Design Beyond the Human by Caccavale, Elio; Caccavale, Elio; Hush, Gordon; Hush, Gordon;

Short description:

A collection of transdisciplinary essays by scholars and designers which explore humanity's relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants, now and in the future

Long description:

"

How can design shine a light on humanity's relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants, now and in the future?

Global challenges like climate change and ecosystem degradation are proving that a singular disciplinary approach is inadequate to respond to issues where societal behaviours, individual choices, political decisions, economic, technological and scientific developments are so densely entangled - not least in design. But what happens when we turn things around and decentre ""the human"" to look at our relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants beyond the capitalist human-nature binary worldview?

Design Beyond the Human is a collection of essays by international scholars, designers and engaged citizens traversing activism, anthropology, conservation, creative writing, design practice, design theory, economics, education, environmental humanities, ethics, history, indigenous knowledge, law, philosophy, poetry, politics, regenerative agriculture, science, sociology and technology. Divided into three sections - We Are Not Alone, Design Beyond the Human, and Mediating Human-Non-Human Relations Through Design - the text generates conversations capable of thinking about life on planet Earth, challenging the Anglo-European anthropocentric conceptualisation of design that dominates practice, education, and academic discourse. Each section is unique: charting the transdisciplinary cultural perspective that is required to comprehend our predicament, the critique of human-centred design and its interdependence with capitalism, and the nascent practices and projects that are attempting to reconcile humanity's possible relationship with the planet, its ecosystems and inhabitants.

The book offers the reader an opportunity to engage with expertise, knowledge, methodologies and lived experiences from across disciplines shaped by shared concerns and provides an opportunity to question if design in a more-than-human way might reimagine design's relationship to capitalism and contemporary lifestyles. Will our planetary future be merely an ecologically aware version of today, or, in going beyond the human, might we develop a transdisciplinary perspective capable of imagining an alternative vision of life on Earth?

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

Foreword, Erin O'Donnell (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Introduction, Elio Caccavale and Gordon Hush (Glasgow School of Art, UK)

Section I: We Are Not Alone
1. A Political Economy of Structural Anthropocentrism, Steven McMullen (Hope College, USA)
2. Co-Creating Multispecies Worlds, Danielle Celermajer (University of Sydney, Australia) and Matthew Darmour-Paul (Australia National University, Australia)
3. Global Trajectories of Oil Palm: From African Communal Groves to Asian Plantation Frontiers, Noboru Ishikawa (Kyoto University, Japan)
4. The Call of the Cricket, Helen Hollyman (Independent Scholar, USA) and James Skeet (Co-founder Sprit Farm, Navajo Nation, USA)
5. Design, Education and the Moulding of Alternative Futures in the Anthropocene, Peter Sutoris (University of Leeds, UK)

Section II: Design Beyond the Human
6. Design and the Invention of the Modern Human, Samer Akkach and John Powell (University of Adelaide, Australia)
7. Ecological Design Thinking in the Anthropocene/Ecocene, Joanna Boehnert (Bath Spa University, UK)
8. Indigenous Design: A Relational Practice Between People and Place, Desiree Hernandez Ibinarriaga (Monash University, Australia)
9. Life-Centered Design: A Sub-Saharan Perspective, Franï¿1⁄2ois-Xavier Nzi iyo Nsenga, (Independent Scholar, Rwanda)
10. Design and Deep Time, Naiyi Wang (China Central Academy of Fine Arts, China)
11. Orbital Debris: Design and its Extraterrestrial Aftermath, Alice Twemlow (Royal Academy of Art, the Netherlands)

Section III: Mediating Human-Non-Human Relations Through Design
12. Consider Everything: A New Kind of Design for a Computationally Irreducible World, J. Paul Neeley (Royal College of Art, UK)
13. Planetarity: Designing for Coexistence - Erinma Ochu (University of the West of England, UK) and Caroline Ward (The Royal College of Art, UK)
14. Indigenous Futures: Epistemologies of Care for a World in Crisis, Felipe Viveros (Culture Hack Labs, UK)
15. A Bottom-Up Approach to Conservation: The Vertical University, Nepal, Priyanka Bista (Vertical University, Nepal)
16. Design That Thinks Like a Mountain, Xinlin Song (Yunhe Centre, China)
17. A Larger, Less Humanised Design Community, Kate Fletcher (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
18. Talking Materials: A Discursive Design Practice for a Design Beyond the Human. Domitilla Dardi (European Institute of Design, Italy)
19. Towards a Culture of Life: A New Synthesis for the Living World, Rachel Armstrong (KU Leuven, Belgium)
20. Designing the Future of Agriculture, Kris Spiros (From Fauna, USA)

Afterword, Elio Caccavale and Gordon Hush (Glasgow School of Art, UK)

Bibliography
Index