FREE ARTICLE: Please sign in or create a free account to access the leading collection of peer-reviewed work on ethnographic practice. To access video, Become an EPIC Member.
1 – Understand Your Reference World
Already back in 1939, in his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’, J.R.R Tolkien differentiated between primary and secondary worlds (Tolkien 1947). The primary world is the real world, while the secondary world is the one existing in the mind of the fairy tale’s author. Some worldbuilders start with a blank sheet of paper and try to imagine the secondary world from scratch (e.g. J.R.R Tolkien with Lord of the Rings). Others try to connect the real world to the imagined one (e.g. C.S. Lewis with The Chronicles of Narnia).
Since we want to contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive future world version, we need to start with our current one as a reference. One of the keys to succeed in worldbuilding, thus, is to ground your future assumptions in the real world that exists out there. When it comes to the matter of figuring out what kind of world would be desirable for all actors involved there is simply no way around this step. A simple survey asking what they wish for will not cut it. You have to get out there, feel the different situations, feel how they are in the world, how they embody it, how they collectively connect to it and why they feel a sense of belonging. You need to be out there in the world.
One of the recent projects of the USC School for Cinematic Art was Dry City, which played with the imagination that water could be “privatized, commodified and transformed into a new currency” as the result of a global economic disaster (Hollon 2018). To achieve more realistic images of the future, “student architects, interactive media designers, musicians, engineers, urban planners, animators, filmmakers and artists (…) collaboratively envisioned multiple interlocking and holistic aspects of the future world, [based on] deeply grounded research into real present-day Lagos” (ibid.). They conducted literature research, video analysis and interviews with locals and experts from various fields (ibid.) as the very basis for their entire concept. This is where anthropology can be of immense value.
To understand your target’s primary world, we have to dive into some of the basic social theories about socio-technical worlds. The spaces we live in, the communities we belong to, the rituals and transformations we go through – altogether define the individual and constantly shaping worlds we experience, with a multitude of entanglements and actors. The following three theoretical thoughts I would like to offer as a sort of a basis for innovators to engage with. Certainly anthropology, and other disciplines provide much more to dive into, which cannot be covered in a single page.
Phenomenology And Life-Worlds
Phenomenology is the study and description of experiences (phenomena) and how they shape our everyday life and our understanding of the worlds we find ourselves in. According to phenomenology, our worlds include social, perceptual, and practical experiences, which we interpret and thereby contribute to our so-called life-worlds.
The life-world is basically our personal world version. It is a little bit like the bubble each of us naturally lives in, which we construct – willingly or not – around us. Unavoidingly, our ‘bubble’ constantly interacts, overlaps and collides with the ‘bubbles’ of others. These lifeworlds are what innovators need to research, provoke and challenge, especially when trying to inform a future world version. By studying the life-worlds of people, meaning their interpretation and construction of reality today combined with their desires, aspirations and images for tomorrow, innovators will learn much about potential values, rules and expectations for new innovation (without necessarily focusing on the problem – right away or at all). Relevant authors of related thinking include e.g.: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Alfred Kraus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Hubert Dreyfuß.
Actor-Network-Theory
As the name suggests, actor-networks are central to this theoretical thought. Basically, it understands the world as a system of different human and non-human actors that are connected in a multitude of ever shifting networks which in turn translate into various forms and outcomes. Consequently any thing, any technology, any community or world (if you will) is simply the sum of all human and non-human actors involved, which often remain hidden to the viewer at first. An often referred example for this is a blackbox, which is by definition not possible to understand unless opened up. For the understanding of your primary world, this means that you should map the actors in your world, sketch their relations and interactions, and thereby try to uncover insights that remained invisible to you before. Relevant authors of related thinking include e.g.: Bruno Latour, Michel Collon, Madeleine Akriech, and John Law.
Post-phenomenology & Human-Technology-World Relations
According to postphenomenology, we can distinguish between several different human-technology-world relations which innovators can use to understand socio-technical interdependencies. These relations build on the concept of technological mediation, which e.g. Merleau-Ponty has demonstrated in his blind person’s cane example. This he argued, the blind person embodies as an extension of the arm to feel, see and interact with the environment – thus the cane mediates the experience of the world around (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Something similar happens with a bike that we use to enhance our motor skills but also to feel the ground beneath us; or a smartphone speaker that translates electricity into a magnetic field and into movements compressing air, which we sense as sounds; or sensors of the semi-autonomous car (e.g. radars, lidars, ultrasonic sound sensors, etc.) helping us perceive our environment beyond our own human capabilities, yet not fully disengaging us from interacting with our surroundings, nor disabling our own senses from feeling the ride as a whole-body experience (Rasmussen et. al. 2016). Thus, technology enhances human capabilities but also engages humans in new ways of experiencing our worlds. By studying and envisioning these mediations, the anthropological innovator develops a micro-level understanding of socio-technical interplays, which will very much guide the outcome of innovation projects and might help to expect certain forms of user adoptions.
Post-phenomenology has introduced seven human-technology-world relations including: the embodiment relation; the hermeneutic relation; the altery relation; the background relation; the cyborg relation; the immersion relation; and augmentation; all of which can be used to understand how humans, technologies and the world surrounding both are connected and influence each other. Relevant authors of related thinking include e.g.: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde, and Peter Paul Verbeek.
