This immensely rich anthology brings together three terms that have traditionally been kept apart. In so doing it enriches all three, highlighting in particular how design and anthropology can conjoin in the active and collaborative unfolding of social possibilities. This unique collection serves as an invitation to anyone interested in the intersection between design and social sciences to move beyond jargon and hype and equip themselves with a critical approach to conceptualising futures. Drawing on canonical anthropology as well as more experimental design anthropology, it is relevant for those who are interested in design thinking, service, social, sustainable, speculative, contestable and propositional practices in short, in design and research for, with and by people. With Design Anthropological Futures, we see the emergent paradigm of a robust, design anthropology as a field in its own right that is beginning to generate its own theoretical insights. The chapters act as case studies for undergraduate courses, as contributions to an anthropology that looks beyond applied and public to making material differences in communities, and as a provocation to imagine anthropology not only as the study of alterity, but as productive of difference. This book should be of interest to those engaged in theorizing the entangled temporalities of past, present, and future, and to those concerned with the practical, political, and economic conditions in which professional design assumes its place in practices of future making. Most importantly, the futures imagined here are those in which the figure of design itself is subject to radical anthropological transformation.
