ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors seek to challenge aspects of anthropology and design that curtail their potential to be significant agents of social, material and ecological change for the better. They also seeks to open up the possibility for the anthropological imagination to play a greater role in the shaping of the world; it is critical of anthropology where the discipline tends not to build upon observations of the world and keeps itself at an arm’s length from the practical formation of future environments and things. Addressing design, the authors critique practices that produce and proliferate material things largely ignorant of the extended dynamics of time, materials and ecology. They highlight practices of design and making that both depend upon and generate extended that is, historically sensitive and future-oriented senses of the present. These practices often seem to do this by offering for consideration critical-hopeful possible alternatives—alternatives that are beyond the boundaries of the present as it is currently conceived.
