Power Signifiers: the subtle forms of power in design practice with marginalized craft communities

This paper discusses how craft practice may offer empowerment strategies for critically reflective spaces, that allow for social transformation, using the case of traditional textile communities of women in rural Pakistan where development opportunities are limited. It uses the reflective practice of its design researcher, to explore established power relations, and search for new dialogues that build meaningful relationships for creating new forms of power in interrelated social, development and design contexts. This practice-based discussion contends with the embedded layers of power arising from social constructs and those extending beyond. A combined methodology, ‘Power Signifiers’ is presented as a critically reflective approach for social and design practice, building on the social sciences discourse of power analysis and power relations frameworks through forms of non-obvious power in developing contexts. Theories of power and empowerment provide a platform that designers can build on in examining agencies of making in design collaborations.