Full Description
Tricky Design responds to the burgeoning of scholarly interest in the cultural meanings of objects, by addressing the moral complexity of certain designed objects and systems.
The volume brings together leading international designers, scholars and critics to explore some of the ways in which the practice of design and its outcomes can have a dark side, even when the intention is to design for the public good. Considering a range of designed objects and relationships, including guns, eyewear, assisted suicide kits, anti-rape devices, passports and prisons, the contributors offer a view of design as both progressive and problematic, able to propose new material and human relationships, yet also constrained by social norms and ideology.
This contradictory, tricky quality of design is explored in the editors' introduction, which positions the objects, systems, services and 'things' discussed in the book in relation to the idea of the trickster that occurs in anthropological literature, as well as in classical thought, discussing design interventions that have positive and negative ethical consequences. These will include objects, both material and 'immaterial', systems with both local and global scope, and also different processes of designing.
This important new volume brings a fresh perspective to the complex nature of 'things', and makes an original contribution to debates in design ethics, design philosophy and material culture.
Contents
Foreword
Clive Dilnot, independent, USA
Introduction - Design's Tricky Ethics
Tom Fisher, Nottingham Trent, UK and Lorraine Gamman, University of the Arts London, UK
Section One, Tricky Thinging
Chapter 1: Civilian and Military: Design Across an Ethical Horizon
Tom Fisher, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Chapter 2: Designers and Brokers of the Mobility Regime
Mahmoud Kesharvarz, Uppsala University, Sweden
Chapter 3: Trickery in Design: Cooptation, Subversion and Politics
Nidhi Srinavas, Parsons School of Design, USA and Eduardo Staszowski, Parsons School of Design, USA
Chapter 4: Guns and morality: Mediation, Agency and Responsibility
Tim Dant, Lancaster University, UK
Chapter 5: The Magic that is Design
Cameron Tonkinwise, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Section Two: Tricky Processes, Tricky Principles
Chapter 6: Designer/Shapeshifter: A De-colonial Redirection for Speculative and Critical Design
Luiza Prado de O. Martins, A Parede, Germany and Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira, A Parede, Germany
Chapter 7: Making 'Safety', Making Freedom: Design and Contested Futures
Shana Agid, Parsons School of Design, USA
Chapter 8: The Nature of 'Obligation' in Doing Design with Communities: Participation, Politics and Care
Ann Light, University of Sussex, UK and Yoko Akama, RMIT University, USA
Section Three: Tricky Policy
Chapter 9: Designing Policy Objects: Designer as Anti-Hero
Lucy Kimbell, University of the Arts London, UK
Chapter 10: Tricky like a Leprachaun - Navigating the Paradoxes of Public Service Innovation
Adam Thorpe, University of the Arts London, UK
Chapter 11: Understanding Suicide and Assisted Dying - Why "Design for Death" is Tricky
Lorraine Gamman, University of the Arts London, UK and Pras Gunasekera, University of the Arts London, UK
Chapter 12: The Quest for Purity, 'Clean' Design and a New Ethics of 'Dirty' Design
Jeremy Kidwell, University of Birmingham UK
Conclusion
Tom Fisher, Nottingham Trent, UK and Lorraine Gamman, University of the Arts London, UK
