Public, social and community organizations are, in many locales, driving systems change toward social and...
Tag: sustainability
A Critical Moment for Global Change: Ethnographers Acting on Climate and Sustainability
Ethnography has grown, like many other industries, in tandem with a fossil fuel economy. As evidence of weather, resource and species disruption surround us on a daily basis, the climate sessions provided guideposts and practical resources to adjust and thrive as informed, climate-conscious...
Local Frictions in the Energy Transition: Design Anthropology for the Emergence of Energy Communities
Critical challenges in energy transitions are social and cultural - not just technical and economic. This paper...
Creating Companies and Products Conducive to Life
Melissa Gregg is a senior principal engineer in user experience driving carbon reduction and green software strategy at Intel. With a Ph.D. in gender and cultural studies, she is a widely cited author, theorist, and ethnographer, with over 60 peer-reviewed publications and books. Her research has...
Friction in Sustainability Transitions: Lessons from Organizations and Institutions
Klaus Weber currently serves faculty director for Sustainability and Social Impact at Kellogg. He is also...
Weighing Decisions in Monitoring and Evaluation of Clean Cookstoves
This case study examines agency within monitoring and evaluation (M&E) schemes for international development projects. Specifically, it evaluates a sensor to measure fuel consumption of clean cookstoves as a method of maintaining accountability and soliciting data on stove performance. Despite...
Ethnography First! Promoting Sustainable Lifestyles through Locally Meaningful Solutions
Sustainability & Ethnography in Business Series, Mike Youngblood, Editor When we think of technology and innovation responses to global warming, we tend to imagine grand solutions that address the problem on a massive scale. For many ethnographers, designers in industry and other solution...
Tutorial: Ethnographic Thinking for Wicked Problems – Framing Systemic Challenges and Catalyzing Change
Overview In this interactive tutorial, participants explored ways in which ethnographers can have an expanded role in addressing social issues and other wicked problems. In particular, it explored how...
Navigating Value and Vulnerability with Multiple Stakeholders: Systems Thinking, Design Action and the Ways of Ethnography
A growing cadre of organizations, corporations, NGOs and philanthropic foundations seek to address difficult global problems like poverty using social innovation and technology. Such problems are multivalent, deep-rooted, ever changing and culturally specific. Amid this complicated terrain,...
People and Energy: A Design-led Approach to Understanding Everyday Energy Use Behaviour
Reducing home energy use is a major societal challenge, involving behaviour change alongside infrastructure improvements. However, many approaches lump ‘energy demand’ together as something homogeneous, addressable primarily through quantitative feedback, rather than basing interventions on...