ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the possibilities of combining design and anthropology through the notion of conversation dispositifs: speculative and interventionist research experiments developed to open up dialogue and engagement among researchers, students and inhabitants in the urban setting. It also discusses the possibilities of developing an experimental research practice that results, simultaneously, in an anthropology by means of design, and in an anthropologically oriented design practice. The concept of conversation dispositifs emerges from an experimental research agenda initially formulated to explore the possible combinations between modes of knowledge production in design and anthropology. So, with the concept of conversation dispositifs, we enter the dimension of transversality among the heterogeneous agents with their different knowledge and practices that lead, in turn, to transversal and transdisciplinary approaches. The chapter highlights two kinds of design tactics—projection and tracing—and how they behave in relation to temporality.
