants to discuss and cite examples of the pros and cons of the paths. Not surprisingly, a majority preferred Great

3657 Transition, as the Conventional Development scenarios showed a rather grim future that no one would desire. But now a lively discussion began, as many participants preferred a future of well-being but could not accept the efforts, or what some called the “sacrifices,” it would take to get there. Issues regarding collective and individual goals as well as the need to abandon some values, habits, and practices that were no longer in line with well-being were discussed. This time, the thing did not reach any conclusion, but ended in confusion, frustration, and disagreement. Some participants actually chose to leave the process. The design researchers closed the second transition thing with the promise that in the next meeting the participants would be provided with the tools to help them stake out new trajectories into the future.

The transition thing process now entered its second phase where the aim was to reframe the situation and stake out several trajectories of inquiry. As the last meeting ended with a sense of disagreement and disillusion, even despair, the challenge for the design researchers was now to get the participants back into a more constructive mood, while at the same time maintaining a space where hope and despair could co-exist along with continuous disagreement and debate. This time, the design researchers had prepared what they called an in-between space so that the participants could get a sense of entering a zone between a collapsing industrial civilization and an emerging new world where one could survive and thrive. The meeting space was filled with props such as various kinds of tools that were both human-powered, like a scythe, and electric; some of them were so-called “smart,” they could talk to each other. There were also various kinds of construction materials and fabrics, both organic and synthetic, locally produced or from the other side of the globe. Even other species were present, like a dead seabird with its stomach full of plastic and various plants, but also a living Swedish workhorse which is on the verge of extinction nowadays because no one uses them any more. These “natural” elements filled the space with a kind of “uncivilized” smell that reminded the participants of lifeforms outside the artificial bubble they are used to spending their days in. One of the design researchers called these props “nonhuman actors with agency” before he realized that this kind of talk

366 did not make any sense to non-academics. The room was also full of images of everyday scenes in various possible lifeworlds. The idea was that, during the day, the participants should use these props to see the world from new perspectives and then sketch “provisional utopias” to be explored. The day started with three guest presentations. The first was from one of the founders of The Dark Mountain Project, who spoke about the need to break with the values behind industrialized civilization, to see the world from new perspectives, and to reconnect with nature. He also stressed the need to go beyond the dichotomies of progress and apocalypse, of hope and despair, and to instead, depart from a space in-between. The second presentation came from a transition activist working with Bay Localize in America. She described how they worked with the vulnerable populations in their communities and stressed that the transition had to be based on both social and environmental justice. The third presentation was a sharp contrast to the previous ones and concerned the latest trend in technology called the Internet of Things. A computer scientist explained that they estimated that in a few years, 50 billion devices would be connected to the Internet. After the presentations and a short, but lively, discussion, the design researchers presented two new design fictions set in the year 2030; one in line with Conventional Development and one in line with Great Transition. They were both played out under what could be called “normal circumstances” and in a situation where society was under stress from disruptions. The Conventional Development fiction was a quite familiar story as it was based mainly on a continuation of the organization of society and dominating values and beliefs already found in Northern European countries. Although the IPCC summit COP 21 in Paris 2015 had led to stronger regulations and an increasingly aware public had become “green” consumers, the real problems were still there: a global market economy, belief in technological progress, and growing social inequality. In this conventional world, most people maintained a view of nature as a resource for extraction to create an increasingly artificial lifeworld for humans. The main strategy for addressing sustainability issues was “sustainable problem solving” by developing new artefacts and adding complexity. These artefacts and technologies were mainly deve-

367 loped by commercial companies with an interest in economic growth and expansion. This belief in technological progression had also affected what was considered valuable knowledge and skills and, as a consequence, knowledge of how to interact with artefacts—“digital literacy”—became dominant while knowledge of nature and how to live with it began to fade away. It was not only nature that was viewed as a resource, but also humans. As the ideas of economic growth and technological progress became even stronger as societal goals, the main task for human existence was to fulfill these goals through work. If one was not able to work towards these societal goals, one was considered useless by not only the economically and politically powerful, but also by the people themselves because to work for growth and progress had become the “normal,” and only, way of life. But the backside of this worldview also became evident, and in 2030, not only the fragility of this artificial world became evident through more frequent breakdowns, but also what was more frightening was that the growing part of the population that could not take part in this world through their work began to develop a dark and destructive worldview in search for new meaning in life. Some turned this darkness against themselves with increasing figures in both mental illness and suicide, while others turned it against other people through joining violent extremist organizations. Taken together, and without including the effects of climate change, the progression on the Conventional Development path began to turn into a nightmare around year 2030. In contrast to the Conventional Development fiction that was based on a continuation of life as we know it, the Great Transition fiction was based on a composition of alternatives—“real utopias” like basic income, ideas from the transition movement like localized economies, and ideas coming from new economics and well-being research. In the Great Transition fiction, a growing movement of citizens had reacted with disappointment to what they considered a weak agreement at COP 21 in Paris 2015. This led not only to protests in the streets, but also to an increase in transition initiatives. Around the world, groups of people formed “niches” in society that explored new life practices. This global movement was based on new worldviews and value sets that put respect for life, both human and nonhuman, as a guiding principle. Another idea that “changed

368 everything” was a three-day working week. People found that in a society that was not based on economic growth, progress, and domination but instead was based on local economies, well-being and basic needs, new tasks emerged. To begin with, there was a huge need of relearning, to know the world in another way, and reskilling, to be able to perform new work like repairing and producing basic products by hand. For most people, this was a positive change and they found both joy and pride in their new work. The combined effects of a three-day working week, sharing workloads, and more local production, meant that unemployment was practically eradicated. But using more human power also meant hard labor. Machines were still used, but prioritized for heavy construction work like building sea walls against the rising sea and other infrastructure work necessary for adapting to climate change. To avoid people becoming worn out, like in pre-industrial societies, people circulated between jobs, as most people enjoyed doing a variety of activities and had various interests. This was a social innovation with a major impact leading to increased interaction between different groups in society. These changes in work life, along with more time for socializing, sports, culture, being in nature, and in preparing food and eating well led to increases in well-being and health. The most dramatic change was in people’s relationships with artefacts. A consequence of sphere economies was that products mass-produced on speculation began to be replaced by products made locally when someone needed or desired one. Also, the use of consumer electronics decreased significantly as they became too expensive due to decreasing resources and a successful global movement demanding fair wages globally. The purpose of the design fictions was to give the participants new outlooks on the world that would help them reframe the situation. In the previous meetings, the design researchers had noticed that even if there was a will to change direction, many participants had difficulties going beyond the way of life they were used to. Through the design fictions and through the use of various concepts, they were able to make “imaginative leaps” beyond the existing world. The design fictions were complemented with concept cards that, together with the props in the room, worked as kinds of building blocks to sketch “provisional utopias” with. The different groups were then given the task to review their local situation and

369 discuss various ideas, themes, or dilemmas to explore further. The design researchers had learned the importance of frame awareness; as a result, one member of each group was given the task of paying attention to what kinds of wording, images, and metaphors were at play in the discussion and whether these drew the participants back to a business-as-usual reasoning or dominating “ideological language” and thus, would need to be exchanged. In their discussions, many groups used generative metaphors in their reframing of the situation. For example, one group who had problems with electronic waste in the streets and overcrowded recycling stations in their neighborhood picked up the phrase “mines above ground” coined by local designers Liv Andersson, Petra Lilja, and Jenny Nordberg. They used this phrase as a generative metaphor for going beyond the view of nature as a source for extraction. In a similar way as “mines above ground” was a way to see all redundant metals in society as mines, the participants started to play with phrases like “forest in your home,” “cotton field in your wardrobe,” and “oilfield in your toys.” They decided to explore this theme further in a living lab together with local youth who had ideas regarding a recycling workshop. Another group was inspired by the idea of a contracting society and began to use new forms of “what if …?” questions based on the need to eliminate destructive life practices. For example, they explored “life without car,” “life without meat,” and “life without the latest model.” They also discussed the idea of going from “buying” to “building,” and from “right now off the shelf” to “tailor made in three months.” All these reframings challenged both held values and habits but, put together with ideas like a three-day working week and basic income, they also opened up for new ways of organizing the everyday. A third group saw the need for new forms of education and reskilling and decided to explore how a platform for reskilling could work. They turned the idea of who should be retrained the other way around. Today, unemployed people with “traditional” skills in crafts, building, and farming are retrained to fit industrial production. But in a future with less energy and more local production, their skills and knowledge would be re-assessed, and they would become the teachers with endless work in reskilling the digital literate.

370 The fourth group addressed perhaps the most important issue regarding food security. They decided to look into different forms of farming and into the breaking down of the separation between the urban and the rural. But they also had ideas about growing hemp and flax as material for new, locally produced textiles. In this case, they immediately faced a dilemma regarding the use of land for growing food or for growing for textiles. The fifth, and last, group looked into issues regarding health and well-being and how these could be explored according to new ideas like “a safe and just space for humanity” and “a new social settlement.” After the group discussions, the groups presented the themes, or in the design researchers’ words “provisional utopias,” as they were tentative sketches of possible futures worth further exploration. They also brought up themes like transportation and security/insurance that had been discussed but had not raised enough interest. One participant objected to the bias towards low-tech making and felt that the more high-tech possibilities that had been presented in the Conventional Development scenarios also needed to be explored. Another participant replied that according to the idea of “sphere economies” that had been presented by the resilience researcher, the issue of more advanced technologies was more a task for global companies than local communities focusing on basic needs. A design researcher thought that this was an interesting debate and asked those gathered if there were any others who were interested in exploring this issue. Three hands were raised, and it was decided that they should form a new group. All participants then got the chance to leave their local group if they found another theme more interesting or thought they had something extra to contribute with, but most chose to stay in their original group. Before the transition thing was closed this time, the design researchers informed the participants of the next phase, where they should explore their themes in local living labs. Each group should work with a designer and, on a weekly basis, also have meetings or workshops with other researchers or other actors with competences they needed. The living labs were also a way of starting to build a network of local and long-term design labs, or as some preferred to

371 call them, “democratic experimental arenas for exploring transformative ideas.”

In the third phase, the transition thing was divided into five local living labs dedicated to exploring the trajectory of inquiry “in the wild.” The idea was to further explore the different “provisional utopias” by prototyping them in a local setting with local actors. In this way, the transition thing also expanded and involved more actors, which also opened up for more ideas and controversies. Even though actors coming from the local communities developed the themes in the first two phases of the transition thing, it was important that new actors could influence the process and feel ownership. The first step was to find a space that could serve as a base camp for the living lab and open up the group to new members. The group that wanted to explore the generative metaphor “mines above ground” got access to a former car repair shop. Thereafter, they contacted the youths that had started to develop a recycling workshop but had to give up when they could not get the support they needed. Two of them were interested in joining the living lab. They got along well with the rest of the group, especially a man from Somalia who was a cabinet-maker, but could not find a job because his ability to speak Swedish was of an inadequate standard. But he had no difficulties communicating with the local youths because they could either speak English or else Somali (the youths’ native language). The next step of opening up the living lab and connecting with the community was to perform some design experiments on the streets outside the garage and on the local square. They also invited the neighbors to a workshop at the garage where they showed a new design fiction that was a collage of their previous ideas. At the workshop they also presented the GSG scenarios as a way to start a discussion about local resilience and future challenges. They were joined by eight more people (some more youths and some grown- ups). Among them was a man that previously had run a repair shop for home electronics but had to close down when people preferred to buy new stuff. He saw the living lab as an opportunity to keep on working with electronics and also to teach his skills to others. The group continued to play with metaphors. This time they picked up the term “food miles,” which is often used in discussions re-

372 garding local food and also coined the term “stuff miles” for local stuff. They decided to explore how far they could get in creating access to products by only using local resources from their city district. They limited the resources to wood, metals, and textiles, as plas- tics were too complicated to handle. They decided to focus on three functions; repairing to prolong the lifecycle of a product, reselling donated products that still worked, and finally redesigning and rebuilding products that had become waste. Together with the design researchers, a core team consisting of mainly youths and adults with the right skills started to prototype different aspects and functions of the service. After a while, a local waste and recycling company interested in circular economy found out about the project and offered support in the form of knowledge and resources. After two months of prototyping, the service had matured and showed to work well. The group had tested different ways of collec- ting working products, set up different repair-and-rebuild workshops for electronics, clothes, bikes, and furniture. It was possible to both leave your product for repair and pay for it in the local currency (something all the living labs explored), but also to do it yourself with some help from the staff or volunteers. The redesigned and rebuilt products were sold in a shop. During the prototyping phase, more locals had joined and the group estimated that it would now be possible to hire several people, thus creating jobs. But the living lab group also saw the service, which they named Local Stuff, as a way to create discussion about local resilience and the need to reorganize society. They wanted people to be made aware of our dependence on global resource extraction, and for this reason, they created an installation that showed how certain resources like wood, cotton, and minerals were saved, leaving the land unexploited. The other groups had similar processes in their local communities, albeit not without friction. There were conflicts and disagreements both within the living lab groups and between the living lab and the community. The group that experienced most resistance in their community was the one that explored various ways of replacing destructive life practices. This living lab was set in one of the wealthier city districts, which also had the largest ecological foot- print. Most people welcomed the living lab, but many saw it as a provocation that challenged their values and lifestyle. In contrast

373 to many other city districts, this community had more to lose than to gain from adapting to new life practices. The living labs not only explored one trajectory of inquiry or “provisional utopia,” but also their presence in the local communities served as a springboard for public discussion about transitions and resilience. In this way, they mobilized citizens in the communities that had yet to have a transition initiative happen in their area.

