Special Issue: Embracing Plurality in Designing Social Innovation Practices

This Special Issue (SI) for Design and Culture is an outcome of many conversations over several years, catalyzed by a series of international symposia on Designing Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific (DESIAP), which the editors (Yoko Akama and Joyce Yee) co-facilitated in Singapore in 2015, Bangkok in 2016, and Malaysia in 2017. The symposia series initially began with our mutual curiosity about what kinds of “design” and “social innovation” projects are undertaken in the Asia-Pacific region and by whom, and a desire to create a platform for capacity-building and knowledge-sharing among those tackling systemic and complex challenges with their local communities. The symposia and workshops were funded by our respective universities’ (RMIT and Northumbria) internal grants and Arts and Humanities Research Council UK network funding, together with generous local support by hosting organizations. These events gathered together academics and practitioners initiating change in Australia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The DESIAP event in Bangkok in 2016 also brought together leading design and social change researchers from Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, whose work is guided by reflexive, feminist, and participatory practices.

Read the rest of our Editorial here.

Below are links to the open access version of the 5 papers.

1. 1. The effect of cultural differences on a distant collaboration for Social Innovation: A case study of designing precision farming in Myanmar and South Korea – Joon Sang Baek, Soyoung Kim & Taie Harimoto
   2. Problematizing Replicable Design to Practice Respectful, Reciprocal, and Relational Co-designing with Indigenous People – Yoko Akama, Penny Hagen & Desna Whaanga-Schollum
   3. Design and Social Innovation at the Margins: Finding and Making Cultures of Plurality – Ann Light
   4. Anticipating Precarity and Risk in Social Innovation Design for Entrenched Place-Based Disadvantage – Rachel Clarke & Ingrid Burkett
   5. Transformative Learning as Impact in Social Innovation – Joyce Yee, Bas Raijmakers & Fumiko Ichikawa