Entanglements of Designing Social Innovation in the Asia-Pacific

Rooted in the places, cultures, histories, and wisdom of the diverse Asia-Pacific region, this book gathers heterogeneous practices of designing social innovation that address various social, political, and environmental challenges. In contrast to dominant notions of design from the Global North that evolved through industrialisation and modernist thinking, the examples in this book speak to designing that is embodied, relational, temporal, ontological, and entangled deeply with ecologies. This edited volume shares rich and detailed stories from Aotearoa New Zealand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Samoa, Thailand, Vanuatu and a continent now called Australia, that offer honest and critical reflections from practitioners and scholars on designing social innovation. Contributors explore issues of ethics, politics, and positionality in their work. This book highlights the importance of respecting multiple knowledge streams, worldviews, and practices situated in a place. This then supports a plurality of designing social innovation. In all, this book offers ways to sharpen focus on entangled pluralities as a central condition for designing. It is a contribution of hope and inspiration that are becoming more urgently needed in the volatile uncertainties of this world. This book will be of interest to scholars working in social innovation, service design, social design, participatory design, design anthropology, and Asian studies.

Yoko Akama is Associate Professor at RMIT University, School of Design, Australia. Joyce Yee is Professor at Northumbria University, School of Design, United Kingdom.

1. Introduction: Inter-related worldviews of designing social innovation Section 1 2. Teu le va: "Nurture the space in-between" when Designing with Communities 3. Inter-generational care of ecologies through social learning 4. Place-based Citizen Science as a Heartware approach to build shared values and capacity for watershed management 5. Rescripting The Absurd in Indonesia Section 2 6. Infrastructuring resilience for sustaining ecosystems: a story from Chikugo, Japan 7. Calling on "aunties" and "nieces": Empowering women in creative sectors in Southeast Asia through designing mentorship 8. Dynamics of power & participation: lessons from Cambodia and Thailand 9. Relationships matter: the role of family-like bonds and interdependency in designing social innovation practices Section 3 10. Tikanga-led design: Whanau-led Innovation for System Transformation 11. Design tools for the pluriverse: proposals for designing public services 12. Examining design orientations through Indigenous Filipino strengths perspective 13. Reflections on the role of participants and practitioners in situating participatory design practices 14. Uncovering tracks: Towards conscious, embodied international development practice in the Pacific 15. Learning to see oneself, in community: An inquiry into what makes collaborative design come alive within a community in Myanmar