After the separate living lab processes, it was time to reassemble the transition thing for the fourth phase. Each city district presented the outcome of their process through a filmed user journey that was complemented with printed storyboards and physical prototypes. For example, the food group described how the local community had set up a partnership with a farmer just outside Malmö. They complemented each other in the way that the farmer provided the community with vegetables, flour, and small amounts of meat which they would not be able to produce themselves. Alternatively, the community helped the farmer with manual workforce when needed. In this case, the farmer was able to convert his production according to permaculture principles with less risks. Both tension and excitement spread among the participants when it was time for the “high tech” group’s presentation. The group explained that, in the beginning, they worked with a strong sense of objection toward the transition thing because they found it both anti-technology and reactionary. They were quite excited about the Internet of Things idea but when doing their research, they began to realize its limitations and risks. Many areas where both academic and commercial researchers wanted to apply the technology did not make sense. Instead, they found the term “appropriate technology,” which the Dark Mountain founder had mentioned, useful as a guiding principle. Instead of putting “smart” technology into everything, use it for some things when appropriate. As a result, they had set up a living lab with local researchers and cleantech companies to explore if it could be possible to develop locally produced and robust smart technology to be used in, for example, situations of flooding. The presentations were followed by a lively discussion and quite a lot of critique, both toward the projects and toward the trans-

374 ition thing process. The design researchers considered this “back talk” to be constructive and important input to future work. The participants then discussed how the different projects could interact and serve as “provisional utopia” on a macro scale and contribute to making Malmö more resilient in general. The participants now formed new groups with the task of sketching various versions of this macro utopia. The design researchers and some of the participants with skills in storytelling were then given the task to turn these sketches into a coherent design fiction that showed everyday life in Malmö in 2030 according to the ideas developed during the transition thing. This design fiction, in the form of a fifteen minute-long video as well as an exhibition would be presented for the public at the former fashion shop. Just before Christmas 2015, the doors were opened to the exhibition, Malmö in Transition 2030. The location of the transition thing now turned out to be perfect. Most citizens had returned to their usual everyday life and the pedestrian precinct was full of happy Christmas shoppers. Many were surprised by how quick the spring events were forgotten and how quick the machinery of business as usual had repaired itself. Yes, life according to the market economy turned out to be quite resilient, especially with the support of the political and economic elite. But a big installation outside the transition thing interrupted the flow of shoppers and led them into the exhibition. Once inside, they could take part in the design fiction video, the various presentations from the living labs, and the original GSG scenarios which merged with the planetary boundaries and social targets concept. Citizens could also take part in workshops and debates. One of these debates turned out to be really fierce as both ordinary citizens and political and economic leaders dismissed the transition thing as left-wing propaganda. The debate spread and continued in various media forms with the effect that more people visited the exhibition. For many happy shoppers, it became a shock as the Conventional Development scenarios reminded them of the spring events. But they could find new hope in the design fiction video and the living labs presentation. For many, it became the start of a personal transition, as they were attracted to many of the ideas; ideas that appealed to sides in themselves that had been repressed in their ordinary lives. Work less, spend more time with loved ones,

375 rediscover that the body actually likes to be in motion, eat well, and make objects by hand—this life appealed to many. The transition thing not only resulted in the continuation of the work the living labs had started, it also amplified the social movement that began with the Future Week in the spring and showed that there was a civil will for change. This was an important signal to the local politicians that now dared to be more radical. It also turned out that not all powerful actors were against a transition. For example, some corporate leaders who had followed the transition thing closely realized that a reorganization of society was in everybody’s interest and said they were willing to support the transition through releasing resources. All these reactions were considered “back talk” by the design researchers who were in good spirits when they re-gathered the transition thing in the spring of 2016. The transition had just started, and if things turned out well, it would never end.

376 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

In this thesis, I have explored two design things in two different situations, one real and one speculative, and the conversation with the situation that took place in them. They can be seen as two ways of addressing our societal challenges and two ways of working with Design for Social Innovation. The first design thing was based on a belief in social innovation as a way to reach sustainability within the existing organization of society. But for me, the outcomes of the incubator workshops and the Innovation forum process taken together with the mainstreaming of social innovation weakened this belief. These close encounters with “governance” processes and “powerful strangers,” for whom social innovation was either not an issue at all or an issue for big businesses and “social capital markets” rather than grassroots associations or small scale cooperatives, gave the impression that the only way to create social change was to play according to the rules of Conventional Development and the global market economy. Through them, social innovation became neutralized and depoliticized. This “civilized” version of social innovation, well-dressed and comfortable in the meeting rooms of governments and companies, needs to be challenged by “wild” social innovation emerging from discussions around campfires in the woods or in dark street corners. But the knowledge about the wide range of actors for whom the aim of social innovation is societal transformation and the wide range of alternative possible worlds that exists out there, for example, in the form of new economics research or “real utopias”

377 like transition towns, made me not give up hope that another world is possible. Consequently, the speculative design thing was based more on strong doubts about our chances to reach sustainability within the existing organization of society. It departed from the prospect of societal collapse and the need to explore the transition to a new society—a new lifeworld where both humans and nonhumans can survive and thrive. This necessary reorganization of society—the Great Transition—needs to be grounded in other values and frames than those that underlie industrial civilization and Conventional Development. If the first design thing was arranged according to an interpretation of design for social innovation where the aim was to sustain society as we know it through sustainable problem solving, then the intention in the second design thing was to work with design for social innovation in order to transform society into something new. In the first, the aim was to increase the resilience of existing society—the ability to remain within the existing organization of society. In the second, the aim was to break down the resilience of the old world and start to build the resilience of the new world. It was at a moment of standstill, doubt, and hesitation that the prospect of collapse entered my research. Diving into both scientific and cultural descriptions of a collapsing civilization made me let go of the stagnated explorations of Design for Social Innovation along with citizens and civil servants in the real world and instead, begin exploring what a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse could be in a theoretical and fictive space. One of the reasons why I chose to temporarily leave “research through design” in the real world was that what I would consider to be a “more important” issue—collapse—entered in at quite a late stage of my project and would more or less mean setting up a new project. Therefore, I consider this thesis to be the beginning of a longer journey rather than a complete record at the end of a journey already traveled. Another reason is that I had difficulty in finding like-minded and fellow travelers. Therefore, I chose to begin exploring a design thing in a collapse and transition scenario in a fictive and speculative setting as the first move before returning to the so-called real world. A third reason is a strong conviction that, rather than accepting the “dictatorship of no alternative,” to present the alternatives—whether

378 in the form of “real utopias” or new economics research, stories from dark mountaineers, transition activists, permaculture growers and DIY-repairers—in a well thought out way would “change everything” even in a conventional social change process. But what was lacking was an arena—a dedicated and safe space—where these alternatives could be explored and composed into new stories to be used in the conversation and debate within the wider public. This is what I consider to be the initial function of the second design thing when the time is right to stage it in the so-called real world. The notion of a safe space exists in both design things. In the incubator workshops, a recurrent theme that was brought up and discussed by the participants was the idea of a “free zone” where one could experiment with ideas and roles, and challenge mental and structural barriers as well as economic and juridical frames. If that safe space had been realized, it might have been the arena where the prospect of collapse and different ways of addressing it could have been brought up, explored, and debated. A safe space is a place where one dares to take risks, where one rehearses moves before removing the safety net, where one can “fail early,” or where the radical prepare for the risk of approaching the “powerful stranger.” It is a space for being awkward. In a safe space, “the idiot” is allowed to claim that “there is something more important” but not yet defined out there. In a safe space, it is acceptable to discuss the “last taboo” (Hine and Kingsnorth 2009)—the myth of civilization. The idea of a safe space is also in line with incubation in itself; the protection and nourishing of something that is new, fragile, developing, or controversial. In the context of the second design thing, the safe space can be found in resilience research. Bullock, Armitage, and Mitchell (2012, 310) discuss “shadow networks” as constellations of disempowered actors who can explore and incubate alternative ideas in the “shadow” of a “dominant, albeit failing, status quo.” Also The Dark Mountain Project is considered a way of establishing a “safe space” where people can shift worldviews and experiment with “other ways of speaking and doing” (Graugaard 2014, 149). The idea of a safe space may seem contradictory to an open and agonistic design thing. But what should be protected is not a business idea or an ideology; what should be protected is the

379 right to the alternative—the right to view the world from other perspectives. The right to explore the world from other trajectories of inquiry, and the right to live in another way. This is the opposite of “the dictatorship of no alternative.” I will now discuss the two design things according to three thematic clusters:

• Democracy, power, and relations • Practices, activities, and work • Arenas and forums

Democracy, Power, and Relations

Democracy, inclusion, and to work with instead of for is at the heart of participatory design and design things as well as the notion of allowing differences and controversies. Participatory design begins with the idea that people should be able to participate in discussions, change processes, and decisions that affect their lives. But as the governance concept makes explicit, these discussions and decisions have, to a large extent, moved away from traditional democratic arenas and public debates and into the more hidden corridors and boardrooms of the politically and economically powerful, a development that is in line with the “elite governance” frame. In turn, this has led to demands for new democratic processes such as “governance with all” and arenas such as knowledge alliances, hybrid forums, and design things. What we saw in the incubator case are two ways of discussing and making decisions about the future. The incubator workshops were based on participatory democracy and an attempt to discuss what an incubator for social innovation could be from the bottom-up and with those it concerned. The trade and industry process was an elite governance process where actors with political and economic power discussed social change without those whom it concerned. These forums also discussed different subjects as the trade and industry actors actually did not discuss an incubator but something “qualitative different” (Björk 2014a, b), an organization that connects investors with established companies looking to expand. In Björk’s view, an incubator for social innovation functions as

380 an “arena for developing new, including and in its prolongation structural changing solutions of societal challenges” (2014, b, 15 my italics). In this thesis, I claim that civil society and concerned citizens will be the most important change actors in the Great Transition. With that said, change makers within the public and private sector will also have an important role. As we have seen in concepts like “the bees and the trees” and “powerful strangers,” the will to change coming from the bottom needs to be connected with the resources of the establishment. From the adaptive cycle, we learn that to be able to create something new, a continuous release of resources such as time, money, and skills that are locked in our institutions must exist. But what we saw in the incubator case was how, instead of releasing resources to the change makers in the design thing to develop their idea of an incubator, the powerful strangers kept the resources and then claimed even more (the EU grant and public funding) to develop their own idea of an investment organization. How does one include the powerful strangers in the design thing? How does one confront them in agonistic debate? And how does one develop collaborations with them? These are the toughest challenges in developing the design thing concept and will need to be further researched. For now, I do not have any answers, only clues about where to look. For example, in resilience theory, Bullock, Armitage, and Mitchell (2012) describe, using the NSCF case as an example, how a “shadow network” was successful in both reframing a situation and transgressing power relations. The idea of operating in the shadow of the establishment also occurs in transition management theory. Loorbach and Rotmans (2010, 239) state that the core idea behind transition management is to “create a societal movement through new coalitions, partnerships, and networks around arenas that allow for building up continuous pressure on the political and market arena to safeguard the long-term orientation and goals of the transition process.” Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans (2009) argue that radical innovations are developed in niches and a “niche regime” develops which “attacks” the incumbent regime “which ultimately is transformed into a new regime” (ibid.). The first principle in transition management is to create a “space for niches” in “transition arenas” (ibid.) that offer protection for a small group of

381 actors. The description of a transition arena as a “learning network that provides room for long-term reflection and prolonged experimentation” resembles both a design thing and a living lab. Accor- ding to Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans, the transition arena needs to be supported by political and economic power, but should not be dictated by them. Niches need to be empowered and provided with resources such as knowledge, finance, lobby mechanisms and be exempted from laws and rules and given space for experimentation. However, the autonomous character of a transition arena “often makes the regime nervous” (Loorbach and Rotmans 2010, 244) and it strikes back, something we experienced in the incubator and Innovation forum processes.

