Sensing Arrangements

Introduction

Sensing the social arrangements that shape our lives is the first step to deploying the I-A-E framework, but it can be harder than it sounds!

Arrangements can be large or small, hard or soft, not to mention taken for granted, obscure, or overlapping.

It takes plenty of practice to develop a sense for identifying arrangements out in the world, or just under our noses for that matter.

What arrangements do we sense in a grocery store?

Your turn: What arrangements do you sense?

Watch this short documentary, How Supermarkets Took Over, and reflect on how the arrangements of “supermarkets” arrange our lives, our bodies, our time, etc.

  • What arrangements do you notice in this video?

  • What ideas are embedded in these arrangements?

  • What effects are produced by these arrangements?

projects that help us sense arrangements

“Capitalism Works for Me!”

Steve Lambert’s “Capitalism Works for Me!” reminded passersby that their lives operated within the meta-arrangement of capitalism; it forced people to see an arrangement that often goes unquestioned.

Steve Lambert’s “Capitalism Works for Me!” in Times Square, New York City, 2008.

Using the iconography of the flashy, lit up sign, Lambert invited folks to simply vote true or false to the sign’s cheery statement: “Capitalism works for me!” In doing so, he created a spectacle that worked as both an attractor to engage the public and a simple invitation to weigh in—not on the merits of capitalism writ large, but on their own experience of it.

Space Bingo

We first designed Space Bingo for a cohort of youthworkers thinking about “out of school time” for young people. We wanted a tool that would help them think about “out of school space,” and the impact the arrangements of space had on the young people traversing them.

An example bingo board made by DS4SI.

We have since played Space Bingo with all sorts of activists, and first and foremost it seems to help people literally see the arrangements of space around them. It is one thing to talk broadly about “gentrified neighborhoods” or “unsafe streets,” but another to look at a new cafe and say “this is a space for a desired public” or look at a street clogged with cars, buses and bikes and say “this is a contested space.”

These spaces might make us believe we are the desirable or undesirable public, that we belong and should be protected or that we are as ugly as the prefab buildings and businesses that get zoned into poor neighborhoods.

What ideas about people and neighborhoods are embedded in spatial arrangements, and what effects do these arrangements have?

three Tools for Sensing Arrangements

Featured
Hanging out at the Mall
Hanging out at the Mall

In many of our towns and cities, the mall is functioning as more than just a mall. It's a teen center, a walking track, a people watching place, a cooling station... the list goes on. In fact, the mall is playing roles that might be better played by other kinds of spaces- public spaces.

Observing Fandom: Learning from the Ordinary
Observing Fandom: Learning from the Ordinary

Every year, there’s always a new sports season. These seasonal sports shape the experience of our town, city, or place. One way these events change our experience of a place is through the arrival of that particular sport's fandom. What are the sports events that affect life where you live?

Space Bingo
Space Bingo

This is a great exercise to help you and your collaborators to talk about spaces and to look at spaces in new ways. It works equally well across scale, from a school campus to a city or town.

Practice: Connecting

I-A-E with Design

We want those of us who care about social justice to see ourselves as designers of everyday life, rather than simply participants in a world we didn’t create or consent to. By using design to intervene in existing arrangements and imagine new ones, we can produce new effects—ones that make a society more just and vibrant.