Steeping – 10-16 Sept 2026

Design Inquiry at Banca del Fare

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What we are reading:

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities

With the term steeping we are exploring a reciprocal immersion with a local culture, rather than an extractive "grab & run" approach. In this beguilingly chatty "letter to communities," Eve Tuck raises some serious issues about research that re-inscribes a one-dimensional view of local, marginalised and disenfranchised communities as passive victims of injustice.
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Peters, J. D. (2015). The marvelous clouds: Toward a philosophy of elemental media. University of Chicago Press.

This book disrupts Romantic, binary ideas of nature vs culture, with a widely noted fact of ecology that populations flourish in adopted habitats. "Digital devices have spread like rabbits in Australia" (2000, p.54). This seems like a good mindset with which to approach steeping, not to Romanticize bucolic settings and rural crafts, but to explore how humans, tools, and culture respond and are transformed by the environment.

Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Being singular plural (R. D. Richardson & A. E. O’Byrne, Trans.). Stanford University Press.

A philosophy of inter-being. “Existence is with: otherwise nothing exists.” (2000, p4)
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Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Yale University Press.

Sennett explores how modern society can rebuild the weakened skills of cooperation required to live with difference, framing it as a "craft" rather than merely good will. Sennett argues that listening, empathy, and dialogue (rather than debate) are crucial skills for repairing social bonds across diverse communities, workplaces, and digital spaces.
Cooperation as a Craft: cooperation requires, and can be developed through, specific skills and practices.

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press.

Challenging the single, Western-dominated view of the "universe," the book promotes a pluriverse - a world that embraces multiple ontologies, diverse ways of being, and radical interdependence of all beings.

Radical Interdependence: Design should focus on relationships between people, places, and the environment rather than isolated products

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.

Steeping is about expanding our understanding of communication. In the chapter "Council of Pecans" (pp12-22), botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer explains how trees appear to talk to one another via airbourne pheromones and underground fungal networks -- in order to coordinate a defence against insect attack by releasing compounds or to synchronise a mast fruiting event -- whereby pecan trees in a grove produce nuts not every year, but every few years so that an excess of fruit overwhelms would-be predators, ensuring that new forests are generated.