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Ancestral and Cultural Futuring: Speculative Design in an Indigenous OvaHimba Context

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Association for Computing Machinery

Abstract

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring in two indigenous ovaHimba communities in northwest Namibia. Over a series of sessions, we, as part of a broad green energy access project, explore futuring to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the opposition of the dominant needs-based and interventionist approach and imagination of unorthodox green energy utilisation that supersedes mainstream, rudimentary and obvious energy use. We reflect on the application of futuring, particularly speculative design, in an indigenous context, highlighting the communities’ back-looking future perspective, and relevance and influence of ancestry and culture over the future. As well as accentuate the friction towards speculative design, arguing for its appropriation and alignment to a more grounded design approach. Moreover, we indicate the agency that it provides, allowing local participants to re-evaluate their values and practices and simultaneously determine the integration of technology into the future.

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Muashekele, Chris; Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike; Rodil, Kasper; Koruhama, Alphons (2023): Ancestral and Cultural Futuring: Speculative Design in an Indigenous OvaHimba Context. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Communities and Technologies. DOI: 10.1145/3593743.3593761. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 85–95. Lahti, Finland

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Speculative design, Namibia, Indigenous participants, Futuring, Green energy

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Number of citations to item: 5

  • Chris Muashekele, Kasper Rodil, Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Shorty Kandjengo (2024): Recovering lost futures of the past: Situating alternative futures within an indigenous Afrocentric orientation and past trajectory, In: Participatory Design Conference 2024, doi:10.1145/3666094.3666101
  • EunJeong Cheon, Vera Khovanskaya (2024): Amazon Z to A: Speculative Design to Understand the Future of Labor-Intensive Workplaces, In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference, doi:10.1145/3643834.3661561
  • Chris Muashekele, Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Kasper Rodil, Uariaike Mbinge (2023): Infusing Futuring into Community-based Co-design: A Pathway to Innovative Technology Design with Indigenous Communities in Africa, In: Proceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference, doi:10.1145/3628096.3629049
  • Victor Vadmand Jensen, Kristina Laursen, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Rachel Charlotte Smith (2024): Imagining Sustainable Energy Communities: Design Narratives of Future Digital Technologies, Sites, and Participation, In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, doi:10.1145/3613904.3642609
  • Asnath Paula Kambunga, Karen Waltorp (2024): Navigating Load Shedding: Tech Entrepreneurs at the Edge of Africa's Silicon Cape, In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, doi:10.1145/3677045.3685424
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