From the transition viewpoint the only adequate response is to build up a close relationship with (parts of) the regime and maintain the autonomy of the transition process by tuning the free space, agenda and responsibilities of the transition process (and the arena within that) compared to the regular policy process. (Loorbach and Rotmans 2010, 244)

One key in establishing a constructive but, at the same time, agonistic collaboration between change makers and the establishment may be a long-term perspective, as we find in concepts like long-term infrastructuring and “metadesign.” In transition management, one principle is “radical change in incremental steps” (Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009) as a way to erode and dismantle the existing system rather than a sudden revolution. Sudden changes will most likely lead to backlashes from those in power while incremental changes allow the system time to adjust. As seen, resilience researchers, such as Folke et al. (2010), also argue that deliberate transformational change introduced at lower scales and in a sequential steps may lead to large-scale changes, while if it had been initially introduced at the larger scale, it would most likely have been considered too controversial or expensive. This falls in line with Wigforss’ idea of “provisional utopias”: the idea of having a utopian vision and working toward it through trial and error rather than implementing a totalitarian idea according to a blueprint. According to my tentative theory of change, we need to compose

382 visions of a world where we can survive and thrive out of the “reservoir of alternatives” and “real utopias” that exist out there and connect them with the civil will of a “global citizen movement” (Raskin 2014). Together with Raskin and many others, also Naomi Klein (2014, 10) puts her hope in social movements and believes that climate change can trigger a “People’s Shock, a blow from below.” She believes that climate change could become a catalysing force for positive change and the “best argument progressives have ever had” for rebuilding local economies, investing in public infrastructure, taking back ownership of essential services, and “end[ing] grotesque levels of inequality within our nations and between them” (ibid., 7). As Bollier and Conaty (2015) state, a wide range of alternative movements exist, but these have not yet merged into a “movement of movements.” Also, seemingly conflicting interests between different movements can arise. Chuck Collins (2015) states, “Labor and community justice organizations will demand jobs, economic growth, and reductions in inequality” (ibid.). These goals seem to be in conflict with the goals of environmental activists who advocate decreased fossil fuel production and limits to growth; however, these goals do not have to be in conflict. Collins states and quotes Joe Uehlein who works with creating alliances between labor and environmental organizations: “Pitting jobs versus the environment is a false choice”; Instead, according to Uehlein, we “need to figure out how to make a living on a living planet.” Collins lists some goals that labor, communities, and environmental organizations have in common: less inequality and more dignified work which contributes to the greater good; children who flourish; elders who are honored and treasu- red; vibrant communities; employment which demands less toil and more rest, with a few more weekdays to delight in one another and care for the young, the old, and those in need; time to care for the earth and be generous stewards and protectors of the commons and then pass it on undiminished to future generations (Collins 2015). His article originates from the question, ”Where is the transition plan for workers?” put at a meeting between labor and environmental activists. This shows the need for visions of what it will mean to “make a living” in a world after the Great Transition. When these movements realize their common interest, “to make a living on a

383 living planet,” then these movements can converge into a mighty “global citizen movement.”

Practices, Activities, and Work

In the incubator process, the question of what kind of activity should count as valuable for society and what kind of work one should get paid for became central, but it was never debated because the powerful strangers never made their agenda explicit in the design thing. If we had known that the real agenda was the creation of new jobs and not an incubator for social innovation, then we could have set up a design thing that explored that “matter of concern.” In such a design thing, not only the job creators from trade and industry and job seekers among the inhabitants of Malmö should be gathered, but also actors with critical perspectives on the dominating framing of work (e.g., Borg ed. 2013). Today, work is framed as wage labor, but that work is just the tip of the iceberg (Gibson-Graham 2006). Below the tip, much work and many activities are performed every day but not acknowledged, such as voluntary work in civil society and household work. This “other” kind of work was brought forward by the Malmö Commission as important for the social cohesion of society and should be supported. Stigendal and Östergren (2013, 115 my translation) states that civil society “creates alternative forms of actual participation in society, even if one lacks paid employment and the economic resources that otherwise is demanded for being ‘in’.” Below the tip of the iceberg, we find the “core economy” which Coote (2015, 19) defines as “uncommodified human and social resources embedded in everyday life of every individual (time, wisdom, experience, energy, knowledge, skills) and in the relationships among them.” The core economy consists of activities such as:

raising children; caring for people who are ill, frail, and disab- led; feeding families; maintaining households; and building and sustaining intimacies, friendships, social networks, and civil society. It is where people learn and share practical skills, such as cooking, gardening, sewing, household repairs and DIY, which have been shown to build confidence, connectedness, a sense of

384 self-worth, and people’s capacity to help themselves and others. (Coote 2015, 20)

Coote states that the resources of the core economy are crucial in a new social settlement in which we no longer depend on economic growth. Instead of taking for granted that job creation according to Con- ventional Development is something good, a design thing addressing the prospect of collapse could have explored what “to make a living on a living planet” could be, and what kind of activities and practices will be in line with life within a “safe and just space for humanity.” As DiSalvo (2013, 26:1) comments, the turn towards practice “focuses research and design attention toward the common activities of life, and those common activities are woven together with a wide range of sustainability concerns.”

Arenas and Forums

In this thesis, I have explored the notion of a design thing. My interpretation of the concept is close to the etymology of the word thing as a gathering where matters of concern are debated, disputes are solved, and decisions are made. In the speculative design thing, I sketched the interplay between a design thing and living labs. Alt- hough they have similar characteristics in being both democratic and experimental arenas, I believe they operate at different scales. The design thing explores an issue on a more societal scale and points out a rough development path, whereas a living lab explores this issue on a more local scale and performs experiments. Both respond to calls for new democratic arenas, the need of experimentation, and continuous exploration and innovation over longer periods of time. “Everyone it seems wants to experiment their way into the future and to do so they want labs,” states Leadbeater (2014) regarding the mainstreaming of experimentation today. In the intersection between design and social innovation, the idea of labs is explored by Westley and colleagues. One of the main tasks for these social innovation change labs is to prepare a “reservoir of alternatives” (West- ley, Goebey and Robinson 2012, 14) that society can use to renew itself when established functions break down. Also, the idea of a safe

385 space recurs as these alternatives are considered “threatening within the normal social space because they challenge habit and flow of resources” (ibid. my italics). But, as discussed above, the idea of the design thing as a safe space is not the same as closed and secret research labs. Both design things and living labs strive to be as open and public as possible. In line with hybrid forums, design things are spaces for “research in the wild” (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthes (2011), in real life situations with ordinary citizens. So, instead of being safe in the meaning free of risk or confrontation, design things offers a safe space for the “living,” “wild,” and “threatening,” ready to take on the challenge of breaking down the resilience of the old and building the resilience of the new.

Implications for Design and Future Research

My ambition is to contribute to design research as well as design practice. In the first design thing, I took part in research through design, and I have reflected over the experience, both in this thesis and in Emilson and Hillgren (2014). In the second design thing, I performed research for design. I do not consider my findings to be definitive accounts for how things are or work; I find them to be more openings, beginnings, and proposals for future research. In the language of The Dark Mountain Project, I have just reached the foothills of the mountain, but I am eager to start the climb and hope to be joined by fellow adventurers. I will now summarize the aspects that I think may have implications for design practice and research and are worth exploring further. These are:

• The design space between sustainability and collapse • The making of design things • Involving other actors (human and nonhuman) • The making of design fictions • Working with frames • Assessing and exploring development trajectories • Composing with “real utopias” • (Meta) design as “provisional utopias” • Designing for life practices and lifeworlds

386 To start with, I hope the idea of designing in the space between stories—the space between sustainability and collapse—influences designers to consider other frames and departure points in a design process. To ask, “What makes our world collapse?” instead of “What makes our world sustainable?” will affect how we perceive the world and address our challenges. To embrace the collapse will mean starting a new conversation and listening to other voices than most of us are used to. It will affect what we consider possible or even desirable. It will most likely affect the almost compulsory optimism of design; the belief that design can make the world as we know it a better place. If we have done our new homework, we have learned that sustaining the world as we know it through “sustainable problem-solving” and to stay on the path of Conventional Deve- lopment will most likely end in an uninhabitable world. But instead of sustaining the world as we know it, if design started a new conversation with the situation to explore the contours of a new world where we could survive and thrive, then there is new hope and even a reason to once again feel optimistic. Then the work of breaking down the resilience of the old and building up the resilience of the new may begin. I see design things as one approach for designers to start a new conversation with the situation in search of a new civilization. As seen, there are other design researchers that address the prospect of collapse (e.g., Tomlinson et al. 2012a, 2012b). What makes the design thing addressing collapse different from the incubator workshops is the presence of other human and nonhuman actors, the recurrent use of new design devices such as dark and soft design fiction and various kinds of props, and a more conscious use of frames, frame reflection, and reframing. I will now discuss each of these new elements. The prospect of collapse will make it necessary to infrastructure with other human and nonhuman actors. These actors will be remarkably different from the ones involved in the conventional design process with its focus on artefacts, but also conventional Design for Social Innovation which focuses on “problem-solving” and fixing flaws within existing systems rather than developing the alternatives that could be the foundation for new systems. Human

387 actors with other kinds of knowledge and frames will be needed; for example, actors coming from resilience research, human ecology, new economics, actors exploring alternative technologies and modes of production such as maker cultures, permaculture growers, cultural actors, and transition researchers as well as transition activists. The list could be longer and different; for most designers and design researchers, these are new faces and new voices. A more tricky issue is the involvement of the nonhuman actors. This is a subject for future design research, but their presence and agency is crucial as a reminder of a “different mode of humanity” (Gibson-Graham 2014) and the need to redefine our relation with both other species and artefacts. In this thesis, I have used a dead seabird with its stomach full of plastic as a symbol of how human activity penetrates and kills other lifeforms (even ourselves). It is a clumsy attempt to demonstrate the need to discuss human domination in the world and the right of other species to live on their own terms and not only as resources or “ecosystem services” for humans. I am convinced that this kind of nonhuman presence at the table will make such a discussion unavoidable. The last category of actors that will be present in the design thing is humans and nonhumans living in future worlds, which brings us to the role of design fiction. Hine and Kingsnorth (2009) state, “It is through stories that we weave reality,” and both design things have been based on storytelling. In the first design thing, the conversation was influenced by the participants’ stories about the here and now, about the existing world. But, as I have argued in this thesis, to be able to have a conversation about a world that is in many ways radically different and organized in another way, we need imaginations of this world. These imaginations can come in various forms and cultural expressions: images, films, written stories, objects and so on. Here, I have suggested that design fiction could have such function. These worlds and objects, based on new value sets and worldviews, tell stories that could help us make the “imaginative leap” (Dindler and Iversen 2007) beyond the existing world and “dream new dreams” (Dunne and Raby 2013) about a parallel possible world to which we could migrate before the existing one becomes uninhabitable. I have also suggested the need to explore another kind of design fiction—dark and soft design fiction—that rather than dreaming of progressive,

