The Special Issue gathers state-of-the-art contributions from leading scholars in the fields of design and anthropology who can demonstrate and discuss the potential value of design anthropology to a diverse community of design studies and practice. Based on the long-standing engagement with the social, empirical research, and ethnography in/for design, new forms of interdisciplinary engagements by anthropologists within and across the fields of design and anthropology are emerging. These encounters are concerned with exploring possible futures through research and intervention in specific sites, processes and situated everyday contexts. They involve social theory and systematic analysis rooted in human concerns, practices and imaginations. The special issue will demonstrate and discuss how design anthropological engagements are widening the scope and developing new approaches to design research and practice. These prompt us to reconceptualize ethnography’s position in design beyond the empirical turn, as well as to develop the theoretical and methodological foundations of design anthropology as a field of research and practice.
