ABSTRACT
Many innovations from the Global South are described as a resourceful response to adversity. In this chapter, however, we propose that such innovations might instead be viewed as a subversive response to norms, control, and power. By doing so, we begin to see these innovations as a practice of social innovation which responds to the absurd by reasserting the plurality of meanings that can be drawn from the world. Using ethnographic data from Indonesia, we introduce three scenarios of rescripting the absurd, including: a review of how people rescripted things in response to Covid-19, a reflection on the ways that artisans respond to the possible automation of their production processes, and a reflection on how customisation helps people respond to the absurdity of standardisation. Drawing on these case studies, we conclude by identifying three attributes of rescripting which speak to, and could inform, the practices of social innovation – namely building solidarity, participatory boundary setting, and being aspirational.