388 high-technology futures, addresses our challenges with kitchen sink realism, dirt on its hands, and dreams of basic income for all and a three-day working week. Regarding the presence of future generations, it seems that neither scientific facts, nor fictive speculations about possible futures affect our decisions today. We know very well that the future looks dark for our children and grandchildren, but we seem to be unable to turn this knowledge into the responses and radical transformations needed. Maybe this paralysis is a consequence of stories from the future that are too general in their character. What if, out of scientific facts and fictive imaginations, we could compose design fictions that would allow our children and grandchildren speak to us directly about using a certain kinds of artefacts or systems in the future according to different development paths? Maybe this could influence us both emotionally and morally about which paths we choose to explore in a design thing. As I have tried to demonstrate in the speculative design thing, I believe the design fictions can have various roles. They can function as input in the design thing. Also, as fiction for design, they can inform the conversation with the situation and support reframing. Futhermore, they can work as output, more like design fiction in its established meaning, which communicates an alternative vision or scenario, both among the participants within the thing and with the wider public. Dark and soft design fiction is also a proposal for further design research. It has to be explored in real cases. As a writer, I have just made a brief first sketch of what the contents of dark and soft design fiction could be, but the craft and form of dark and soft design fiction needs to be explored together with traditionally trained designers with skills in making objects. I imagine that dark and soft design fictions communicate through mixed media; texts, storyboards, and films communicate the bigger picture of societal organization while more traditional design objects and design devices such as props, mock-ups and prototypes make it possible to experience interaction and re-compose concepts and proposals in the real world. Regarding the use of props, mock-ups, and prototypes in Participatory Design, there exists a large body of design research (e.g., Brandt, Binder, and Sanders 2013), and design fiction is an emerging research theme.

389 Both fields can be applied to develop the notion of dark and soft design fiction. Together with this, the exploration of other cultural expressions like soft science fiction, steam punk, climate fiction and the “uncivilized” art that The Dark Mountain Project brings forward in a more thorough way is needed. It is through stories that our frames become explicit and reveal various ways of making sense of the world. Consequently, we need to become more aware of the various stories we tell and the frames, including values and ideologies, they represent. In this thesis, I have focused on frames, frame reflection and reframing as crucial elements in Donald Schön’s design theory. I argue that Schön and Rein, with their description of how frame conflicts develop into a cooperative-antagonistic “design drama,” precede the idea of agonism which is central in contemporary concepts like Adversarial Design and design things. I have also looked into how frames are used in related fields like resilience and social change research. Here is another area where more design research is needed. How may one work more consciously with frames, frame reflection, and reframing within design processes and in design things? This is, of course, closely related to working with stories and design fictions. Furthermore, I think there is even more to gain for design research when looking into frames research in other fields. One concept that I approached at a late stage and rather hastily is that of utopia. But both design things and dark and soft design fiction serve utopian functions. Design things can be seen as utopian as they serve as “spaces for speculation and critique in the interest of change” (Bradley and Hedrén 2014, 2) and where one can experiment with an alternative social organization. Dark and soft design fiction is utopian in its general sense of communicating a vision of a radically different society. But instead of being based on the introduction of progressive technologies, dark and soft design fiction can be seen as compositions of “real utopias” that through the merging ideas like basic income and a three-day working week with “new” or retrieved life practices like growing nuts or sewing one’s own clothes develops into new meta narratives to live by. At the same time, the critical and experimental character of utopia is explicit in Wigforss’ concept of “provisional utopias” which is in line with design in general, but more specifically with “metadesign”

390 and the notion of design as an continuous process that is never done. This, in turn, is in line with recent interest in experiments and labs in social innovation and Mulgan’s statement that we need to discover the future through experimenting.

Many of the concepts I explore in this thesis, such as design things and knowledge alliances, build on cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, thus, finding new allies will be most necessary. This will be the case when further developing how to use concepts such as planetary boundaries and safe and just operating space. Here, design researchers need to collaborate with, for example, resilience researchers in developing assessing tools and making scenarios of different development trajectories more tangible and possible to identify with a practice or lifestyle. In recent years, researchers have began to explore these concepts on a more local scale. For example, Nykvist et al. (2013) relate Sweden’s environmental performance to the planetary boundaries concept and Sayers, Trebeck, and Stuart (2014) have assessed Scotland’s performance according to Oxfam’s safe and just operating space concept. I regard this as a most interesting area for further research. How could this kind of environmental and social research be merged with design fictions to inspire the conversation with the situation in a design thing? These possible collaborations with actors from other disciplines and sectors add to the expansion and redefining of design practice. During the last fifteen years a wide range of new design labels have been introduced: design for sustainability, design for social innovation, service design, critical design, adversarial design, transformation design, public design, to name just a few. Some of them have developed into emerging research fields. In the last couple of years design research have also addressed themes like collapse (e.g., Tomlinson et al. 2012a, 2012b) and resilience (e.g., Manzi- ni and Till 2015). Design has also moved away from single focus on one type of material or product category like in the traditional disciplines architectural-, graphic-, product-, and interaction design. Increasingly, a more holistic approach is advocated that departs from services or practices (Pierce et al. 2013), which in turn could be supported by various combinations of artefacts. In this development I think it is important to stress that we need both

391 holistic approaches and specific knowledge about materials and technologies. These knowledge domains need to be in conversation with each other. Adding labels is a way to make a distinction between approaches as design becomes more and more hybridized (DiSalvo 2013). My introduction of dark and soft design fiction should only be seen as a tentative way of discussing another kind of design fiction than the techno-centric one. I will not add another label like ‘collapse design’ or ‘uncivilized design’, but I think the call for an uncivilized art is most interesting as a departure for discussing if (industrial) design as we know it is beginning to dissolve as the industrial civilization from which it once emerged is beginning to decline. Jared Diamond claims that at certain moments a society must contemplate whether it is necessary to abandon a way of life when it is no longer compati- ble with survival. I think we live in such a moment now. Therefore, it may be reasonable to also ask if it is not time to abandon the notion of design in service of the market and start to move towards a view of design in service of life, as in design of life practices and lifeworlds where humans and nonhumans can survive and thrive. That would be to reframe the very notion of design in itself.

Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, I have argued that to be able to create a world where we can survive and thrive, we need to question the story of industrial civilization and begin searching for a new story. We find parts of the new story in scenario storylines such as Great Transition (science), in the stories from people living in transition towns (activism), and the stories from dark mountaineers (culture). I will argue that designers can contribute to this story and vision of the future by:

• Gathering a collective of heterogeneous human and nonhuman actors in a design thing • Working with frames, frame reflection, and reframing • Making design fictions and fictional interventions

392 SAMMANFATTNING

Designarbete handlar om att ge förslag på hur något skulle kunna vara i framtiden. Men vilken slags möjliga framtider är det designer föreslår? Ännu idag är design djupt förankrad i sitt ursprung i den industriella revolutionen, därmed utforskar en majoritet designer möjligheter i ny teknologi och utvecklar produkter som ska säljas på en marknad och bidra till ekonomisk tillväxt. Design är förknippat med en tro på att teknologiska framsteg och tillväxt är den rätta vägen in i framtiden. Samtidigt står vi inför enorma sociala och eko- logiska utmaningar som få tror att vi kommer rå på med enbart ny teknologi. En växande skara forskare och kritiker hävdare till och med att vi står inför slutet av den industriella civilisationen – på gränsen till ekologisk och samhällelig kollaps. I den här avhandlingen undersöker jag ett möjligt förhållningssätt och sätt att arbeta som designer där vi inte längre enbart tror att vi kommer att lyckas nå en hållbar utveckling utan även förbereder oss inför en kollaps. Designer behöver i allt högre grad överväga och välja mellan olika vägar in i framtiden, de som leder till en värld där vi både kan över- leva och leva gott, och de som leder till social och ekologisk kollaps. I den här avhandlingen utforskar jag två scenarier av sådana möjliga framtider, Conventional Development och Great Transition, utveck- lade av forskare vid Stockholm Environment Institute. Conventional Development beskriver en värld där människor fortfarande lever ut- ifrån de värderingar som präglat den industriella civilisationen, tron på teknisk utveckling och marknadslösningar. I det scenariot kom-

393 mer vi inte lyckas att minska vår negativa påverkan på miljön utan överskrida planetära gränser. I Great Transition-scenariot däremot har människor ändrat värderingar och ser livskvalitet, solidaritet och hållbarhet som centralt för välbefinnande. I det scenariot lyckas människor att minska sin påverkan på miljön och leva inom pla- netens gränser samtidigt som de uppnår sociala mål som jämlikhet och mat till alla. Jag kommer att betrakta ”rummet” mellan dessa två scenarioberättelser, rummet mellan hållbarhet och kollaps, som ett ”design-rum” (design space) fullt av möjliga framtider som vi behöver utforska. Vilka möjliga framtider kan vi välja och vilka bör vi välja bort om vi vill överleva? Avhandlingen utgår från begreppet social innovation och hur designers på senare år börjat delta i arbetet med att skapa inte bara tekniska utan även sociala innovationer. Syftet med avhandlingen är att bidra till en diskussion om hur designers inte bara kan bidra till sociala innovationer och hållbar utveckling inom det nuvarande samhällets organisation, utan även till sociala innovationer som bi- drar till att organisera om samhället så att det är bättre rustat för att hantera kollapser och stödjer ett vardagsliv inom planetära gränser och social mål. I avhandlingen hävdar jag att vi inte bara kan förlita oss på tekniska lösningar för att tackla framtidens utmaningar och förbere- da oss inför framtida kollapser, vi måste i allt högre grad arbeta med att ändra värderingar. Värderingar är starkt kopplade till hur vi uppfattar och skapar världen. Här kommer jag att använda mig av begreppet frames (ramar). En ram är en struktur i medvetandet som påverkar hur vi upplever, förstår och konstruerar världen. Dessa ramar består av associationer, värderingar, antaganden och idéer och de framkallas genom de ord, fraser och berättelser vi använder. I avhandlingen redogör jag för hur sådana ramar används inom om- råden som resiliens, sociala rörelser och design. För att bättre för- bereda oss för de utmaningar som väntar oss och ta fram relevanta lösningar bör vi både arbeta utifrån andra värderingar men också utifrån andra ramar, vi behöver helt enkelt börja se, förstå och konstruera världen på ett nytt sätt. Här spelar berättelser en stor roll. Hur påverkar våra berättelser hur vi ser på världen och vår roll i den? Här kommer jag att utforska begreppet designfiktion (design fiction) och föreslå en skillnad mellan vad kallar för mörk och mjuk

394 designfiktion. I avhandlingen utforskar jag hur designfiktioner kan stödja berörda människor som samlats i ett designting (design thing) för att se, förstå och konstruera världen på ett annat sätt och byta bana in i framtiden. Ett designting kan ses som en demokratisk arena där berörda aktörer samlas för att utforska en frågeställning och gemensamt arbeta fram olika lösningar. Det empiriska materialet i avhandlingen utgår från erfarenheterna av ett designting som utforskade hur en inkubator för social innovation i Malmö kan utfor- mas. De erfarenheterna ligger till grund för mitt förslag – ett fiktivt designting ämnat åt att ta sig an frågan om en möjlig samhällelig kollaps. Metodmässigt har jag arbetat utifrån ”forskning genom design” där jag reflekterar över erfarenheterna av att organisera ett designting som utforskade vad en inkubator för social innovation skulle kunna vara. Därefter har jag utifrån ”forskning för design” studerat litteratur för att samla material som, tillsammans med reflektioner- na över inkubatorprocessen, bildar underlag för mitt förslag till ett fiktivt designting ämnat en möjlig kollaps. Det huvudsakliga resultatet av avhandlingsarbetet är ett förslag på hur man kan organisera ett designting inriktat på att ställa om samhället så att det möjliggör ett liv inom planetära gränser och sociala mål. I detta omställningsarbete spelar mörk och mjuk designfiktion en avgörande roll i att stödja deltagarna i tinget att se och förstå världen utifrån nya perspektiv (ramar) och att staka ut nya utvecklingsbanor som leder till ett resilient samhälle.

