Design + Anthropology ― Converging Pathways in Anthropology and Design

This book explores the evolution of two disciplines, design and anthropology, and their convergence within commercial and organizational arenas. Focusing on the transdisciplinary field of design anthropology, the chapters cover the global forces and conditions that facilitated its emergence, the people that have contributed to its development and those who are likely to shape its future. Christine Miller touches on the invention and diffusion of new practices, the recontextualization of ethnographic inquiry within design and innovations in applications of anthropological theory and methodology. She considers how encounters between anthropology and ‘designerly’ practice have impacted the evolution of both disciplines. The book provides students, scholars and practitioners with valuable insight into the movement to formalize the nascent field of design anthropology and how the relationship between the two fields might develop in the future given the dynamic global forces that continue to impact them both.

Christine Miller is Clinical Associate Professor of Innovation in the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. Her research interests incorporate how sociality and culture influence the design and diffusion of new products, processes, and technologies. She studies technology-mediated communication and knowledge work flows within multiple discipline groups, teams, and networks and the emergence of collaborative innovation networks (COINs).