‘Critical systemic thinking as a philosophy for “design” practice.’

Some systems approaches tend to conceptualize social systems as collective entities, in which emergent properties of the whole can render individuals within a social system invisible. As critical systemic thinkers, however, we choose to see a social system as an emergent property of the interactions between unique individuals whose social relations are of interest. Thus, within the field of critical social research, we include work with a focus on sense-making and learning in the context of systems of human interaction. Such work tends to encourage challenging of taken-for-granted assumptions and ‘received wisdom’. It is oriented towards supporting individuals and groups to reflect in context, to learn and hence to bring about beneficial change for themselves. In this class of research, we include work influenced by, for example, Gregory Bateson. His taxonomy of orders of learning, and his exploration of human interaction have informed work of many other researchers. His insights have been influential in highlighting concepts such as ‘otherness’, ‘in-betweenness’ and ‘immanence’ as relevant aspects to explore in relation to human systems. Another author whose work has informed that of many other researchers is Claudio Ciborra. An on-going critique of rationality characterizes his contribution to investigation of human systems. Ciborra highlights differences between logical descriptions of social behavior that people make and their actual, contextualized experiences. This social behavior includes play as an emergent property of improvisation in problem solving practice and expressionism as communicative practice. This paper will discuss the contributions of critical systemic thinkers to the development and application of critical social research