395 396 REFERENCES

Agö, Jenny. 2013. “Sverige utan krisplan för matförsörjning.” Svenska Dag- bladet, March 19. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inri- kes/sverige-utan-krisplan-for-matforsorjning_8008626.svd.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. 2010. “The End of the World As We Know It? The Rise of the Post-carbon Era”. Ceasefire, September 20. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know- it-the-rise-of-the-post-carbon-era/.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. 2011. The Crisis of Civilization. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://crisisofcivilization.com/watch/.

Anderson, Kevin. 2012. “Climate Change going beyond Dangerous – Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope”. What Next 3: 16-40. Accessed May 26 2015. http://whatnext.org/resources/Publications/Volume-III/Single-articles/ wnv3_andersson_144.pdf

Ayres, Christopher J. 2012. “The International Trade in Conflict Minerals: Coltan.” Critical Perspectives on International Business 8, (2): 178-193.

Azar, Christian. 2013. “Sol och vind är världens framtid”. Dagens Nyheter, June 10 2013. Accessed May 25, 2015. http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kul- turdebatt/sol-och-vind-ar-varldens-framtid/.

Bason, Christian. 2010. Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society. Bristol: Policy Press.

Bay Localize. 2015. “Our Mission.” Accessed May 26, 2015. http://www. baylocalize.org/taxonomy/term/188.

397 Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. 2000. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment”. Annual Review of Sociology 26, (1): 611–39.

Binder, Thomas, Giorgio De Michelis, Pelle Ehn, Giulio Jacucci, Per Linde, and Ina Wagner. 2011. Design things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Björgvinsson, Erling, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2010. ”Participatory Design and ’Democratizing Innovation’.” In: Proceedings of the 11th participatory design conference, 41-50.

Björgvinsson, Erling, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2012a. ”Agonistic Participatory Design: Working with Marginalised Social Movements.” CoDesign, 8 (2-3), 127-144.

Björgvinsson, Erling, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2012b. ”Design Things and Design Thinking: Contemporary Participatory Design Challeng- es.” Design Issues, 28, (3): 101-116.

Björk, Fredrik. 2014a. Tillväxt Malmö: Delrapport följeforskning. Malmö högskola.

Björk, Fredrik. 2014b. Tillväxt Malmö: Slutrapport följeforskning. Malmö högskola.

Bleecker, Julian. 2009. “Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction.” Near Future Laboratory Blog, March 17. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/2009/03/17/design-fiction-a-short- essay-on-design-science-fact-and-fiction/.

Blevis, Eli. 2007. ”Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems, 503-512.

Blevis, Eli, and Shunying Blevis. 2010. ”Hope for the Best and Prepare for the Worst: Interaction Design and the Tipping Point.” Interactions, 17, (5): 26-30.

Blyth, Simon, and Lucy Kimbell. 2011. Design Thinking and the Big Socie- ty: From solving Personal Troubles to Designing Social Problems. Lon- don: Actant and Taylor Haig. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://actant.co/ publications/designing-thinking-and-the-big-society-from-solving-personal-troubles-to-designing-social-problems/.

398 Bollier, David, and Pat Conaty. 2015. “A New Alignment of Movements?” A Report on a Commons Strategies Group Workshop, Meissen, Germany, August 29 – September 1, 2014. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://bollier.org/ sites/default/files/misc-file-upload/files/Report%2C%20A%20New%20 Alignment%20of%20Movements_%20February%202015%20_0.pdf.

Borg, Kristian, editor. 2013. After work – farväl till arbetslinjen. Stockholm: Verbal förlag.

Borzaga, Carlo, and Riccardo Bodini. 2012. “What to Make of Social Inno- vation? Towards a Framework for Policy Development.” Euricse Working Paper, N.036 | 12. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://www.euricse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1338304696_n2082.pdf

Bosch, Torie. 2012. “Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction”. Slate Blog, March 2, 2012. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/02/bruce_sterling_ on_design_fictions_.html

Botsman, Rachel and Roo Rogers. 2010. What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harper Business.

Boyle, David, and Andrew Simms. 2009. The New Economics: A Bigger Picture. London: Earthscan.

Bradley, Karin, and Johan Hedrén. 2014. “Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures.” In Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices, edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén, 1-20. New York: Routledge.

Brandt, Eva, Thomas Binder and Elisabeth B.-N Sanders. 2013. “Tools and Techniques: Ways to Engage Telling, Making and Enacting.” In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design, edited by Jesper Simon- sen and Toni Robertson, 145-181. New York: Routledge.

Braungart, Michael, and William McDonough. 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Rema- king the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.

Brewer, Joe. 2007. “Chapter 3 – Part 1: Frames.” Cognitive Policy Works. Accessed May 26, 2015. http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/resource- center/thinking-points/chapter-3-part-1-frames/.

Brixton Pound. 2014. “What is the Brixton Pound?” Accessed May 26, 2015. http://brixtonpound.org/what.

399 Brown, Tim. 2009. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. New York: Harper Business.

Buchanan, Richard. 1992. “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.” Design Issues, 8, (2): 5-21.

Bullock, Ryan, Derek Armitage, and Bruce Mitchell. 2012. “Shadow Networks, Social Learning, and Collaborating through Crisis: Building Resilient Forest-Based Communities in Northern Ontario, Canada.” In Collaborative Resilience: Moving through crisis to opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 309-337. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burns, Collin, Hilary Cottam, Chris Vanstone and Jennie Winhall. 2006. Red Paper 02: Transformation Design. London: Design Council.

Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe. 2011. Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Caulier-Grice, Julie, Anna Davies, Robert Patrick, and Will Norman. 2012a. Defining Social Innovation. A deliverable of the project: “The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe” (TEPSIE), European Commission – 7th Framework Programme, Brussels: European Commission, DG Research. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.tepsie.eu/images/documents/TEPSIE.D1.1.Report. DefiningSocialInnovation.Part%201%20-%20defining%20social%20inn- ovation.pdf.

Caulier-Grice, Julie, Anna Davies, Robert Patrick, and Will Norman. 2012b. Social Innovation Practices and Trends. A deliverable of the project: “The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe” (TEPSIE), European Commission – 7th Framework Programme, Brussels: European Commission, DG Research. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.tepsie.eu/images/documents/TEPSIE.D1.1Report.DefiningSocia- lInnovation.Part%202%20-%20practices%20and%20trends.pdf.

Caulier-Grice, Julie, Anna Davies, Robert Patrick, and Will Norman. 2012c. Social Innovation Context and Responses. A deliverable of the project: “The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe”(TEPSIE), European Commission – 7th Framework Programme, Brussels: European Commission, DG Research. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.tepsie.eu/images/documents/TEPSIE.D1.1.Report. DefiningSocialInnovation.Part%203%20-%20context%20and%20 responses.pdf.

400 Christiansen, Jesper, and Laura Bunt. 2012. Innovation in Policy: Allowing for Creativity, Social Complexity and Uncertainty in Public Governance. London: Nesta. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/innovation_in_policy.pdf.

Cisco. 2015. “Seize New Product and Revenue Opportunities with the Inter- net of Things.” Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/iot/portfolio.html

Collins, Chuck. 2015. “Can We Earn a Living on a Living Planet?” Commons Magazine. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/can-we-earn-a-living-on-a-living-planet.

Common Cause. 2015. Valuesandframes.org. Accessed May 27, 2015.

Conklin, Jeffrey E. 2006. Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems. Chichester: John Wiley.

Cocks, Doug. 2012. “Alternative and Normative scenarios for Australia 2050: Economic Growth, Conservative Development and Postmaterialism.” In Negotiating our future: Living scenarios for Australia to 2050, Volume 2. Edited by Michael R. Raupach, Anthony J. McMichael, John J. Finnigan, Lenore Manderson, and Brian H. Walker, 191-200. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science. Accessed 27 May, 2015. https://13-science.cdn.aspedia .net/sites/default/files/user-content/resources/file/australia-2050-vol-2.pdf.

Coote, Anna. 2010. Cutting It: The “Big Society” and the New Austerity. London: New Economic Foundation. Accessed June 13, 2015. http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/fe562b1ef767dac0af_g0m6iykyd.pdf.

Coote, Anna. 2015. People, Planet, Power: Towards a New Social Settlement. London: New Economics Foundation. Accessed June 1, 2015. htt- p://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/eafb0135c69d8a9152_yum6bt9zh.pdf.

Coote, Anna, Jane Franklin, and Andrew Simms. 2011. 21 Hours: Why a Shorter Working Week Can Help Us All To Flourish in the 21st Century. London: New Economics Foundation. Accessed June 1, 2015. htt- p://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/f49406d81b9ed9c977_p1m6ibgje.pdf.

Cornell, Peter. 1991. Den hemliga källan. Hedemora: Gidlunds Bokförlag.

Cottam, Hilary. 2008. Beveridge 4.0. London: Participle Limited. Acessed May 27, 2015. http://www.participle.net/uploaded/docs/Bev_4_2015.pdf.

401 Cottam, Hilary. 2009. “On the Big Society”. Participle, November 19. Accessed June 24, 2015. http://participle56.rssing.com/chan-21604775/ all_p1.html.

Cottam, Hilary, and Charles Leadbeater. 2004. Health: Co-creating Services. London: Design Council.

Crompton, Tom. 2010. Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values. Surrey: WWF-UK. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://assets. wwf.org.uk/downloads/common_cause_report.pdf.

Cross, Nigel. 2001. “Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline Versus Design Science.” Design Issues, 17, (3): 49-55.

Cross, Nigel. 2011. Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. Oxford: Berg.

Dannestam, Tove. 2009. ”Stadspolitik i Malmö: Politikens meningsskapande och materialitet.” Phd diss., Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Lunds univer- sitet.

The Dark Mountain Project. 2015. “The Dark Mountain Project.” Accessed May 27, 2015. http://dark-mountain.net/about/the-dark-mountain-project/.

Darnton, Andrew, and Martin Kirk. 2011. Finding Frames: New Ways to Engage The UK Public in Global Poverty. London: Bond. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.findingframes.org/Finding%20Frames%20New%20 ways%20to%20engage%20the%20UK%20public%20in%20global%20 poverty%20Bond%202011.pdf

DESIS, 2014. ”DESIS Network”. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://www.desis-network.org/.

Diamond, Jared. 2011. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. London: Penguin Books.

Dindler, Christian, and Ole Sejer Iversen. 2007. ”Fictional Inquiry–Design Collaboration in a Shared Narrative Space.” CoDesign: International Jour- nal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 3, (4): 213-234.

DiSalvo, Carl. 2010. ”Design, Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism.” In Proceedings of Design Research Society International Conference. 366-371.

402 DiSalvo, Carl. 2012. Adversarial Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

DiSalvo, Carl. 2013. ”Commentary I: One Practice Among Many: An Ecology of Practices in Sustainable HCI.” ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interactions, 20, (4).

Dott Cornwall. 2010. Big Society by Design. Accessed June 13, 2015. http:// dottcornwall.s3.amazonaws.com/big_society_by_design_b6753e123b- 189d6e.pdf.

Dukes, Franklin E., Jill Williams, and Steven Kelban. 2012. “Collective Tran- sitions and Community Resilience in the Face of Enduring Trauma.” In Collaborative Resilience: Moving Through Crisis to Opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 231-251. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dunne, Anthony. 1999. Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Ex- perience and Critical Design. RCA CRD Research Publications. London: Royal College of Art.

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2001. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ehn, Pelle. 1993. ”Scandinavian Design: On Participation and Skill.” In Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, edited by Douglas Schuler and Aki Namioka, 41-77. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ehn, Pelle. 2008. ”Participation in Design Things.” In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008, 92-101.

