Julian Gasson and Susanne Nilsson
Within the European context, the recruitment of youth into organised crime presents as an urgent and complex societal challenge which has emerged from entangled patterns of relational dynamics. It is from these situated and evolving relational dynamics that such ‘wicked problems’ become.
Systemic design has emerged within the design discipline as an approach well suited to engaging with systemically complex phenomena, however, an integration of relational theory (as observed in other design fields) remains under-explored. We posit that this integration could afford systemic design better capacities for societal transformation in line with pluralist principles. This paper contributes to calls for a relational turn in design by exploring what a systemic design approach can reveal when adopting an explicit relational sensibility.
To do so, this paper presents a qualitative case-study of a Swedish social innovation initiative in which an explicit relational approach was taken by systemic design practitioners to explore cross-sectoral collaboration against the recruitment of youth into organised crime. Through developing and applying a relational lens, our analysis revealed four key patterns of relational dynamics, namely fragmentation and distributed ownership, misalignment of perspectives and partial understandings across sectors, relational lock-ins maintained through stereotypes, and the emergence of alternative relational configurations through shared imaginaries and dialogic engagement. These patterns are shown to both underpin the societal challenge as well as act as barriers to collaboration against it.
With these insights generated through our abductive approach, we support our claim that integrating relational theory into a systemic design approach allows identifying where system actors could potentially ‘relate otherwise’ when co-creating pathways towards a safer and more equitable ‘world of many centres.’
Keywords: systemic design, relationality, pluralism, vulnerable youth, complex societal challenges.