Papers

Infrastructure as Advocacy: Infrastructuring mid-level actors with student-led research projects

Format: Papers, RSD11, Topic: Health & Well-being, Topic: Learning & Education, Topic: Sociotechnical Systems

Michael Arnold Mages

Northeastern University

Viewed from a systemic perspective, social services hold complex and rich profiles. From a tactical perspective, services play an important role in addressing community needs. However, services also play an important role in fostering community infrastructure and advancing the advocacy mission of an organization. This paper presents the cases of three related projects to develop interactive services for a key social service organization to address specific challenges faced by parents, guardians, and caregivers of pre-K children in East Boston. Rather than discussing these cases solely from the perspective of how they might meet the needs of residents, these cases will be further analyzed from the systemic perspective of these projects as tools for both infrastructure and advocacy.

KEYWORDS: systemic design, infrastructure, community design, midlevel organization, socio-technical systems, advocacy, early childhood education, social good

Citation Data

Author(s): Michael Arnold Mages
Year: 2022
Title: Infrastructure as Advocacy: Infrastructuring mid-level actors with student-led research projects
Published in: Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Volume: RSD11
Article No.: 132
URL: https://rsdsymposium.org/infrastructure-as-advocacy-infrastructuring-mid-level-actors-with-student-led-research-projects
Host: University of Brighton
Location: Brighton, UK
Symposium Dates: October 3–16, 2022
First published: 22 September 2022
Last update: 30 April 2023
Publisher Identification: ISSN 2371-8404

Copyright Information

Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (ISSN 2371-8404) are published annually by the Systemic Design Association, a non-profit scholarly association leading the research and practice of design for complex systems: 3803 Tønsberg, Norway (922 275 696).

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Open Access article published under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. This permits anyone to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or form according to the licence terms.

Suggested citation format (APA)

Author(s). (20##). Article title. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD##. Article ##. rsdsymposium.org/LINK

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