Designing and Researching from Affection: An Ethnography on the Creative Practices of <i>Cartoneros</i> *

This article presents a collaborative design ethnography with a cartoneros (waste-picker) cooperative in Argentina, examining how emotions and affect function as epistemic and methodological drivers in design research. Grounded in the researcher’s positionality as a white, female designer from the Global South, the study engages decolonial, feminist, and affect theory to show how relational knowing emerges through care, trust, and shared vulnerability. Ethnographic vignettes illustrate four moments – negotiating disciplinary roles, building affective bonds, co-designing solutions, and confronting epistemic and ontological boundaries – in which emotions shaped both process and insight. Cooperative members appear as epistemic and emotional collaborators with their own ways of doing and knowing, challenging dominant design imaginaries and offering creative, situated strategies. Findings highlight how fear, laughter, and uncertainty became engines for collaboration, enabling more inclusive and plural design. Ultimately, the study argues that embracing affect reconfigures design as a performative, politically engaged practice attuned to multiple ontologies and ways of knowing and creating.