Playground Playpump and the Affective Economy #Design 100

Imagine a design product that has the approval of celebrities around the world, including the Clinton family, the Bush family, Jay-Z, tennis star Nicole Vaidisova and hundreds more. (Chamber, 2009) and (Costello, 2011). Imagine sponsorships of millions of dollars to make and distribute this product. You would think, wouldn’t you, that this product must be legitimate; that it has been thoroughly researched and examined by a group of different experts and that its mark on the world must be significant.

The product in question is called Playground Playpump. It is simple in design, yet riveting and vibrant; and if the smiles of the moving children are anything to go by, then certainly from this photo, you would believe it was successful.

The hype surrounding this product was high in the late 2000’s, yet it wasn’t successful, but a huge drain on resources. The concept is, a merry-go-around is connected to a water pump, when children play on the merry-go-around the spinning motion pumps underground water into a reserve tank that can then provide water on demand. (Unicef, 2007) and (Chamber, 2009). The pairing of children’s play with solving one of the most desperate issues of improvised communities; the scarcity of drinkable water, was deemed ingenious.

The intentions behind the concept was good; to find a solution in a common daily activity and to capitalise on its unproductive power. Not only would it alleviate women and girls of this task, as it was often the responsibility of African women and girls to collect water for their families, it would also indirectly shift this responsibility to both genders. (Seshadri, 2018). In addition, Trevor Field, the South African entrepreneur and creator of Playpump, believed its simple design and sturdiness of structure would stand against the movement of cattle and other agriculture as well as make maintenance and repairs easy. (Seshadri, 2018)

However, this product was created without the input of the communities for which it was designed. For example, it was installed in a remote area in Mozambique where there were few children. Moreover, Playpump is only operational under certain environmental conditions, such as when there is already a reservoir of clean, underground water that is close to the surface, which is not the case in many parts of Africa. (Seshadri, 2018) and (Chamber, 2009).

There was a general lack of holistic thinking, for example, why didn’t anybody raise the issue of, what if children grow tire of going around and around in circles? What happens when the weather is bad, and they want to stay home? Could children be pressured into going on the merry-go-around? What would happen to communities if their playpump broke, do they have the knowledge and resources to fix it themselves, if not, how soon can it be fixed? If a community without water collects water from another community would tension and conflict arise?

Reports of broken down Playpumps arose 3 years after its installation, in 2008. Children did grow tired of the merry-go-around, especially as energy must first be expended for the merry-go-around to spin, and they must play, non-stop, for two hours so the bare minimum water requirements for 200 people a day could be met. (Costello, 2011). There was a scarcity of water during times children can’t play, such as early in the morning and late at night as well as during times of bad weather. Photos of smiling children are now accompanied by old women working laboriously on the merry-go-around. There were reports of children being bribed to go on the merry-go-around. Communities were neither given the knowledge, tools, nor resources to fix it themselves. Officials at Mozambique’s Rural Water Authority said, “Once the pump breaks, and takes more than 3 months to repair”; of the 375,000 playpumps in Africa, less than 150,000 are in working condition now. (Seshadri, 2018. Pg. 63)

(End of post for purposes of assignment 1, full list of references at the bottom )

I wanted to take this blog post further and explore how this product gained so much support when it was very clearly flawed. I want to use Sara Ahmed’s concept of the Affective Economy to explain Playpump’s initial popularity in popular culture and why so many people, from world leaders to prominent musicians and athletes converted their passion for the idea into funding for it. (Ahmed, 2004, article)

Ahmed believes emotion, affect, does not reside in the body alone. (Ahmed, 2004, article and book). It can be infectious, moving from person to person and that every person is only a node in its passage. Affect, Ahemd explains, has a history and a future; she uses the example of white nationalists’ rage towards the non-white race to explain this. Their rage does not stand alone because it has been shaped by the discourses and events of the past; for example, slavery, the rhetoric of America being for the white man, and it has a future in the contemporary narrative of African Americans and immigrants which provides the basis for their continuation. (Ahmed, 2004, article)

Affect is also a form of capital. (Ahmed, 2004, article), (Khalikova & Fish, 2016). Ahemd loosely based her logic on Marx’s logic of Capital. That the M-C-M (money-commodity-money) circuit creates surplus value, that is, more money. Ahemd’s Affect does not circulate to create wealth, but rather its very circulation accumulates more Affect, which can then be converted into wealth. How that works is, through modes of communication (news media, social media etc), something which evokes emotion is disseminated, the more it circulates, the more “affective” it becomes. The ecology which surrounds a news item/video/concept, such as user’s comments, reposts, remixes, contributes to the affective economy. (Ahmed, 2004, article), (Khalikova & Fish, 2016). Different forms of capital be exchanged, for example, social capital (a person’s connections) can be converted into economic capital when they use their social network to get a job. Another example is a person’s symbolic capital can be used to increase their social capital. Affect can in the same way be converted into economic capital such as when emotions compel people to donate. (Webb, Schirato & Danaher, 2001)

Affect has a past and a future. America has a history of making helping people a part of their national identity. For example, the Ellen Show, a staple of American television is beloved for its generous spirit. The desire to show one’s “Americanness” also compels one to convert Affect into monetary value. This provides an explanation for why the concept of Playpump gained the recognition and donations that it did; affect was accumulated through its dissemination in the media, people felt compelled to turn their affect into a donation because of their desire to be a part of a community, and because it tapped into the normative understanding what a good citizen is. (Ahmed, 2004, article).

To conclude, the intentions behind Playpump was good but it was poorly executed due to inadequate research. However, the fantastical idea of utilising children’s play as a solution for the world’s water scarcity problem generated a lot of excitement and passion in the citizens of American and around the world. The accumulation of affect then compelled a reaction, which was to fund this seemingly miracle design that did not live up to its expectation.

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