Abstract
The design research community has been interested in its identity as an intellectual community for some time, and, as with design itself, critique is central to good scholarship. Building on recent citation analyses in the field, in this paper we examine two cases of critique in design research scholarship. We aim to contribute to the theory of scholarly critique by providing a richer picture of critical citations than has previously been available. In addition, we identify the need for a crucial methodological development in the field; namely, design researchers need a way to examine and assess critical citations from within. Analytical (citation) frameworks that have been imported from other fields are limited in what they can tell us about the nature and quality of critical citations in the design research community. We argue for the DRS community to examine and reflect on its use of scholarly critique.
Keywords
scholarly critique; community building; critical citations; citation analysis
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.482
Citation
Beck, J., and Chiapello, L. (2018) An Examination of Scholarly Critique in DRS Publications and Its Role as Catalyst for Community Building, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.482
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
An Examination of Scholarly Critique in DRS Publications and Its Role as Catalyst for Community Building
The design research community has been interested in its identity as an intellectual community for some time, and, as with design itself, critique is central to good scholarship. Building on recent citation analyses in the field, in this paper we examine two cases of critique in design research scholarship. We aim to contribute to the theory of scholarly critique by providing a richer picture of critical citations than has previously been available. In addition, we identify the need for a crucial methodological development in the field; namely, design researchers need a way to examine and assess critical citations from within. Analytical (citation) frameworks that have been imported from other fields are limited in what they can tell us about the nature and quality of critical citations in the design research community. We argue for the DRS community to examine and reflect on its use of scholarly critique.