Papers by Ron Eglash
Shape Shifting, 2015
Eglash, Ron, and Colin K. Garvey. “Hybridity, Humanity and Biodiversity.” In Shape Shifting, edit... more Eglash, Ron, and Colin K. Garvey. “Hybridity, Humanity and Biodiversity.” In Shape Shifting, edited by Elke Marhöfer and Mikhail Lylov, 58–68. Berlin: Archive Books, 2015.
*This is a chapter from a combination book/film called Shape Shifting, which looked at the Japanese "satoyama," a traditional concept of dwelling. Several anthropologists, including Anna Tsing, also contributed chapters.
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European Journal of Engineering Education, 2007
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Chaos Theory in Politics, 2014
Eglash, Ron, and Colin Garvey. “Basins of Attraction for Generative Justice.” In Chaos Theory in ... more Eglash, Ron, and Colin Garvey. “Basins of Attraction for Generative Justice.” In Chaos Theory in Politics, 1st ed., 75–88. Understanding Complex Systems. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.
*It has long been known that dynamic systems typically tend towards some state – an “attractor” – into which they finally settle. The introduction of chaos theory has modified our understanding of these attractors: we no longer think of the final “resting state” as necessarily being at rest. In this essay we
consider the attractors of social ecologies: the networks of people, technologies and natural resources that makeup our built environments. Following the work of “communitarians” we posit that basins of attraction could be created for social ecologies that foster both environmental sustainability and social justice.We refer to this confluence as “generative justice”; a phrase which references both the “bottomup”, self-generating source of its adaptive meta stability, as well as its grounding in
the ethics of egalitarian political theory.
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Critical Interventions journal, 2012
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Eglash, R., Bennett, A., O'Donnell, C., Jennings, S., and Cintorino, M. "Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom." American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, No. 2. (2006), pp. 347–362
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Cultural Studies, 1998
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Science As Culture, 2001
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Social Text, 2002
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American Anthropologist, 1997
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Science Technology & Human Values, 1997
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American Anthropologist, 2006
Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematical ideas and practices situated in their cultural cont... more Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematical ideas and practices situated in their cultural context. Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs) are web-based software applications that allow students to create simulations of cultural arts—Native American beadwork, African American cornrow hairstyles, urban graffiti, and so forth—using these underlying mathematical principles. This article is a review of the anthropological issues raised in the CSDT project: negotiating the representations of cultural knowledge during the design process with community members, negotiating pedagogical features with math teachers and their students, and reflecting on the software development itself as a cultural construction. The move from ethnomathematics to ethnocomputing results in an expressive computational medium that affords new opportunities to explore the relationships between youth identity and culture, the cultural construction of mathematics and computing, and the formation of cultural and technological hybridity.
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Book Chapters by Ron Eglash
Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design, 2006
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Books: Edited Collections by Ron Eglash
In an age of globalization and connectivity, the idea of "mainstream culture" has become quaint. ... more In an age of globalization and connectivity, the idea of "mainstream culture" has become quaint. Websites, magazines, books, and television have all honed in on ever-diversifying subcultures, hoping to carve out niche audiences that grow savvier and more narrowly sliced by the day. Consequently,the discipline of graphic design has undergone a sea change. Where visual communication was once informed by a designer's creative intuition, the proliferation of specialized audiences now calls for more research-based design processes.
Designers who ignore research run the risk of becoming mere tools for communication rather than bold voices. Design Studies, a collection of 27 essays from an international cast of top design researchers, sets out to mend this schism between research and practice. The texts presented here make a strong argument for performing rigorous experimentation and analysis. Each author outlines methods in which research has aided their designwhether by investigating how senior citizensreact to design aesthetics, how hip hop culture can influence design, or how design for Third World nations is affected by cultural differences. Contributors also outline inspired ways in which design educators can teach research methods to their students. Finally, Design Studies is rounded out by five annotated bibliographies to further aid designers in their research. This comprehensive reader is the definitive reference for this new direction in graphic design, and an essential resource for both students and practitioners.
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Papers by Ron Eglash
*This is a chapter from a combination book/film called Shape Shifting, which looked at the Japanese "satoyama," a traditional concept of dwelling. Several anthropologists, including Anna Tsing, also contributed chapters.
*It has long been known that dynamic systems typically tend towards some state – an “attractor” – into which they finally settle. The introduction of chaos theory has modified our understanding of these attractors: we no longer think of the final “resting state” as necessarily being at rest. In this essay we
consider the attractors of social ecologies: the networks of people, technologies and natural resources that makeup our built environments. Following the work of “communitarians” we posit that basins of attraction could be created for social ecologies that foster both environmental sustainability and social justice.We refer to this confluence as “generative justice”; a phrase which references both the “bottomup”, self-generating source of its adaptive meta stability, as well as its grounding in
the ethics of egalitarian political theory.
Book Chapters by Ron Eglash
Books: Edited Collections by Ron Eglash
Designers who ignore research run the risk of becoming mere tools for communication rather than bold voices. Design Studies, a collection of 27 essays from an international cast of top design researchers, sets out to mend this schism between research and practice. The texts presented here make a strong argument for performing rigorous experimentation and analysis. Each author outlines methods in which research has aided their designwhether by investigating how senior citizensreact to design aesthetics, how hip hop culture can influence design, or how design for Third World nations is affected by cultural differences. Contributors also outline inspired ways in which design educators can teach research methods to their students. Finally, Design Studies is rounded out by five annotated bibliographies to further aid designers in their research. This comprehensive reader is the definitive reference for this new direction in graphic design, and an essential resource for both students and practitioners.
*This is a chapter from a combination book/film called Shape Shifting, which looked at the Japanese "satoyama," a traditional concept of dwelling. Several anthropologists, including Anna Tsing, also contributed chapters.
*It has long been known that dynamic systems typically tend towards some state – an “attractor” – into which they finally settle. The introduction of chaos theory has modified our understanding of these attractors: we no longer think of the final “resting state” as necessarily being at rest. In this essay we
consider the attractors of social ecologies: the networks of people, technologies and natural resources that makeup our built environments. Following the work of “communitarians” we posit that basins of attraction could be created for social ecologies that foster both environmental sustainability and social justice.We refer to this confluence as “generative justice”; a phrase which references both the “bottomup”, self-generating source of its adaptive meta stability, as well as its grounding in
the ethics of egalitarian political theory.
Designers who ignore research run the risk of becoming mere tools for communication rather than bold voices. Design Studies, a collection of 27 essays from an international cast of top design researchers, sets out to mend this schism between research and practice. The texts presented here make a strong argument for performing rigorous experimentation and analysis. Each author outlines methods in which research has aided their designwhether by investigating how senior citizensreact to design aesthetics, how hip hop culture can influence design, or how design for Third World nations is affected by cultural differences. Contributors also outline inspired ways in which design educators can teach research methods to their students. Finally, Design Studies is rounded out by five annotated bibliographies to further aid designers in their research. This comprehensive reader is the definitive reference for this new direction in graphic design, and an essential resource for both students and practitioners.
What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?
Edited by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Overview
In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. “Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere,” observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume’s editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable.
The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of “fixing”; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production.
Contributors
Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash,
Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer