Estratégias para adiar o fim do mundo: contribuições dos saberes indígenas para uma outra compreensão do papel do Designer Estratégico em meio à crise contemporânea

Abstract

Alarming data prove that human action in recent decades has been so harmful to the balance of life on Earth to the point of ushering in a new geological era called the Anthropocene. The contemporary crisis is composed of a series of factors intrinsically related to the modus operandi of the capitalist model, from which design was born. At the same time, it is known that indigenous peoples are responsible for maintaining and protecting most of the terrestrial biodiversity today. Capitalist, colonial and extractive society is just one more way of life among many others, but, due to its hegemonic principles, today it encompasses the largest portion of the global population. By bringing to reflection the role of the Designer as an active agent in a society that is heading towards self-destruction, this research intends to investigate how indigenous knowledge can contribute to another understanding of the role of the Strategic Designer within the context of contemporary crisis. We think that Strategic Design can encompass other modes of action, in the aforementioned crisis, by relating scientific knowledge and ancestral knowledge inspired by concepts derived from indigenous knowledge. This dissertation consists of semi-structured interviews, recorded in audio, with two indigenous people from the Kaingang and Mehinako ethnic groups, as well as a bibliographical review and documental research. The interviews were transformed into stories, using a multimethod approach for narrative analysis, new to this field of activity. From the personal stories of the interviewees, a concept emerged that stood out as the contribution of the research to the area of strategic design: to perceive and think about contentment as a source of the generalized imbalance that we experience in the contemporary crisis. The apparently obvious conclusion makes the act of thinking about such subjectivity as a possible contribution to be worked on in the field of design even more urgent.