Design Ethnobiology: Creative engagements with materials for sustaining natural resource harvest in a changing world

In a recent book with the short title “Making” author Tim Ingold distinguishes between ethnography as a process of documenting and anthropology as a transformational engagement. I have recently been reflecting upon the implications of Ingold’s work on critical inquiry and transformational engagements for ethnobiology. What might we learn through making with biological materials?  What might we learn through critical inquiry with harvesters into the conditions and contingencies of their practice? What could this teach us about sustainable ways to meet our material needs in the future? What prospects are there for a design ethnobiology that would bring a focus on aspirations and creativity together with biological materials, places, times and peoples to consider such questions? In this presentation, I reflect upon these questions and provide some examples through my own work with biological materials. In doing so, I open a special session that begins a conversation about design ethnobiology.