MIT Press Live! event series presents an author talk with Sasha Costanza-Chock, author of Design Justice
About the book
What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world.
This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.
“Books like [Design Justice] offer insight into the history of disability and ideas for building on the ADA’s foundation of basic protections to create a more just world for the variety of humans who inhabit it.” —Washington Post
About the author
Sasha Costanza-Chock (they/them) is Associate Professor of Civic Media at MIT, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, creator of the MIT Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu), and the author of numerous articles and two books. Their first book is Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets! Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement (MIT Press).