For the last 40 years, anthropotechnology has concentrated its efforts on the study and improvement of the working and living conditions of populations throughout the world. It guides the actors of the design processes by paying attention to the “human factor”: its social, cultural and environmental components. It therefore values a conception of techniques that respect people and their ways of thinking and acting in specific contexts.
This book introduces the reader to design dynamics that combine often conflicting sets of competencies, but that are always anxious to respond to the contexts of the field.
1. Anthropotechnological Practice and Time Politics in the Development Industry.
2. The Appropriation of Knowledge: An Anthropology of Transmission in the Context of Professional Training.
3. At the Heart of the Sensibility: The “Profane” Gold of Madre de Dios.
4. The Fall Between the Objectification of Engineers and the Subjectification of Elderly People: The Challenges of Mediation.
5. In Step with Prosthetic Limbs! A Study of Scaling Up from Local Innovations.
6. Fab Labs: Product Design and Anthropotechnology.
Philippe Geslin is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Applied Sciences, Western Switzerland, and the founder of the first Laboratory of Research in anthropotechnology. His work focuses on the development of anthropotechnology and he is currently working on the forms of ethnographic restitutions through various media: photography, theater and literature.