Basile Zimmermann

Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters in Alphabet-Encoded Networks

ABSTRACT This article discusses the difference between two ideas of what written language can be—the Roman alphabet versus Chinese characters—and what happens when this difference is embodied in everyday devices such as computers or mobile phones in the Peoples Republic of China today. The articles main argument is that this highly contrasted opposition brings to light an alternative to the problem of the concept of “culture,” in the context of the design and use of artifacts, if we consider it as being related to a specific set of phenomena characterized by the presence of lower-level cultural elements.

Participate, collaborate, and decide: defining design problems in a Syrian community

This paper discusses an exploratory approach for identifying potential ICT design problems in a local community through collaboration with its members. We are currently participating in the activities of a volunteer community in Syria, where members appropriate Facebook and other online tools to collaborate and organize. In such context, conducting participatory design is not straightforward and needs to be problematized. For instance, what is the desired outcome of participation? Who participates in what? And what are the suitable tools? Here we focus on the value of participation in defining relevant design problems in collaboration with the community. We present our research process where we adopt an ethnographic approach guided by the works of sociologists Howard Becker, Juliet Corbin, and Anselm Strauss. We finally describe how this approach also allows us to move from participant observation towards participatory design.

Technology Is Culture: Two Paradigms

The author discusses the relationship of technology to culture in the Peoples Republic of China. Basing his discussion on his experiences in Beijing between 2001 and 2004, the author suggests that the two paradigms of accumulation of decisions and struggle against difference can be used to describe technology in its relation to culture, includingbut not limited topopular electronic music in Beijing.

Circulation: A Theoretical Toolkit

Abstract This paper introduces a framework which we believe has the potential to become a relevant toolkit for researchers involved in the analysis of design history and practice. We show how design can be understood as a circulation process, and how design elements can be understood as forms identified by design studies scholars, which can be followed as they circulate from one instance to another, being either created, conserved, or dissipated. Using the example of the evolution of the iPhone calculator, we illustrate how this framework facilitates a dynamic understanding of how design elements are transported and transformed when traveling through human and nonhuman entities.

Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »

Abstract Chinese studies are going through a period of reforms. This article appraises what could constitute the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary sinology today. The author suggests an approach of “Chinese culture” by drawing from recent frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The paper starts with current debates in Asian studies, followed by a historical overview of the concept of culture in anthropology. Then, two short case studies are presented with regard to two different STS approaches: studies of expertise and experience and the notion of interactional expertise, and the framework of waves and forms. A general argument is thereby sketched which suggests how “Chinese culture” can be understood from the perspective of materiality.

Database Green: Software, Environmentalism and Data Flows in China

Significant efforts towards environmental transparency have been made by the Chinese government since 2008. This paper focuses on the technical decisions shaping a database of official pollution information built and operated by a Chinese NGO known as the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). Issues of standardization, power distribution and institutional fragmentation are discussed. The paper illustrates a case of NGOs integrating enforcement capabilities as data centres amidst the growing reliance on processes of informational governance of environmental issues.

Waves and forms: constructing the cultural in design

While research in HCI on dealing with cultural issues when designing ICTs tended to adopt fixed and taxonomic views, recent theoretical perspectives closer to the social sciences have called for attending to the contingent, fluid, and dynamic aspects of the notion of culture. In this article, we contribute to translating these perspectives into an approach for informing design. We focus on abandoning prior conceptions of culture to allow the discovery of cultural differences through inductive field research while engaging with the target community. This allows a view on cultural difference that is generative for design: it is unique to each case, and it also remains close to the concerns of community members. We base our approach on Basile Zimmermann’s (2015) waves and forms framework, and we illustrate it through our engagement and design with VOCI, a local voluntary community of tech-savvy university students in Syria between 2011 and 2015.