This session took place on April 15, 2021.
Session Recording
Session Description
The political economy governs design economies and ultimately determines whether the design industry can (or cannot) rise to global challenges such as climate change. Anthropocene design economies currently reproduce unsustainable conditions, with accelerating social and environmental harms. Economics priorities shape the so-called “unintended consequences”, both social and environmental, of various type of design. The work of creating sustainable and socially just futures by design is predicated on redirecting design economies. This talk will explore existing extractive political economies of design and consider regenerative possibilities.
Dr Joanna Boehnert is author of Design/Ecology/ Politics: Towards the Ecocene (2018), Anthropocene Economics and Design: Heterodox Economics for Design Transitions (2019),Design vs the Design Industry (2014) and The Green Economy: Reconceptualizing the Natural Commons as Natural Capital (2016). She is Lecturer in the School of Design and the Creative Arts at Loughborough University, UK and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey, UK. She is originally from Canada and tweets @ecocene (academic) and @ecolabs (high traffic).