Design Anthropology: A Distinct Style of Knowing

[Extract] This book is about design anthropology, which is a fast-developing academic field that combines elements from design and anthropology. The following chapters comprise innovative case studies and theoretical reflections that provide an introduction to the field from the perspective of anthropologists participating in its development. In this introductory chapter, we sketch the contours of this new field and its emergence from the early uses of ethnography in design in the late 1970s up to the present. We argue that design anthropology is coming of age as a separate (sub)discipline with its own concepts, methods, research practices, and practitioners, in short its own distinct style and practice of knowledge production. But first we discuss the two separate knowledge traditions from which this new discipline has developed.