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Lab short abstract

Design and anthropology share a growing relationship rooted in power, acquisition, and neoliberal regimes. This Lab invites design anthropologists and practitioners to challenge disciplinary hierarchies and open critical, multimodal inquiries through polarized edible and wearable objects.

Lab long abstract

The Anthropology, Dates, Design Lab invites participants to rethink anthropological relations by means of design. By positioning designers not as auxiliary contributors but as interlocutors, we aim to broaden current debates on multimodal anthropology beyond methodological experimentation toward a more critically grounded form of practice. Dates and outfits of different varieties, sources, and marketing claims serve to anchor the critical discussion. Three out of every four Medjoul dates are produced in Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Examining the packaging and infrastructural design, consumers make engaged decisions in solidarity with Palestine, whose date farmers face tremendous hurdles in harvesting and exporting their produce under Israeli occupation. Design mediates polarised political narratives through everyday commodities. The Kufiyeh, a Palestinian symbol of identity and resistance, has been decontextualised by the global design industry and repackaged as an aesthetic commodity. Yet simultaneously, this appropriation and mass production have enabled activists to reclaim the garment for solidarity action. These cases of edible and wearable design bring into focus: How is design complicit in obfuscating settler colonialism while simultaneously creating space for resistance? What roles does design play in both increasing polarisation and in mobilising counter-narratives? What kind of anthropological perspectives can we map when critical design theory and practices come into play?

At the intersection of design and anthropology as a growing relationship rooted in histories of power, acquisition, and neoliberal regimes, This lab invites design anthropologists and practitioners to challenge disciplinary hierarchies and open critically grounded modes of multimodal inquiry for imagining different worlds.