Small Scale Manufacturing

The paper reports the current results of analysis and interpretation – from the standpoint of social
innovation – of a number of studies1 on the development of Distributed Microproduction (DM). A
phenomenological reading of the new forms of small-scale production now developing in various
disciplinary contexts – design, modern craft, ‘Make’ and DIY Culture – makes it possible to recon-
struct the emergence of a set of ideas, processes, technologies, and shared values, and to hypoth-
esise that DM can be interpreted as a socio-technical paradigm. It can thus generate new areas and
paths of innovation. The first part of the paper defines DM, explaining its constitutive features and
the factors driving its development. The second part extends the DM model by describing its sys-
temic aspects in social and technological terms (Arthur, 2010). The final part of the paper identifies
the linkages between DM and social innovation (Mulgan et al., 2012), which make a larger-scale
merger of these two domains plausible, i.e. they build a Microproduction Everywhere perspective.

Questioning a singular global narrative We question if global urbanism, even when conceived relationally as a bridge across contexts, can be a viable operative concept posing a singular explanatory logic -- a  theoretical anxiety emerged over the past decade from international relations countering ideas of a dominant 'Westphalian world' (Kayaoglu, 2010) and corresponding ideas of 'southern urbanism' (Roy, 2009). We seek power-laden spatial frames reflecting ahierarchical relationships to reject those that are sequential or temporal and thus project a binary between the 'north and south'. Our two cases, Kowloon and East Delhi,  illustrate the 'complexities of situated histories' rather than adhering to a method exploring diversity via a 'Chinese and Indian comparison' --  academic 'fashion statements'  framed under a tacit assumption of both being influenced by global capital. Our approach invokes the tongbian philosophy (Tang, 2019; Tian, 2005) and considers the complex embedded, sedimented and different logics concerning the occupancy of land (Benjamin 2017). Complicating land is central, as it remains at the nexus of varied forces with relational specificities across time-space contexts. Invoking Li (2014), land cannot be rolled up and taken away but also evolves to be a deeply material space whose worn textures reflect hauntings of earlier occupancies with diverse logics, where an intensity of bodies who have sat and slept on, used it as a site of prayer, to sell stuff from and when set on a pole, protect against a harsh sun or heavy rain. Land tenures move beyond cartographic imprisoning to reflect accumulative practices, memories , values and meanings and thus are central to our framing of 'situated histories'. In this operative frame, we look beyond the visible to dig deep into the ground to unravel diverse materiality and relationalism developed from the deep soil up: layer by layer, temporally and in spatial relation with many other events that open different logics and forces of transformation, both locally and far distant apart. Such centring of land as an analytic rejects its relegation as implicit in both post-colonial and planetary urbanization thinking, one of the 'lower elements' constituting diversity under an overarching frame of global capital. While we recognize the importance of the philosophy of internal relations in itself, the tong-bian philosophy is central to emphasize spatial complementaries and problematize contradictions in land transformation. In doing so, it overcomes one of the shortcomings of dialectics informed by the philosophy of internal relations (Ollman, 2015)