Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice, Community Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2020. Pp. 360. ISBN: 978-0-2620-4345-8 (paper) $25.00; (OER options)
Design, defined in many ways, is all around us and occurs in virtually every industry. Design impacts the structure of society. With structural inequities at the root of social systems, technology and design are part of power dynamics and impact those who are intersectionally disadvantaged. Increasingly, technology and design are investigated and scrutinized from different perspectives. Central to Sasha Costanza-Chock's Design Justice, Community Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need is design justice--the idea that design needs to be re-imagined, with marginalized communities at the center, leading the charge. Costanza-Chock takes a deep dive into how design led by marginalized communities can be a tool and catalyst for dismantling social and structural inequalities. The relationship between social justice, design, and power are woven throughout Costanza-Chock's exploration of design justice in practice and theory.
Sasha Costanza-Chock is an Associate Professor of Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Faculty Affiliate at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and the creator of the MIT Codesign Studio. Their work uniquely ties together critical standpoint theories and participatory action research (PAR), focusing on design justice, transformative media organizing, and social movements. Their research centers around creating media strategies for a more creative, collaborative, and just society. Costanza-Chock brings a unique perspective due to their rich experience and training in feminist standpoint theory, Black feminist thought, disability justice, media production and design, and activism.
The book takes us on a journey through the world of design justice, specifically looking at how universal design principles place people in the margins or erase them, especially if they have intersectional identity markers that are non-dominant in society. Key topics discussed include: The Design Justice Network, design justice, feminist standpoint theory, participatory action research, Intersectionality, and The Matrix of Domination.
Costanza-Chock explains that the term design justice developed from a community of people who do social activism work, such as researchers, journalists, developers, and many others. This group of people make up the Design Justice Network, that was originally created at the Allied Media Conference (ACM) in 2015. The Design Justice Network...