Politics of the Everyday

by Ezio Manzini, Clive Dilnot (Editor), Eduardo Staszowski (Editor)

Overview

Each of us develops and enacts strategies for living our everyday lives. These may confirm the general tendency towards new forms of connected solitude, in which we work, travel and live alone, yet feel sociable mainly by means of technology. Alternatively, they may help to create flexible communities that are open and inclusive, and therefore resilient and socially sustainable.

In Politics of the Everyday, Ezio Manzini discusses examples of social innovation that show how, even in these difficult times, a better kind of society is possible. By bringing autonomy and collaboration together, it is possible to develop new forms of design intelligence, for our own good, for the good of the communities we are part of, and for society as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350053649
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/21/2019
Series:	Designing in Dark Times
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.32(d)

About the Author

Ezio Manzini founded DESIS Network, the international network of design for social innovation and sustainability. He is Distinguished Professor of Design for Social Innovation at ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona; Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy; and Guest Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, and Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. His previous book Design, When Everybody Designs. An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation was published by MIT Press in 2015.

Clive Dilnot is professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA. Recent publications include Ethics? Design? (2005) and the text for Chris Killip: Pirelli Work (2007).

Eduardo Staszowski is associate professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, and Director of the Parsons DESIS Lab, New York, USA. He is the co-editor of the Designing in Dark Times series and of the book Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (Bloomsbury 2020).

Table of Contents

Preface
You are here. A point of view and of action on the world

1. Light communities. Social forms in a fluid world
If the world becomes fluid. Transformative social innovation. Local discontinuity in the transition. Social commons and their regeneration. People, encounters and conversations. Community as a space of opportunity. Continuity of place. Meaningful encounters and their enabling ecosystems. The value of lightness

2. Life projects. Autonomy and collaboration
Projects, designers and design capability. The crisis of the conventional mode. Difficulties, risks and opportunities. Projects, autonomy and new conventions. Capabilities, tools and results. Life projects as bricolage. Complexity and individual responsibility. Exploring and transforming the field of possibility. Collaborative projects and autonomy. Collaborative living, as an example. Communities of interest and communities of purpose. Enabling ecosystems and designing coalitions. Collaboration and relational values.

3. Politics of everyday life. Design activism and transformative normality
Everyday life makes policies. The world seen (and constructed) by those who live in it. Change the world from where you are. The systemic effects of everyday choices. Can we escape the control apparatus? Transgressive tactics and strategies. From activism to transformative reality. Innovation trajectories and design choices. The Platform economy and the new co-operative movement. Sharing economy and collaborative economy. Collaboration, efficiency and relational value. Everyday-life policies, other policies and other democracies.

4. Project-centred democracy. Ecosystems of ideas and projects
The complex nature of democracy. A regime capable of learning. The dimensions of the crisis. Experimenting distributed democracy. Participatory democracy and social innovation. Participatory enabling ecosystems. The scenario of project-centred democracy. Infrastructure for project-centred democracy. Diffuse design capabilities.

Afterword
Another book. Design experts and diffuse design capability

Editorial Reviews

Ezio Manzini's book is remarkably timely and much-needed. He shows that another world is possible, not through top-down policy making but through everyday social innovation. Project-based democracy is a concept we'll be hearing a lot more about.” —Pathik Pathak, Director of the Social Impact Lab at the University of Southampton, UK

From the Publisher