10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17505
application/pdf
2038-3460
17505
1
en
Andrea Botero
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Julia Watson, Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism, Taschen, 2019
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
12
Book Reviews
2021-11-01
2023-06-27
2021-11-01
2023-10-19
148-151
TS
Andrea Botero
2021/11/01
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17505
148
Aalto University
2038-3460
1
en
151
Julia Watson, Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism, Taschen, 2019
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17505/16350
12
148                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

authoritarian in nature. This is why he speaks about a need to “stop the
machine” (p. 308). In questioning whether we should accept the existence
of computers, in a way, he appears to suggest that the problem would be
solved if we got rid of computers. By doing so, it could be argued that Félix
Tréguer falls into the trap of some kind of reverse technological solution-
ism (Morozov 2014). His provocative suggestion, however, should rather
be understood as a call to reflect, and to make us look once more at tech-
nology itself, not only its uses or its controversies, through a moral and
political lens.

References
Foucault, M. ([1976] 1998) The History of Sexuality: The Will to Know, London,
      Penguin.
Illich, I. (1973) Tools for Conviviality, New York City, Harper and Row.
Morozov, E. (2014) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
      Solutionism, New York, Public Affairs.
Mumford, L. (1964) Authoritarian and Democratic Technics, in “Technology and
     Culture”, 5(1), pp. 1-8.
Musiani F., Cogburn D. L., DeNardis, L. and Levinson N. S. (2016) The Turn to
      Infrastructure in Internet Governance. New York, Palgrave Macmillan US.
Zuboff, S. (2018) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Fu-
       ture at the New Frontier of Power, New York, Public Affairs.



                                      ***
   Julia Watson
Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism, Köln, Taschen, 2019, pp. 417

Andrea Botero Aalto University

    The wetlands of my home town Bogotá (or humedales as they are called
in Spanish) are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems of the city and its
surrounding plateau. Today they are at the center of many development
pressures and controversies, as well as numerous conservation efforts.
From politicians, urbanists, designers, to activists, almost everybody has an
opinion about how these patches of “nature” should be either preserved
or dried out in the name of progress. However, few have said about how
we could work with the wetlands to thrive together. In contrast, research
efforts in the recent decades have uncovered that these wetlands are not
just the outcomes of the particular natural ecological conditions of the area,
Book Reviews                                                             149
but importantly that their existence is also a product of the intentional
stewardship – and later abandonment – of a complex agro-hydraulic land-
scape of camellones (in English: ridges) tended by local Indigenous groups
over millennia (Rodríguez Gallo 2019). This system supported a highly di-
verse, resilient and rich way of life until the Spanish conquest and further
colonization erased, through genocide and ontological occupation of terri-
tories and ways of living, the very practices and knowledge that maintained
that landscape. All we have left are traces of that landscape as seen from
old aerial photographs and from the many indigenous water-related words
inscribed in the topography of the area (Rodríguez Gallo 2019).
     Julia Watson’s Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism is a highly vis-
ual, detailed compilation of more than 100 similarly sophisticated indige-
nous landscapes and their related infrastructures from around the world.
Unlike the vestiges of the ancient camellones in the plateau of Bogotá, all
examples catalogued in the book continue to support indigenous peoples’
everyday lives today. Through their tending and maintenance of these in-
frastructures, indigenous people contribute to the larger wellbeing of the
ecosystems themselves. In the book, this wide variety of human-nature
symbiotic infrastructures is reframed as Lo-TEK, that is “sustainable,
adaptable, and resilient technologies that are borne out of necessity (p.
21)”; placed in contrast to what are often referred as Lo-Tech, that is “sim-
ple, unsophisticated, uncomplicated and primitive technology” (p. 20).
Her book has the explicit aim to create a design movement that can help
us – though there is very limited explanation about who “us” might be –
rebuild an understanding of both indigenous philosophy and vernacular
architecture, which as she argues, already generate sustainable climate-re-
silient infrastructures. To aid in this movement building task, in the book,
the author proposes various resources organized in three parts.
     First, a very broad outline for a new mythology of technology partly
inspired by the methodology of radical indigenism as defined by Eva Maria
Garroutte (2018) that is combined with a handful of other eclectic con-
cepts such as cultural keystone species. The second part contains a basic
lexicon that is assembled and then identified, and highlighted throughout
the examples in the next section of the book. The last section is the com-
pendium of examples proper, concretizing some of the possibilities of Lo-
TEK by describing, in accessible terms, how for example the ingenious
boma acacia corrals of the Maasai, the polyculture milpa forest gardens of
the Mayans or the wastewater treatment system developed by the Ben-
galese in Kolkata emerged and are kept alive. The exemplars in this section
are divided by the particular ecosystem within which they work, namely:
mountains, forests, deserts, and wetlands. The exemplars are fleshed out
through various strategies – for example, descriptive narratives that locate
these technologies within their larger cultural context, the sourcing and
curating of a large body of photographs, and the creation of a series of
compelling architectonic and visualizing devices that document particular
150                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