Ehn, Pelle, Anders Emilson, Per-Anders Hillgren, and Anna Seravalli. 2011. Inkubatorn finns därute! Malmö högskola. Accessed May 27, 2015. http:// medea.mah.se/2011/05/inkubatorn-finns-darute.

Eisenstein, Charles. 2013. ”2013: The Space between Stories”. Accessed May 27, 2015. http://charleseisenstein.net/2013-the-space-between-stories.

Emilson, Anders. 2010. Design för social innovation: ett nytt designforsk- ningsområde. Stockholm: Designfakulteten. Accessed May 27, 2015. http:// www.designfakulteten.kth.se/sites/default/files/DesignfsocialInnovRap- port_AE_9.6.pdf.

403 Emilson, Anders. 2014. ”Designing Conditions for the Social”. In Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy, edited by Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M. Nilsson, and Richard Topgaard, 17-33. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Emilson, Anders, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2014. ”Connecting with the Powerful Strangers: From Governance to Agonistic Design Things”. In Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy, edited by Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M. Nilsson, and Richard Topgaard, 63-84. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Emilson, Anders, Per-Anders Hillgren, and Anna Seravalli. 2014. ”Designing in the Neighborhood: Beyond (and in the Shadow of) Creative Communi- ties”. In Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and De- mocracy, edited by Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M. Nilsson, and Richard Topgaard, 35-61. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 2015. Soft Sciences. Accessed June 18, 2015. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/soft_sciences.

Engine. 2015. “Building a Social Innovation Lab to Develop Services.” Accessed May 27, 2015. http://enginegroup.co.uk/work/kcc-social- innovation-lab.

Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, and Jan Rotmans. 2009. “Conceptualizing, Obser- ving, and Influencing Social–Ecological Transitions.” Ecology and Society 14(2): 3. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/ iss2/art3/.

Folke, Carl. 2006. “Resilience: The Emergence of a Perspective for Social-ecological Systems Analyses.” Global Environmental Change 16, (3): 253-267.

Folke, Carl, Stephen R Carpenter, Brian Walker, Marten Scheffer, Terry Chapin, and Johan Rockström. 2010. “Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability.” Ecology and Society 15(4): 20. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/ art20/.

Forsberg, Björn. 2012. Omställningens tid: Tillväxtens slut och jakten på en hållbar framtid. Stockholm: Karneval Förlag.

Frayling, Christopher. 1993. “Research in Art and Design.” Royal College of Art Research Papers. 1, (1): 1-5.

404 Fry, Tony. 2009. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice. Oxford: Berg.

Gawell, Malin, Bengt Johannisson, Mats Lundqvist, editors. 2009. Samhällets entreprenörer: En forskningsantologi om samhällsentreprenörskap. Stock- holm: Stiftelsen för kunskaps- och kompetensutveckling.

Gerst, Michael D. Paul D. Raskin, and Johan Rockström. 2014. “Contours of a Resilient Global Future.” Sustainability, 6: 123-135. Accessed May 28, 2015. Doi:10.3390/su6010123

Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press.

Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2014. ”A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthro- pocene”. In Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices, edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén, 38-56. New York: Routledge.

Glass, Rodge. 2013. ”Global Warming: the Rise of ’Cli-fi’”. The Guardian, May 31, 2013. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/ books/2013/may/31/global-warning-rise-cli-fi.

Goffman, Erving. 1986. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston MA: Northeastern University Press.

Goldstein, Bruce Evan, editor. 2012. Collaborative Resilience: Moving through crisis to opportunity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Graugaard, Jeppe Dyrendom. 2014. “Transforming Sustainabilities: Grass- roots Narratives in an Age of Transition. An Ethnography of the Dark Mountain Project.” PhD diss., University of East Anglia.

Gray, Barbara. 2007. “Frame-based Intervention for Promoting Understanding in Multiparty Conflicts.” In Inside Networks: A Process View on Mul- ti-organisational Partnerships, Alliances and Networks, edited by Tobias Gössling, Leon Oerlemans and Rob Jansen, 223-250. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hales, Derek. 2013. “Design Fictions an Introduction and Provisional Taxo- nomy.” Digital Creativity, 24, (1): 1-10.

Halse, Joachim, Eva Brandt, Brendon Clark, and Thomas Binder, editors. 2010. Rehearsing the Future. Copenhagen: The Danish Design School Press.

405 Heinberg, Richard. 2007. Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers.

Hickey, Amber, editor. 2012. A Guidebook of Alternative Nows. The Journal of Aesthetic and Protest Press. Accessed May 28, 2015.http://alternative- nows.net/files/A%20Guidebook%20of%20Alternative%20Nows.pdf

Hillgren, Per-Anders, Anna Seravalli, and Anders Emilson. 2011. “Prototyping and Infrastructuring in Design for Social Innovation.” CoDesign: Interna- tional Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 7, (3-4): 169-183.

Hine, Dougald, and Paul Kingsnorth. 2009. Uncivilisation: The Dark Moun- tain Manifesto. The Dark Mountain Project. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/.

Hine, Dougald. 2010. “Death and the Mountain: John Berger’s Enduring Sen- se of Hope.” In Dark Mountain: Issue 1, Summer 2010, edited by Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth, 78-96. The Dark Mountain Project.

Hine, Dougald, and Paul Kingsnorth. 2010. “Editorial: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And We Feel Fine).” In Dark Mountain: Issue 1, Summer 2010, edited by Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth, 1-4. The Dark Mountain Project.

Hodgson, Jaqi and Rob Hopkins, editors. 2010. Transition in Action: Totnes and District 2030. An Energy Descent Action Plan. Totnes: Transition Town Totnes.

Holmberg, John, and Jonas Nässén. 2007. “Tio miljarder lyckliga planetskö- tare!” In Konsumera mera – dyrköpt lycka, edited by Birgitta Johansson, 135-148. Stockholm: Formas Fokuserar. Accessed May 28, 2015. http:// www.formas.se/PageFiles/3396/konsumera_mera_dyrkopt_lycka.pdf.

Holmberg, John, Jörgen Larsson, Jonas Nässén, Sebastian Svenberg, and David Andersson. 2011. Klimatomställning och det goda livet. Stockholm: Naturvårdsverket. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.naturvardsverket. se/Nerladdningssida/?fileType=pdf&downloadUrl=/Documents/publikatio- ner6400/978-91-620-6458-7.pdf.

Holmes, Tim, Elena Blackmore, Richard Hawkins, and Tom Wakeford. 2011. The Common Cause Handbook. Machynlleth: Public Interest Research Centre. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://publicinterest.org.uk/.

Hopkins, Rob. 2008. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.

406 Hornborg, Alf. 2014. “Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees: Technological Utopianism and the Uneasy Relationship Between Marxism and Ecological Economics.” In Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro- Practices, edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén, 76-97. New York: Routledge

Hornborg, Alf. 2013. “Revelations of Resilience: From the Ideological Di- sarmament of Disaster to the Revolutionary Implications of (P)anarchy.” Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 1, (2): 116-129.

Hornborg, Alf. 2012. Myten om maskinen: essäer om makt, modernitet och miljö. Göteborg: Daidalos.

Hosking, Rebecca. 2009. “A Farm for the Future.” The Natural World, Se- ason 28, Episode 14. London: BBC. Accessed May 28, 2015. https://vimeo. com/72026186.

Howaldt, Jurgen, and Michael Schwarz. 2010. Social Innovation: Concepts, Research Fields And International Trends. Dortmund: Socialforschungsstel- le Dortmund. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.sfs-dortmund.de/odb/ Repository/Publication/Doc%5C1289%5CIMO_Trendstudie_Howaldt_ Schwarz_englische_Version.pdf.

Hubert, Agnés. 2011. Empowering People, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Huppé, Gabriel .A., Heather Creec, and Doris Knoblauch. 2012. The Fron- tiers of Networked Governance. Winnipeg, Manitoba: International Institu- te for Sustainable Development. Accessed May 28, 2015. www.iisd.org/ pdf/2012/frontiers_networked_gov.pdf.

Hunt, Dexter V. L, D. Rachel Lombardi, Stuart Atkinson, Austin R. G. Barber,Matthew Barnes, Christopher T. Boyko, Julie Brow n, John Bryson, David Butler,Silvio Caputo, Maria Caserio, Richard Coles, Rachel F. D. Cooper, Raziyeh Farmani,Mark Gaterell, James Hale, Chantal Hales, C. Nicholas Hewitt, Lubo Jankovic,I. Jefferson, J. Leach, A. Rob MacKenzie, Fayyaz Ali Memon, Jon P. Sadler,Carina Weingaertner, J. Duncan Whyatt and Christopher D. F. Rogers. 2012. ”Scenario Archetypes: Converging Rather than Diverging Themes.” Sustainability 4: 740-772. Accessed May 28, 2015. Doi:10.3390/su4040740.

Johansen, Lars Jannick. 2011. “Malmø Inkubator for Sociale Innovationer”. Memorandum to Bjarne Stenquist January 11.

407 Jégou, François and Ezio Manzini, editors. 2008. Collaborative Services: Soci- al Innovation and Design for Sustainability. Milano: Edizioni POLI.design.

Jonstad, David. 2012. Kollaps: Livet vid civilisationens slut. Stockholm: Ord- front.

Jönsson, Jayne. 2011. Stödstrukturer för Sociala Innovationer i Malmö regionen. Malmö Högskola.

Kaufman, Sandra. 2012. ”Complex Systems, Anticipation, and Collaborative Planning for Resilience.” In Collaborative Resilience: Moving through crisis to opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 61-98. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Kaye, Jofish and Paul Dourish. 2014. ”Editorial: Special issue on science fiction and ubiquitous computing.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18, (4): 765 -766.

Kensing, Finn, and Joan Greenbaum. 2013. ”Heritage: Having a Say.” In Handbook of Participatory Design, edited by Jesper Simonsen and Toni Robertson, 21-36. New York: Routledge.

Kiem, Matt. 2011. ”Designing the Social, and the Politics of Social Innova- tion.” Design Philosophy Papers, 3, 2011. Accessed May 28, 2015. http:// www.academia.edu/1167642/Designing_the_social_and_the_politics_of_so- cial_innovation.

Kim, Jim Yong. 2012. “Foreword”. In Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided. Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim, William Hare, Olivia Serdeczny, Sophie Adams,Dim Coumou, Katja Frieler, Maria Martin, Ilona M. Otto, Mah. Perrette, Alexander Robinson, Marcia Rocha, Michiel Schaeffer, Jacob Schewe, Xiaoxi Wang, and Lila Warszawski. 2012. Washington DC: The World Bank. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www- wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/03/ 26/000445729_20130326120429/Rendered/PDF/632190WP0Turn000Box- 374367B00PUBLIC0.pdf.

Kingsnorth, Paul. 2012. ”Dark Ecology.” Orion Magazine on December 21. Accessed June 18, 2015. https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/.

Kingsnorth, Paul. 2014. ”Five Years on a Mountain.” The Dark Mountain Blog on July 17. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://dark-mountain.net/blog/ five-years-on-a-mountain.

408 Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Allen Lane.

Kloos, Karina, and Daniela Papi. 2014. ”Lost in Translation.” Stanford Social Innovation Review. 12 (3). http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/lost_in_ translation.

Koskinen, Ilpo, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redström, and Stephan Wensveen. 2011. Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Knutz, Eva, Thomas Markussen, and Poul Rind Christensen. 2013. ”The Role of Fiction in Experiments within Design, Art & Architecture.” In Nordes 2013 Online Proceedings, 341-348. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www. nordes.org/nordes2013/pictures/Nordes2013Proceedings.pdf.

Krippendorff, Klaus. 2006. The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press.

Lakoff, George 2004. Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Lakoff, George. 2010a. “Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment.” Environmental Communication, 4, (1): 70-81.

Lakoff, George. 2010b. “We are the Polar Bears: What’s Wrong With the Way That the Environment is Currently Understood.” In From Hot Air to Happy Endings: How to Inspire Public Support for a Low Carbon Society, edited by Sylvia Rowley and Rebekah Phillips. London: Green Alliance. Ac- cessed June 1, 2015. http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/resources/From%20 hot%20air%20to%20happy%20endings.pdf.

