The late
2000s was a period of tremendous growth and achievement for proponents
of
social innovation.[1]
With the
proliferation of research centers, think tanks and journals, the
establishment
of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the
In
response to these observations I will use this paper to examine two
questions:
1) What is the relation between design and the concept of the social? and 2) What are the possible political
implications of design for social innovation? The first question will
be
addressed through a selective survey of theoretical positions relevant
to the
social role of design. This will lead into a more focused examination
of the
results of the EMUDE (Emerging user demands) project, one of the most
valuable
research projects on design for social innovation published so far, in
order to
develop a provisional critique of the political function of design for
social
innovation vis á vis its ability to instigate discontinuous social
change in
the interest of sustainability.
Revisiting
the social significance of design
What relation
does design(ing) have to the concept of the social? Precedents for
thinking
about artefactual production, mediation, and consumption in social
terms are
numerous, rich and complex, and would be difficult to adequately survey
in a
single paper.[3]
The more
modest objective here is to derive some conclusions to this question by
comparing a selection of recent work in social theory and philosophy.
A
valuable starting point for returning to the question of design and the
social
is Clive Dilnot’s Design as a socially significant activity[4]
which argued for design to be recognised as a distinct form of activity
with significance
beyond the simple production of material things. According to Dilnot,
design
can be distinguished as a particular way of thinking and communicating
that is
concerned with giving form to the materiality of a human world. Dilnot
stresses
that the concept of form not only refers to the design of particular
commodified objects but should also be understood in terms of the
ordering of
an entire socio-technical mode of being. He adds that this conscious
ordering
of the material world towards human ends is an essential part of our
praxiological
being.[5]
The consequence of this claim is that we
are
only what we are as a certain kind of being by means of what and how we
give
form to, organise, and draw significance from the things that
constitute our
everyday environment. This point signals that design is never simply a
means to
a productive end but is in fact a much more complex activity with
fundamental
implications for human ontology.[6]
Because
designing involves synthesising the many complex and heterogeneous
characteristics of a situation into a concrete form, design can also be
seen as
the activity that makes it possible for form to express or embody the
character
of a particular relation between people and things and the very means
by which
things are able to have an effect within such a relation.[7] Dilnot’s
account therefore provides grounding for the claim that design must be
considered in social terms, and conversely that any discussion of sociality
ought to take into account the effect of design.
While
Dilnot was centrally concerned with design activity, his point
concerning design’s social relevance can also be connected to
developments in the fields of social theory and philosophy. For
instance, in his overview of the field of social theory Andreas
Reckwitz proposed that modern social theory has produced three
distinctive ways of explaining human action and social order: the
utilitarian homo economicus, the norm-orientated homo sociologicus, and
the 20th century ‘cultural theories’.[8]
Each of
these approaches represents a different conception of the social,
respectively:
as an aggregate product of decisions made by rational individuals, as a
consensus of norms, and as connected to the symbolic and cognitive
structures
of knowledge. This third approach is where Reckwitz positions practice
theory
(as exemplified in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Michel
Foucault, Judith Butler, Harold Garfinkel, Bruno Latour, and Theodore
Schatzki)
alongside mentalist (the social is in the head), textualist (the social
is in
the text), and inter-subjectivist (the social is in the interaction
between
subjects) theories. In contrast to utilitarian, normative, and other
cultural
theories, practice theory locates the social within practices, thereby
positing
the practice as the most minimal social ‘unit’. A practice in short can
be
understood as a routinised set of activities that involve relevant
bodily
dispositions, mental habits and concepts, and a certain assemblage of
things
put to use in a manner that is particular to that practice.
Importantly, these
are necessary and irreducible conditions for a practice. There is no
practice
and therefore no form of sociality that does not contain conditioned
bodies,
minds, or (designed) artefacts. By demonstrating the role of artefacts
within
practices Reckwitz provides a useful account of the necessary role of
design in
forming sociality.
The
relevance of practice theory to design is evident in the work of
Elizabeth
Shove. In her historical and ethnographic studies of everyday practices
Shove
provides rich accounts of how affective, conceptual, habitual,
material, and
symbolic elements are entwined in daily activities.[9]
Showering, for instance, a cleaning practice that may be part of a
daily
routine or more occasional ritual, is as much dependent upon feelings
of
cleanliness and conceptions of health and hygiene as it is modern
bathrooms,
fixtures, plumbing, soaps, shampoos, razors, mirrors, lighting, towels,
packaging, toothbrushes, hair-straighteners, perfumes, etc. The
body/mind/thing
assemblages of modern showering practices are distinctly different from
other
historical practices of cleaning such as public baths of ancient
Shove’s
studies are a valuable demonstration of the necessary role that
designed things
play within the structure of practices. Artefacts are therefore just as
important in understanding sociality as language or consciousness.
