Objects for peaceful disordering: Indigenous designs and practices of protest

What do a piece of plumbing pipe, some wire netting, some adhesive tape, two loops of nylon webbing and a carabiner have in common? Nothing, until they are assembled, in a design. In turn, the object these components comprise comes into being only with the presence of human beings. These are the components of a device known as a ‘lock-on’; some sundry objects that you would find in a builders’ merchant and some people’s bodies – peace activists pursuing non-violent direct action. Peace activists use lock-ons to join themselves together by the arms to enhance the power of their passive resistance. This paper identifies a number of theoretical approaches to objects of this sort. It is intended to initiate a discussion of the lock-on as an example of an ‘indigenous’ design that has appeared without professional designers, evolving as part of the practice of peace protest. As well as considering the way that the lock-on may have evolved, referring to Langrish's (2004) analysis of design in terms of Darwinian evolution, the paper refers to 'practice' in the sense found in the sociological study of culture, in the work of Bourdieu (1977) and others, summed up recently by Reckwitz (2002). Drawing as it does from a range of sources, including the social study of technology, ‘practice theory’ seems to have a good deal to offer a conception of design that seeks to influence the world positively beyond the point of sale. In common with other recent strands in design research such as the Participative Design that has grown out of the study of human computer interaction, practice theory acknowledges that our relationships to objects are socially important. Together with cultural knowledge and embodied skill objects form ‘compounds’ with people that evolve through time (Shove 2006). This paper raises the possibility that the transforming power of designing may be enhanced if it is acknowledged that it is most powerful when it takes place in full articulation with practices. This principle is inscribed in contemporary 'user oriented' design process, but the lock-on is an extreme example of it, since no professional designers are involved in its production and its social purpose is not commercial but political. Politically engaged design is often directed at issues of sustainability and work with NGOs and these contexts for designing may be the closest in kind to that which has produced the lock-on. A ‘practice orientated’ approach to design might be able to engage with the full relationship between things and the agents they imply, their bodies, their minds, the knowledge they have, the emotions they feel, the discourses they engage with. For this reason it seems to be a useful framework through which to understand an object like the lock on which has emerged out of an identifiable practice. The nature of this practice may also be inspiring in itself, as in this example, which works against weapons of mass destruction. The paper offers an initial analysis of the evolution and current use of the 'lock-on' in UK non violent direct action as an example of an indigenous design that is part of a practice and indicates the potential for further research that would seek more fully to understand the history and development of the lock-on to both test the applicability of practice theory and to seek insights into human/ object relationships in other contexts. "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored." (King, 2000: 77)