The above described theoretical concepts are just a few of many which anthropologists use or think about in their everyday work. Others worth looking into include concepts of belonging, meaning, value, rituals, society, institutions, and many more. Subdisciplines include business anthropology, design-anthropology, digital anthropology, with several valuable methodologies that have been developed and practiced over decades precisely to understand known and unknown worlds.
To make all of this more digestible, with Target Worlds I created a first version guide that hopes to help innovators in understanding their targeted world as a reference for the future.
Figure 14: Building target worlds – Step 1
1.1 – Map Your World
Mapping the ecosystem, including all actors is the first step to get an overview. What ecosystems do you belong to? Map the people that live in your world, how they relate to each other, what roles they play, what tools they use, how and where they spend their time and why. Map the technologies that exist in the world and how they relate to the actors. You can use actor-network theory for mapping, human-technology-relations from post-phenomenology, mediation theory and embodiment to understand how all actors might relate to each other and what kind of effects they might have on another.
1.2 – Understand Your Role In The World
Who are you and what are your key touchpoints with the world you are part of? How do your key touchpoints relate to the rest of the world? How do you contribute to the world, how might you oppress, influence, manipulate, support and develop elements of your world? Who are the people that you serve, interact with, and what does their world look like beyond your touchpoints? Who do they interact with? What physical and virtual spaces do they engage in?
1.3 – Set The Sails And Go Rediscover Your World
To truly understand your world plan for a little bit of fieldwork. Of course interviews are better than nothing, but the really interesting things happen only once you move into the world you mapped out; once you engage with it, feel it, embody it, and observe how your map looks in reality. It is indeed a reality check. Before going out into the field, though, prepare a little bit for the future already because once in the field you can study your reference world and desires futures in one go.
2 – Explore Desired Futures & Enchant Your Target World
Michael Saler (2012) expresses the act of worldbuilding as “re-enchanting” today’s reality with detailed desires and images of alternative fictional worlds or futures. Thus, when engaging with your primary world today, make sure to study desired futures of people as well to understand how you want to re-enchant it to become your target world. It is not about scenarios, signals of what is probable or plausible, it is about one’s imagination of better versions of future worlds. Do not focus on what is possible just yet, but also keep it realistic to some extent. Exploring your world’s desires means to engage with the current first, which you already achieve in step one.
Figure 15: Building target worlds – Step 2
2.1 – Engage In Your World’s Desires
Similarly to mapping your current world, take a clean sheet of paper, and start sketching from scratch again – only now you are not alone. In step 1.3 you set your sails for field work. By now, the ship has left the harbor, and you are arriving at the island you were aiming for. With your world’s map from step 1.1 in your hand, and the “regions” you want or need to understand in more detail, you are directly heading for the future. Observe, engage in these spaces. Engage in the moments others have in your world, and try to really make sense of the way people around you feel and belong to this world. All sorts of different ethnographic tool sets can help you to achieve this. Observe, talk to the people, ask them how they experience the moment, a certain tool, a particular service, try to live through those kinds of moments with them together. Build a relationship. Every now and then look back at your map from step 1.1. and check whether your map still represents the many realities you experience whilst being part of this world. And then, when you have this relationship, take them by the hand and try to imagine the best future version they could think of – no matter whether this is 2 years from now or 20, no matter whether it involves technologies that do not exist yet, or not. This is all about dreaming the dream. Invite them for a good coffee, tea or drink, take out your map or a fresh sheet of paper and run through the three levels of futures with them. What kind of macro futures do they dream of, what kind of meso futures do they picture, and what kind of micro futures seem most relevant for them? Document their futures and dreams and bring them back home.
Figure 16: Three levels of desired futures
Make sure that you include at least three people from each relevant group of actors. The amount of people you need to include is entirely up to the scope of the world you focus on.
2.2. – Collectively Revise Your Reference World
After your field trip to understand your reference world and to explore desired future worlds, it is time to revise your map from step 1.1. Involve your entire research team, or even external experts, or maybe even the people you engaged with in the field. Remember the section from earlier called Responsibility. It is your power and responsibility to make sure that you involve the right actors in your innovation network.
First, double check whether your map actually still represents the world you experienced, or whether you realize that you got something slightly wrong before. Does your map represent only your perspective of the many subworlds out there or does it already look like a good representation of the many different lifeworlds you got to know in your field trip earlier? Does it miss something? Did you miss something? Discuss in a group or in break outs what you learned from your field trip and how your map of your reference world has changed. Beware of confirmation bias.
2.3 – Collectively Map Your Desired Futures
In the same group, put all your notes, pictures, videos, and maps on the table and reposition them so you form clusters of shared desirable futures and those that might contradict each other. Analyse and map out the big clusters of desired futures that you collected on your fieldtrip. Try to make sense of what this means: what kind of values, aspirations, big change requests, concerns and fears can you read out of it? What does it tell you about the collective images of desired futures your reference world entails? Try to prioritize and list desired futures clusters in a way that seems most important for you and the participants of your group.
3 – Build Your Target World
In the same group as the one from step 2.2 and 2.3, start building your target world now. It might be that parts of your team see different target worlds, or that you do see different elements which fit together and form one target world only. Start by preparing some basics.
Figure 17: Building target worlds – Step 3