Lang, Peter, and William Menking. 2003. Superstudio: Life Without Objects. Milano: Skira.

Larsson, Annette. 2011. Slutrapport: Förstudie Innovationsforum. Malmö stad.

Latour, Bruno. 2005a. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor- Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2005b. “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public.” In Making Things Public: Atmosphere of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 4-31. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

409 Latour, Bruno. 2010. “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto’”. New Literary History, 41, (3): 471-490.

Leadbeater, Charles. 1997. The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur. London: Demos. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.demos.co.uk/files/theriseofthe- socialentrepreneur.pdf?1240939425.

Leadbeater, Charles. 2007. “Mainstreaming the Mavericks.” The Guardian, 25 March. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/25/voluntarysector.business.

Leadbeater, Charles. 2014. “Hooked on Labs: The Experimental Life is Being Created All Around Us.” The Long and Short. London: Nesta. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-two/stories-season-2.html#.

Lenas, Sverker. 2010. “Bokrecensioner Alf Hornborg.” Dagens Nyheter, Octo- ber 29. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.dn.se/dnbok/bokrecensioner/ alf-hornborg/.

Live Work. 2015. “Employability: Connect the Agencies & Build Relation- ships.” Accessed May 28, 2015. http://liveworkstudio.com/perspectives/ employability/.

Loorbach, Derk, and Jan Rotmans. 2010. “The Practice of Transition Mana- gement: Examples and Lessons From Four Distinct Cases.” Futures, 42, (3): 237-246.

Löwgren, Jonas, and Erik Stolterman. 2007. Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Malmö stad Stadskontoret. 2011. Ärende: KS-KOM-2011-00273. Inrättande av en inkubator för entreprenörer med inriktning på sociala innovationer.

Malmö stad Kommunstyrelsen. 2011. Utdrag Protokoll fört vid samanträde med Malmö kommunstyrelse den 30 november 2011. § 396, D273/2011, Inrättande av en inkubator för entreprenörer med inriktning på sociala innovationer.

Manzini, Ezio and François Jégou. 2003. Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Life. Milano: Edizione Ambiente.

410 Manzini, Ezio. 2007. ”Design Research for Sustainable Social Innovation.” In Design Research Now: Essays and Selected Projects, edited by Ralf Michel, 233-245. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.

Manzini, Ezio. 2011. Introduction to Design for Services, by Anna Meroni and Daniela Sangiorgi, 1-6. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

Manzini, Ezio. 2014. “Making Things Happen: Social Innovation and De- sign”. Design Issues, 30, (1): 57-66.

Manzini, Ezio and Eduardo Stazowski, editors. 2013. Public and Collabora- tive: Exploring the Intersection of Design, Social Innovation and Public Policy. DESIS Network.

Manzini, Ezio and Jeremy Till. 2015. Cultures of Resilience: Ideas. London: Hato Press.

Meroni, Anna. 2007. Creative communities: People Inventing Sustainable Ways of Living. Milano: Edizioni Poli.Design.

Michael, Mike. 2012. “’What Are We Busy Doing?’: Engaging the Idiot.” Science, Technology, and Human Values. 37, (5): 528-554.

Mjölkdroppen. 2015. “Historik”. Accessed June 23. http://www.mjolkdrop- pen.se/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=9.

Moggridge, Bill. 2007. Designing Interactions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2000a. ”Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism.” Political Science Series, edited by Christine Neuhold, 72: 1-17. Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2000b. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.

Moulaert, Frank, Flavia Martinelli, Erik Swyngedouw, and Sara Gonzalez. 2005. “Towards Alternative Model(s) of Local Innovation.” Urban Studies, 42, (11): 1969-1990.

Movement Generation. 2015. “Political Home.” Accessed May 29, 2015. http://movementgeneration.org/our-work/movementbuilding-2/political- home/

411 Mulgan, Geoff. 2007. Social Innovation: What it is, Why it Matters and How it Can Be Accelerated. University of Oxford. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Skoll_Centre/Docs/Social%20 Innovation%20-%20What%20it%20is%2C%20why%20it%20mat- ters%20%26%20how%20it%20can%20be%20accelerated.pdf .

Mulgan, Geoff. 2009. “Europe 2025: Discovering the Future Through Action as Well as Analysis.” In The World in 2025 – Contributions from an expert group, edited by Elie Faroult, 69-75. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Mulgan, Geoff. 2012. “The Theoretical Foundations of Social Innovation”. In Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets, edited by Alex Nicholls and Alex Murdock, 33-54, Basingstoke: Palgrave Mcmillan.

Mulgan, Geoff. 2013. “Joined-Up Innovation – What is Systemic Innovation and How Can it Be Done Effectively.” In Systems Innovation: Discussion Paper, Geoff Mulgan and Charlie Leadbeater, 5-24. London: Nesta. Acces- sed May 29, 2015. http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/systems_inno- vation_discussion_paper.pdf.

Murray, Robin. 2009. Danger and Opportunity: Crisis and the New Social Economy. London: Nesta.

Murray, R., Caulier-Grice, J., Mulgan, G., 2010. The Open Book of Social Innovation. London: Nesta. Accessed May 28, 2015. http://www.nesta.org. uk/sites/default/files/the_open_book_of_social_innovation.pdf.

Nelson, Harold G., and Erik Stolterman. 2003. The Design Way: Intentional Change in a Unpredictable World. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications.

Nerdy by Nerds. 2014. “Our story.” Accessed May 29, 2015. http://nerdyby- nerds.com/conceptandstory/

Nicholls, Alex and Alex Murdock, editors. 2012. Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets. Basingstoke: Palgrave Mcmillan.

Norman, Will. 2012. Adapting to Change: The Role of Community Resilience. London: The Young Foundation. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://youngfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Adap- ting-to-ChangeOctober-2012.pdf.

Nykvist, Björn, Åsa Persson, Fredrik Moberg, Linn Persson, Sarah Cor- nell, and Johan Rockström. 2013. National Environmental Performan-

412 ce on Planetary Boundaries. Stockholm: Naturvårdsverket. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Nerladdningssida/?- fileType=pdf&pid=8514&downloadUrl=/Documents/publikatio- ner6400/978-91-620-6576-8.pdf.

Nåsander, Nicklas. 2013. “Inledning.” In Kan dödläget brytas? Idépolitiska skrifter i urval 1908-1974. Ernst Wigforss, 11-24. Stockholm: Karneval förlag.

Olofsson, Dan, and Luciano Astudillo. 2013. ”Mer än 1 000 personer har fått arbete. Samarbete mellan näringslivet och det offentliga är vägen framåt”. Sydsvenskan, August 27. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.sydsvenskan. se/opinion/aktuella-fragor/mer-an-1-000-personer-har-fatt-arbete-samarbete-mellan-naringslivet-och-det-of/.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civili- zation: A View from the Future. New York: Columbia University Press.

Oxford English Dictionary. 2015a. “Transformation”. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.oed.com.proxy.mah.se/view/Entry/204743?redirected- From=transformation#eid.

Oxford English Dictionary. 2015b. “Transition”. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.oed.com.proxy.mah.se/view/Entry/204815?rskey=BdRAXI&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.

Ozawa, Connie P. 2012. “Planning Resilient Communities: Insights from Experiences with Risky Technologies.” In Collaborative Resilience: Moving Through Crisis to Opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 19-38. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Papanek, Victor. 1995. The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.

Perez, Carlotta. 2010. ”The Financial Crisis and the Future of Innovation: A View of Technical Change With the Aid of History.” Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics, no. 28, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and The Other Canon Foundation, Norway. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://hum.ttu.ee/wp/paper28.pdf.

Phills, James, A., Kriss Deiglmeier, and Dale T. Miller. 2008. ”Rediscovering Social Innovation.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, 6, (4): 34-43.

413 Pierce, James, Yolande Strengers, Phoebe Sengers, and Susanne Bødker. 2013. “Introduction to the Special Issue on Practice-Oriented Approaches to Sustainable HCI.” ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interactions, (TOCHI) 20, (4): 1-8.

Pierre, Jon, and B. Guy Peters. 2000. Governance, Politics and the State. Basingstoke; New York: Macmillan.

Polanyi, Karl. 2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Prieur, Ran. 2010. “Beyond Civilised & Primitive.” In Dark Mountain: Issue 1, Summer 2010, edited by Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth, 119-135. The Dark Mountain Project.

Raskin, Paul, Tariq Banuri, Gilberto Gallopín, Pablo Gutman, Al Hamond, Robert Kates, and Rob Swart. 2002. Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead. Boston MA: Stockholm Environment Institute. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.greattransition.org/documents/Gre- at_Transition.pdf.

Raskin, Paul. 2014. “A Great Transition? Where We Stand.” Great Transition Initiative, October 2014. Boston MA: Tellus Institute. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.greattransition.org/images/GTI_publications/Raskin_A_ Great_Transition_Where_We_Stand.pdf.

Raupach, Michael R., Anthony J. McMichael, Kristin Alford, Steven Cork, John J. Finnigan, Elisabeht A. Fulton, Nicola J. Grigg, Roger N. Jones, Fiona Leves, Leonore Manderson, and Brian H. Walker. 2012. ”Living Scenarios for Australia as an Adaptive System.” In Negotiating Our Future: Living Scenarios for Australia to 2050, Vol. 1., edited by Michael R. Rau- pach, Anthony J. McMichael, John J. Finnigan, Lenore Manderson, and Brian H. Walker, 1-53. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science. Accessed May 29, 2015. https://26-science.cdn.aspedia.net/sites/default/files/user-content/resources/file/australia-2050-vol-1.pdf/.

Raupach, Michael R. 2012. ”The Evolutionary Nature of Narratives About Expansion and Sustenance.” In: Negotiating Our Future: Living Scenarios for Australia to 2050, Vol. 2. edited by Michael R. Raupach, Anthony J. McMichael, John J. Finnigan, Lenore Manderson, and Brian H. Walker, 201-213. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science. Accessed May 29, 2015. https://13-science.cdn.aspedia.net/sites/default/files/user-content/resources/file/australia-2050-vol-2.pdf.

414 Raworth, Kate. 2012. “A Safe and Just Space for Humanity: Can We Live Within the Doughnut?” Oxfam Discussion Paper, February 2012. Ox- ford: Oxfam. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/ publications/a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-can-we-live-within-the- doughnut-210490.

Reckwitz, Andreas. 2002. “Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Develop- ment in Culturalist Theorizing.” European Journal of Social Theory, 5, (2): 243-263.

Redström, Johan. 2013. “Commentary II: On Hubris, Hammers and a Promise of Practice.” ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interactions, 20, (4).

Rettig, Marc. 2013. “Interaction Awards ’Future Voice Award’ and Studio H: Why?” Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.ixda.org/node/33781.

Rhodes, R. A. W. 1997. Understanding Governance: Policy, Networks, Gover- nance, Reflexivity and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. ”Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences, 4, (2): 155-169.

Robertson, Toni, and Jesper Simonsen. 2013. ”Participatory Design: an introduction.” In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design, edited by Jesper Simonsen and Toni Robertson, 1-17. New York: Routledge.

Robertson, Toni, and Ina Wagner. 2013. ”Engagement, Representation and politics-in-action”. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design, edited by Jesper Simonsen and Toni Robertson, 64-85. New York: Routledge.

Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan A. Foley. 2009. ”A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461, (24 Sept): 472-475.

Rodin, Judith. 2013. ”Innovation for the Next 100 Years.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, 11, (3): 2A.

415 Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N., and Jan Stappers. 2008. “Co-creation and the New Landscapes of Design”. CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. 4, (1): 5-18.

Sanne, Christer. 2012. Hur kan vi leva hållbart 2030. Stockholm: Naturvårds- verket. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Nerladd- ningssida/?fileType=pdf&pid=3833&downloadUrl=/Documents/publikatio- ner6400/978-91-620-6524-9.pdf.

Sayers, Malcolm, Katherine Trebeck and Francis Stuart. 2014. “The Scottish Doughnut: A Safe and Just Operating Space for Scotland.” Oxfam Re- search Reports July 2014. Oxford: Oxfam. Accessed May 29, 2015. http:// policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/the-scottish-doughnut-a-safe- and-just-operating-space-for-scotland-323371.

