THEORIES OF CHANGE: The Domains of Everyday Life & The Satisfaction of Needs

CMU Transition Design Seminar from Monday, February 29. Documentation of Seminar session.

Continuing our exploration of theories of change, we build upon Max Neef’s framework of universal needs to arrive at this framework of the domains of everyday life.

Argument:

The loss of the fabric of the domains of everyday life has led to the rise of wicked problems.

Resolving these wicked problems requires us to re-weave the fabric of the domains of everyday life.

The way to do this is through the integration of the satisfaction of (Max Neef’s) needs.

Using a mindset of radical holism, we need to reappropriate the notion of sociality that underlies the quality of relationships in modern society.

Themes & Concepts:

Radical Holism

Some of these ideas: participation, no hierarchies, self-organization, confederation, decentralism, human scale, community

Integration of Needs

The integration of needs as the way for satisfying multiple universal needs at once

Holarchy and The Organic

Form of hierarchy that is the “anti-hierarchy” so everything is both a part and a whole; something organic

Levels of Scale

Home, village, town, city, global

The (Re)appropriation of Sociality

From the “same” sociality across cities to something more/different

Lecture notes from Gideon Kossoff’s lecture on “The Domains of Everyday Life and The Satisfaction of Needs”

Class Exercise:

Case study of social adoption of cars through multi-level approach and attempts to use additional frameworks

Tracy Potter describing a phase in the social change from horse-drawn carriages to the modern automobile with Kaylee White and Kakee Scott translating on whiteboard

Whiteboard notes post class exercise of multi-level analysis of car example of socio-technical regime change