Civic Design & Media
Reading Group
Design is the deliberate shaping of futures. The identities of those who shape and for whom the products are designed, however, can be as important as the objects or processes themselves.
To quote the historical idiom, popularized again in the 1980s by disability activist James Charlton in Apartheid South Africa, “Nothing for us, without us.”
“Civic design” queries the potential for a process to privilege the values of a civil body such that the design’s outcomes would become realized as a cumulative good for the wider public.
“Civic” is also descriptive of desired outcomes. The form and function of public life is designed, and the institutions that mediate public life operate within designed systems. Systems of voting, policy making, deliberation, schooling. Civic design has facilitated wider participation in these official—and unofficial—arenas, many of which have historically excluded marginalized communities. Consequential issues like racial justice, climate change, and poverty, enter into public discourse through media and political institutions, and are increasingly shaped by large amounts of data and emerging AI tools. How humans interface with those systems and how humans are affected by those systems are matters of civic design.
The civic design research group will explore key texts in participatory and codesign methods, creative learning modalities, as well as critical literature on technology and its effects in civic life.
Who should design, for what, and for whom?
This guiding question for our reading group is open to multiple epistemological approaches, allows us to explore these questions as pertains to the academy, the industry, and the community, and pushes us to think about projects during their development, implementation and transition, and after-life.
Session #12: Political Imagination
We will be discussing the following pieces.
Duncombe, Stephen. “Politics in an Age of Fantasy.” In Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. New York: New Press ; Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2007.
Papacharissi, Zizi. “Democracy on the Run.” In After Democracy: Imagining Our Political Future. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #11: Civic Imagination
We will be discussing the following pieces.
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo, Elizabeth A. Bennett, Alissa Cordner, Peter Taylor Klein, and Stephanie Savell. “The Civic Imagination.” In The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life, 52–76. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Jenkins, Henry, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson, and Neta Kligler-Vilenchik. “Superpowers to the People! How Young Activists Are Tapping the Civic Imagination.” In Civic Media, edited by Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis. The MIT Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9970.003.0022.
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #10: Democracy and Journalism (Youth)
We will be discussing the following pieces.
Obadare, Ebenezer. “Statism, Youth and Civic Imagination: A Critical Study of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Programme in Nigeria,” n.d., 57.
Ayish, Mohammad. “A Youth-Driven Virtual Civic Public Sphere for the Arab World.” Javnost - The Public 25, no. 1–2 (April 3, 2018): 66–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1418794.
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #9: Democracy and Journalism (Social Movements)
We will be discussing the following pieces.
Tufekci, Zeynep. “Technology and People.” In Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, 115–31. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2017.
Chua, Lynette J. “Cyber Organizing.” In Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014.
———. “Mobilizing Gay Rights under Authoritarianism.” In Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014.
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #8: Design Justice
We will be discussing the following chapters from Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice.
Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2020. “Design Pedagogies: ‘There’s Something Wrong with This System!’” In Design Justice. PubPub. https://design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/y2ymuvuk/release/1.
Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2020. “Design Practices: ‘Nothing about Us without Us’”. In Design Justice. PubPub. https://design-justice.pubpub.org/pub/cfohnud7/release/2.
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #7: The Speculative Turn in Design
We will be discussing the following article.
Chandler, D., & Reid, J. (2020). Becoming Indigenous: The ’Speculative Turn’ in Anthropology and the (Re)Colonisation of Indigeneity. Postcolonial Studies, 23(4), 485-504. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2020.1745993
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #6: Thinking Through China
We will be discussing the following chapter.
McCormack, Jerusha, and John G. Blair. 2015. “Where Is My Mind?” In Thinking through China, 1st ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #5: Civic Media and Meaningful Inefficiencies
We will be discussing the following chapters.
Gordon, Eric, and Gabriel Mugar. 2020. “Introduction.” In Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency, 1st ed. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190870140.001.0001.
Gordon, Eric, and Paul Mihailidis. 2016. “Introduction.” In Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, edited by Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9970.003.0002
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #4: Transition Design Case Study
We will be discussing the following case study.
Iwabuchi, Masaki and Mizuno, Daijiro. Speculation of The Purpose of Life in 2050 from Kyoto - Case Study on Transition Design in Japan https://taylor.tulane.edu/pivot/contributions/speculation-of-the-purpose-of-life-in-2050-from-kyoto/
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session #3: Designs for the Pluriverse and Transition Design
We will be discussing the following texts.
Arturo Escobar. 2018. “Design For Transitions.” In Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century. Durham: Duke University Press.
Terry Irwin and Laurene Vaughan. 2016. Transition Design Workshop: Forced Migration. https://www.academia.edu/30409204/Transition_Design_Workshop_Forced_Migration
Monica Looze. 2017. Access to High Quality Education in Pittsburgh: Case Study I. https://medium.com/transition-design-case-studies-transition-design/access-to-high-quality-education-in-pittsburgh-case-study-i-676f324d3eda
Meetings are open to everyone interested. If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).
Session 2: Transition Design
“Who should design, for what, and for whom?” This question is open to multiple epistemological approaches, allows us to explore these questions as pertains to the academy, the industry, and the community, and pushes us to think about projects during their development, implementation and transition, and after-life.
We will be discussing the following texts.
Scupelli, Peter. "Designed transitions and what kind of design is transition design?." Design Philosophy Papers 13.1 (2015): 75-84. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14487136.2015.1085682
Terry Irwin, (2015). "Transition Design: A Proposal for a new area of Design Practice, study and Research." Design and Culture 7(2): 229-245 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282432370_Transition_Design_A_Proposal_for_a_New_Area_of_Design_Practice_Study_and_Research
Kees Dorst (2018), "Mixing Practices to Create Transdisciplinary Design: A Design-Based Approach. 8(8) Technology Innovation Management Review, pp. 60-65. https://timreview.ca/article/1179
If you’re interested in attending this reading group meeting, please email Tomás Guarna (tguarna@mit.edu).