Dewey, Addams, and Design Thinking

Abstract

Looking at Dewey’s and Addams’ aspirations for an ethical democracy, this chapter examines the philosophic and methodological connections between pragmatist social change and contemporary design thinking innovation. Design thinking, a method of problem-solving based in understanding the values and needs of people, has become a useful method of social change in the past decade. It is in many ways comparable to pragmatist social ethics that require empathy as a foundation for democracy and embrace experimentalism, meliorism, and fallibilism. Design thinkers talk about the importance of difference/diversity but often have limited critical reflection on the theoretical underpinnings on the role of power and privilege in the design process. A feminist pragmatist lens can address this and strengthen this experimental approach. Reading Addams’ and Dewey’s work also provides historical context for a contemporary culture of innovation while providing guidance for future social imagining.

Place-Based Philosophical Activism on the US–Mexico Border

“…Still, it is not easy to get right; sympathetic understanding falls victim to false starts, mistakes, and the need for redos. The good news is that pragmatism values an experimental approach to social problems (Whipps 2019). There is, for pragmatists, no other way to begin.…”

Emergent, Relational Revolution: What More Do We Have to Learn from Jane Addams?

“…It is both the starting point for self-critique and the means by which we cultivate social change. That is, being with and open to others over time can uncover implicit biases, reveal values in conflict, and foster relations of empathy (Whipps 2019). It can move us toward situated understandings of different people and enable shared visions of a world with one another that diverge from narrow frames and dominant tropes 2…”

“…Placing this research in relationship with the strategies noted in Table 1 highlights the potential value of a feminist-pragmatist commitment to meliorism when it emerges from sustained relationships across difference. Defined as a living hypothesis that continuous “observation and experience” (Hildrebrand 2013, 59) can be harnessed to “effect change to make the world better” (Whipps 2019, 317), meliorism has been a consistent source of critique. Incremental improvements, critics worry, can be harnessed as convenient facades that cover over and thus sustain root injustices.…”

“…However, placing recent work on Addams alongside research on creativity and social change highlights the potential value in a meliorist approach that is also grounded in relationships across diverse communities (Whipps 2019; Fenton 2019; Fischer 2020). The cultivation of such relationships alongside the commitment to fallibilism can spark radically new ways of thinking and acting in the world.…”

“…Whipps traces the evolution of these words, noting that empathy did not arise until 1909. Addams's use of sympathetic understanding conveys what we mean today when we talk about “coming alongside others and working to understand their lived experience as a basis of democratic change” (Whipps 2019, 319).…”