details of their configurations. I consider this section the most vital contri-
bution of the book, and would hope they continue developing. One possi-
ble direction for further development is to address the critical need to find
non-verbal forms to communicate out not only technical details, but also
the relations, ontologies and the forms of governance that make these con-
figurations of people, place, non-humans and stories, possible (see: Hara-
way 2013). These aspects remain under addressed in the analysis and visual
representations in the book. However, there are interesting seeds found in
the book to further the “drawing things together” that Latour (2008) once
invited designers to explore further. I also found that the lexicon section
would merit expansion. More than providing pointers to further reading
and examples hinting to how these terms might manifest, it could offer
more in-depth explanations and explicit links to think through and com-
municate collectively; so that important concepts such as “radical indigen-
ism” can be actually applied and mobilized to build the movement.
    Many of the issues raised by the book will be familiar to STS scholars,
although STS scholarship is not the book’s main audiences. The author’s
narrative and each of the examples in the compendium, draws our atten-
tion to the socio-technical character of all technology and the preeminence
of infrastructure in contemporary understanding of the world (Star 1999),
something discussed extensively in STS, albeit from a different angle. Also,
its continuous attempts to reframe what counts as technology and innova-
tion will resonate – and contrast – with feminist STS research agendas that
invite us to look critically at innovation (see: e.g., Suchman and Libby
2000) by paying close attention to forms of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017),
repair and maintenance without privileging preoccupations with the
“new”.
    In general, the book offers an accessible and important testimony of the
complex, plural and rich knowledge and practice systems that exist today.
I, however, remain curious to learn more about how indigenous commu-
nities themselves (and not only unidentified us) could also use these re-
sources to continue repairing and tending to their worlds, and reconfigur-
ing their own ecological knowledge. It seems to me that their ability to mo-
bilize their own knowledge, and not the fact that we (designers or STS
scholars) are able to do so, is particularly urgent. As the compilation makes
it also painfully obvious, most of these Lo-TEK are under enormous en-
croaching pressures, putting them at risk of following the steps of the ca-
mellones, which once supported a unique way of life in the place I call
home.

References
Garroutte, E. (2018) Defining “radical indigenism” and creating an american in-
      dian scholarship, in A. Brooks, D. Leckenby, S. J. Pfohl, A. Van Wagenen,
      and P. Arend (eds.), Culture, Power, and History: Studies in Critical Soci-
      ology, Brill, pp. 169-98.
Book Reviews                                                                   151
Haraway, D. (2013) The Companion Species Manifesto, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm
      Press.
Latour, B. (2008) A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of
       Design [Keynote lecture], Networks of Design – Design History Society
       Conference, Falmouth, Cornwall.
Rodríguez Gallo, L. (2019) La construcción del paisaje agrícola prehispánico en los
       Andes colombianos: El caso de la Sabana de Bogotá, in “SPAL. Revista de
       Prehistoria y Arqueología”, 28(1), pp. 193–215.
Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More Than
       Human Worlds, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Star, S. L. (1999) The ethnography of infrastructure, in “American Behavioral Sci-
         entist”, 43(3), pp. 377-391.
Suchman, L. and Bishop, L. (2000) Problematizing “innovation” as a critical pro-
      ject, in “Technology Analysis and Strategic Management”, 12(3), pp. 327-
      333.

                                       ***
