Critical Jugaad Ontologies: Practices for Just Future

Abstract

Design, however critical, does not emerge exclusively in closed studios of designers or classrooms. Instead, it happens concurrently at the sites of the everyday struggle to survive, resist, and subvert. Yet, very few designers and researchers have emphasized the importance of designerly practices within socially situated contexts that illustrate the underlying critical and political imperatives. To address such perspectives, the author has investigated critical making practices through a conceptual framework of Critical Jugaad that represents designerly making practices from the Global South. In this article, the author further examines an ontology of Critical Jugaad from a futures perspective, through a conversation with the designer and researcher Ernesto Oroza discussing his theory of Technological Disobedience. This inquiry aims to provoke the imaginaries of how we move beyond a western logic of criticality in design through practices that engage with deeper social, cultural, political, and economic conditions of designerly praxis.