Innovating Through Caring Assemblages

Collaborative Writing in Two Qualitative Case Studies of Design-Led Rural Projects in Rural China

Bibliographic Data

ID19479182
AuthorsZiwei Lin (0000-0002-9892-2331, University of the Arts London), Yunrui Yang (University of the Arts London), Yue Ma (0009-0009-8408-0231, Coventry University), Jiashuo Liu (0000-0002-9159-1752, Edinburgh College, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume25
Publication date2026-01-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1609-4069 • E-ISSN: 1609-4069
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/16094069261430400
OpenAlexW7147009750
LanguageEN
References cited58

Design-led social innovation projects often begin in a fuzzy front end, where problem definitions, researcher roles, and criteria of success are fluid, and conventional qualitative approaches are ill-equipped to capture the affective and relational pressures of practice. In response, this study explores how collaborative writing can work as a caring assemblage in this context, highlighting its generative role. We conducted two qualitative case studies of rural social innovation projects in China, in which design researchers and students experimented with collaborative writing during their cooperation with village communities. Following the writing experiment, we collected shared digital journals, comments, and follow-up interviews generated by the teams, which we analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. By employing the caring assemblage as a theoretical lens, this study shows how flows between human and non-human actants in collaborative writing gave rise to four entangled dynamics: caring interruptions, care across screens, emergent knowledge, and care for subjectivity. These dynamics did not directly produce design “solutions,” but assembled an immanent plane where care, responsibility, and power could be continuously negotiated in the face of uncertainty and perceived failure. We argue that treating collaborative writing as a socio-material infrastructure enables design teams to transform confusion, fatigue, and conflict into shared inquiry, while supporting ethical self- and other-care. Drawing on theories from broader disciplines, this study contributes to qualitative methodology in the field of design by reframing collaborative writing as a generative way of knowing and intervening within complex, design-led projects, rather than a retrospective add-on

Assemblage (archaeology) · Cognitive reframing · Collaborative writing · Generative grammar · Participatory design · Power (physics) · Qualitative research · Reflexivity · Artistic and Creative Research · Crafts, Textile, and Design · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

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Open DOIOpen Access