Schulman, Sarah. 2012. ”Ethical Outrage.” In With For Blog, April 8. Acces- sed May 29, 2015. http://www.inwithfor.org/2012/04/ethical-outrage/#- start.

Schwind, Kirsten. 2009. Community Resilience Toolkit. Oakland: Bay Locali- ze. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.baylocalize.org/toolkit.

Schwind, Kirsten. 2013. Mapping Our Future: A Work Plan for Public En- gagement & Equity in Climate Adaptation Planning in the San Francisco Bay Area. Oakland: Bay Localize. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.baylocalize.org/files/Bay%20Localize%20Mapping%20Your%20Future%20 Report%20Final04.23.13.pdf.

Schön, Donald A. 1984. ”Problems, Frames and Perspectives on Designing.” Design Studies 5, (3): 132-136.

Schön, Donald A. 1987. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers.

Schön, Donald A. 1993. ”Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-setting in Social Policy”. In Metaphor and Thought, edited by Andrew Orto- ny, 137-163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schön, Donald A. 1995. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.

Schön, Donald A., and Martin Rein. 1994. Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. New York: Basic Books.

416 Seravalli, Anna. 2014. “Making Commons (attempts at composing prospects in the opening of production).” PhD thesis. Malmö: Malmö University.

Shareable. 2015. Accessed 29 May, 2015. http://www.shareable.net/.

Simms, Andrew. 2008. Nine Meals from Anarchy: Oil Dependence, Climate Change and the Transition to Resilience. London: New Economics Founda- tion. Accessed May 29, 2015.http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/e0923bb9ffde- ef6ebd_34m6bv9jo.pdf.

Simms, Andrew. 2013. Cancel the Apocalypse: The New Path to Prosperity. London: Little Brown.

Simon, Herbert A. 1994. The Sciences of the Artificial: Second Edition. Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press.

Snow, David A. 2004. Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields. In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 380-412. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Spratt, Stephen, Simms, Andrew, Neizert, Eva, and Josh Ryan-Collins. 2010. The Great Transition: A Tale of How It Turned Out Right. London: New Economics Foundation. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/d28ebb6d4df943cdc9_oum6b1kwv.pdf.

Spiller, Neil. 2013. ”Fictional Influences.” Digital Creativity, 24, (1): 88-92.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. ”The Cosmopolitical Proposal.” In Making Things Public, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 994–1003. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Stenquist, Bjarne. 2009. ”Välfärden behöver ett eget Turning Torso”. Syd- svenskan, May 12. Accessed May 29, 2015. http://www.sydsvenskan.se/ kultur--nojen/kulturkritik/valfarden-behover-ett-eget-turning-torso/.

Stenquist, Bjarne. 2010. Områdesprogram för ett socialt hållbart Malmö. Stadskontoret. Malmö stad

Stenquist, Bjarne. 2012. Interview May 24.

Sterling, Bruce. 2005. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Sterling, Bruce. 2009. ”Design fiction.” Interactions 16: 20-24.

417 Stigendal, Mikael. 2002. Den gode socialvetenskaparen: Vetenskapsteori i vardande. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Stigendal, Mikael. 2011. Malmö – de två kunskapsstäderna. Malmö stad.

Stigendal, Mikael. 2012a. Malmö – från kvantitets- till kvalitetskunskapsstad. Malmö stad.

Stigendal, Mikael. 2012b. Malmö – de två kunskapsstäderna. Lecture at Mal- mö University February 3, 2012.

Stigendal, Mikael, and Per-Olof Östergren. 2013. Malmös väg mot en hållbar framtid: Hälsa, välfärd och rättvisa. Malmö stad.

Stoker, Gerry. 2000. ”Urban Political Science and the Challenge of Urban Go- vernance.” In Debating Governance: Authority, Steering, and Democracy, edited by Jon Pierre. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sustainable Everyday Project. 2015. Sustainable Everyday Project. Accessed June 24, 2015. http://www.sustainable-everyday-project.net/.

Swyngedouw, Erik. 2005. ”Governance Innovation and the Citizen: The Janus Face of Governance beyond-the-State.” Urban Studies, 42, (11): 1991–2006.

Swyngedouw, Erik. 2014. ”Anthropocenic Politicization. From the Politics of the Environment to Politicizing Environments.” In Green Utopianism: Per- spectives, Politics and Micro-Practices, edited by Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén, 23-37. New York: Routledge

Tainter, Joseph A. 2006. “Social Complexity and Sustainability.” Ecological Complexity 3: 91-103.

Tanenbaum, Joshua, Karen Tanenbaum, and Ron Wakkary. 2012. “Steam- punk as Design Fiction.” In Proceedings of the SIGHCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 1583-1592.

Thackara, John. 2005. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Thackara, John. 2014. “Reading small signals.” Doors of Perception Blog on June 21. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://www.doorsofperception.com/most- read/mid-year-newsletter-reading-small-signals/.

418 Tillton, Timothy A. 1984. “Utopia, Incrementalism, and Ernst Wigforss’ Conception of a Provisional Utopia.” Scandinavian Studies, 56, (1): 36-54.

Tillväxt Malmö. 2014. “Frågor och svar.” http://tillvaxtmalmo.se/tillvaxtm/ fragor-och-svar/.

Tomlinson, Bill, M. Six Silberman, Donald Patterson, Yue Pan, and Eli Blevis. 2012a. “Collapse Informatics: Augmenting the Sustainability & ICT4D in HCI.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 655-664.

Tomlinson, Bill, Donald Patterson, Yue Pan, Eli Blevis, Bonnie Nardi, Six Silberman, Juliet Norton, and Jr LaViola Joseph. 2012b. “What if Sustaina- bility Doesn’t Work Out?” Interactions, 19, (6): 50-55.

Tomlinson, Bill, Eli Blevis, Bonnie Nardi, Donald J. Patterson, M. SIX Sil- berman, and Yue Pan. 2013. “Collapse Informatics and Practice: Theory, Method and Design.” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 20, (4): 1-26.

Tonkinwise, Cameron. 2010. ”Politics Please, We’re Social Designers”. Core 77, September 1. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://www.core77.com/blog/fea- tured_items/politics_please_were_social_designers_by_cameron_tonkinwi- se__17284.asp.

Transition Network. 2015. ”Where.” Accessed May 31, 2015. https://www. transitionnetwork.org/where.

Ulv Lenskjold, Tau and Li Jönsson. 2013. “A Foray Into Not-Quite Com- panion Species: Design Experiments With Urban-Animals As Significant Others.” In NORDES 2013 Online Proceedings. 322-331. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://www.nordes.org/nordes2013/pictures/Nordes2013Procee- dings.pdf

Unger, Roberto Magabeira. 2013. ”Professor Unger, Social Frontiers Speech.” (transcript). London: Nesta. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://www.nesta.org. uk/sites/default/files/professor_unger_social_frontiers_transcript.pdf.

United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, 2012. Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing. New York: United Nations. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://uscib.org/docs/GS- PReportOverview_A4%20size.pdf.

Uppstart Malmö. 2011. “Inkubator för nya jobb och innovationer.” Pro- jektansökan ur EG:s strukturfonder. 1-17.

419 Walker, Brian, C.S. Holling, Stephen R. Carpenter, and Ann Kinzig. 2004. “Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological Sys- tems.” Ecology and Society, 9, (2): 5.

Wakkary, Ron, Audrey Desjardins, Sabrina Hauser, and Leah Maestri. 2013. “A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices.” ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interactions, 20, (4): 1-34.

Warberg, Fredrik, and Jörgen Larsson. 2005. Rik på riktigt: En värdefull vardag är möjlig! Stockholm: Bokförlaget Natur och Kultur.

Weber, Edward P. 2012. “Getting to Resilience in a Climate-Protected Community: Early Problem-Solving Choices, Ideas, and Governance Philo- sophy.” In Collaborative Resilience: Moving through crisis to opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 177-206. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

West, Dan. 2014. “Worlds First Portable Wind Turbine for USB Devices.” Walden Labs, Septemper 9. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://waldenlabs. com/worlds-first-portable-wind-turbine-usb-devices/.

Westerlund, Bo. 2009. “Design Space Exploration: Co-operative Creation of Proposals for Desired Interactions with Future Artefacts.” PhD thesis. Stockholm: Kungliga Tekniska högskolan.

Westley, Frances, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton. 2007. Getting to Maybe: How the world is changed. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Westley, Frances. 2008. The Social Innovation Dynamic. University of Wa- terloo. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://sig.uwaterloo.ca/sites/default/files/ documents/TheSocialInnovationDynamic_001.pdf.

Westley, Frances, Sean Goebey, and Kirsten Robinson. 2012. “Change Lab/ Design Lab for Social Innovation.” Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience. Accessed May 31, 2015. http://sig.uwaterloo.ca/sites/default/files/documents/Paper_FINAL_Lab%20for%20Social%20Innovation. pdf.

Westley, Frances, and Nino Antadze. 2010. “Making a Difference: Strategies for Scaling Social Innovation for Greater Impact”. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 15,(2): 1-18. Accessed June 2, 2015. http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/westley2antadze2make_differen- ce_final.pdf.

Westley, Frances. 2013. “Social Innovation and Resilience: How One Enhan- ces the Other.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, 11, (3): 6A.

420 Wigforss, Ernst. 2013. Kan dödläget brytas? Idépolitiska skrifter i urval 1908- 1974. Stockholm: Karneval förlag.

Wikipedia. 2014. News From Nowhere. Accessed July 3, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere

Wikipedia. 2015. Soft Science Fiction. Accessed July 3, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction.

Wilkinson and Pickett. 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. New York: Allen Lane.

Wood, John. 2007. Designing for Micro-Utopias: Making the Unthinkable Possible. Aldershot: Gower.

World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso.

Zellner, Moira L., Charles J. Hoch, and Eric W. Welch. 2012. “Leaping For- ward: Building Resilience by Communicating Vulnerability.” In Collabora- tive Resilience: Moving through crisis to opportunity, edited by Bruce Evan Goldstein, 39-59. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Zetterlund, Christina. 2011. “Historical Perspectives, an Interview with Helena Mattsson and Christina Zetterlund by Magnus Ericson”. In Design Act: Socially and Politically Engaged Design Today – Critical Roles and Emerging Tactics, edited by Magnus Ericson and Ramia Maze. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Östergren, Per-Olof. 2012. Hur hänger en socialt hållbar utveckling och häl- sans jämlikhet ihop? Malmö stad.

421 422 Dissertation series in

New Media, Public Spheres and Forms of Expression

Faculty of Culture and Society Malmö University

1. Denward, Marie. Pretend that it is Real! Convergence Culture in Practice, 2011. 2. Memmott, Talan. Digital Rhetoric and Poetics. Signifying Strategies in Electronic Literature, 2012. 3. Eriksen, Mette Agger. Material Matters in Co-designing. Formatting & Staging with participating Materials in Co-design Projects, Events & Situations, 2012. 4. Gansing, Kristoffer. Transversal Media Practices. Media Archaeology, Art and Technological Development, 2013. 5. Lindström, Kristina & Ståhl, Åsa. Patchworking Publics-in-the- Making. Design, Media and Public Engagement, 2014. 6. Hobye, Mads. Designing for Homo Explorens. Open Social Play in Performative Frames, 2014. 7. Seravalli, Anna. Making Commons. Attempts at Composing Prospects in the Opening of Production, 2014. 8. Emilson, Anders. Design in the Space Between Stories. Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability—From Responding to Societal Challenges to Preparing for Societal Collapse. 2015.

423 424

ANDERS EMILSON DISSERTATION: NEW MEDIA, PUBLIC SPHERES AND FORMS OF EXPRESSION ANDERS EMILSON DESIGN IN THE SPACE BETWEEN STORIES

MALMÖ UNIVERSITY 205 06 MALMÖ, SWEDEN WWW.MAH.SE

isbn 978-91-7104-633-8_omslag_tryck.indd Alla sidor 2015-07-30 13:42