Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Daunted by design

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Daunted by design: creating tools of slow violence

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

E-pub ahead of print
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>26/08/2024
<mark>Journal</mark>Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research
Number of pages15
Publication StatusE-pub ahead of print
Early online date26/08/24
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Design today is tackling increasingly complex societal issues; however, it is also prone to instrumentalisation in this endeavour. This paper examines how design practice and solutions can become a tool for daunted managerialism, a form of slow violence that conceals, prolongs, and even reinforces the complex and interwoven sources of social and environmental harm. It argues that design problem-solution spaces are often constructed with naturalised norms and subjectivities, which can lead to design processes and outcomes that incite cruel optimism, prioritise certain harms over others, and become tools for governing precarity. This argument is illustrated with examples from different domains of design addressing complex societal issues, such as sustainable design, social design, humanitarian design, and participatory design. We propose that design outcomes should not be regarded as solutions, but as intermediaries of engagement that can facilitate sociological and political imaginations that empower society in general, and marginalised people and communities specifically, to resist and transform violent systems.