Furthermore,
Shove’s work also provides a way of explaining the limits of either
economic or
moral appeals to ‘be more sustainable’. People are always already
embedded,
invested in, and carried along by their material contexts to the extent
that
externally imposed forms of reasoning often represent a weak means of
instigating change. This is not to suggest that people do not respond
to
economic arguments or are impervious to moral appeal. Rather, it
recognises
that people are also participants in larger socio-technical assemblages
that
enforce prudential and pragmatic reasons for acting in a certain way.[10]
Furthermore, against other forms of
cultural
theory, practice theory demonstrates that the inertia and resilience of
practices is a product of the dispersed and interconnected nature of
agency.
Sociality includes more than mental phenomenon because there are also
bodies
and things that have already been conditioned or designed to (re)act in
a
certain way. It also includes more than semiotic ‘texts’ because while
a
practice must include language, signs, readings, interpretation etc. it
is not
solely reducible to textual phenomenon. Finally, the ontology of
sociality is
more than direct intersubjectivity because the interaction of subjects
is
mediated, orientated, and conditioned by non-subjective things.
Additionally,
the non-subjective relation of things, their inter-objectivity or
inter-thinglyness also conditions what is easy, hard, desirable, or
necessary
within any socio-technical context – consider for instance the
relationship of:
freezer, frozen meals, and microwave oven; car to highway; or
graphic-user-interface
to computer.
The idea
of inter-objectivity connects with the view of sociality of
actor-network
theorists. In Reassembling the Social Bruno Latour directly outlines
what
actor-network theory means as a theory of the social.[11]
Latour’s main target for attack in this text is Émile Durkheim’s
concept of the
social as a sui generis object, that is, as a distinct entity with its
own kind
of agency. Part of the reasoning that drives Latour’s critique is his
belief
that Durkheim failed to give proper account to the role of non-human
actors
within the formation of groups or assemblages. While previously Latour
had been
content to simply assert that non-human actors were a part of what held
a
society together[12]
in Reassembling
Latour extends this idea to claim that there is no sense in studying
society as
an object itself because the term ‘society’ does not refer to any real
or
identifiable entity and therefore cannot constitute an object that
could be
studied or that could produce its own effects. What Latour does allow
for
however, is that the objects (understood in terms as broad as
institutions,
machines, ideas, etc) that do constitute reality are formed through a
multitude
of dynamic groupings composed of associations between human and
non-human
actors. In this sense Latour argues that the term ‘social’ relates to
the kinds
of connections that link together actors that are otherwise not social
into
some form of assemblage.[13]
Given
this position Latour’s idea for the proper role of sociology is not the
study of
a social object but rather the trails of complex associations that form
objects. Researching the connections involved in the formation of
entities
provides a way of understanding the relational effect of systems,
technologies,
institutions and concepts alongside the efforts, strategies and
achievements of
people. Given that he includes non-human actors within the domain of
social
relations, Latour’s philosophy becomes particularly relevant to the
question of
how we understand the social significance of design. Because design is
the
practice that conditions material and expressive effects, and therefore
the
means by which connections are made, stabilised or dispersed, the act
of
designing becomes a crucial element in the formation and effect of
assemblages.[14]
What we
learn from Dilnot, Reckwitz, Shove and Latour is that there are very
good
reasons to assert that design – as activity, form, things and objects –
is
crucial to understanding what sociality means and what influence it has
on the
way we live. To bring this conclusion back to the concept of social
innovation,
it is reasonable to suggest that because design is always involved in
formation
of social conditions, any novel social arrangement or any social
innovation,
must involve some element of design(ing). However, this is not
necessarily a defense
of the claims that professional designers and design theorists have
made vis á vis the potential of design in/as
social innovation. A distinction worth considering here is that while
we might
say that sociality will always be something that is conditioned by
design, it
is quite another thing to imply that social innovation and design (as a
professional practice and way of thinking) is currently capable of
addressing,
or even making sense of, contemporary issues of public concern. To
further
examine this issue we will turn to the second question of this paper:
what are
the possible political implications of design for social innovation?
The politics and power of design for social innovation
The
accounts of the social offered above suggest that the ‘social’ of
design for
social innovation should be recognised as something already designed
before it
is approached as something in which a designer might intervene.
Additionally,
the experience of a situation by an actor can also be understood as a
question of
design. For instance, any ‘social’ context is always structured in a
way that
influences what can be seen, said, and imagined. Design also affects
the
condition of social position and position-taking, a question of being
set and
setting oneself in relation to others through engagement with people,
symbols,
things, etc.[15]
Therefore
design for social innovation would always entail designing
with/for/against/and
amidst the dynamic of what has already been designed. This implies that
design(ed) ‘problems’, ‘social’ or otherwise, are constituted by a
plurality of
design(ed) interests and possibilities, some of which are dominant
relative to
others, and some of which may not necessarily be commensurable or
desirable. To
set this in relation to the issue of sustainability, this picture of
contested
plurality implies that the act of designing should take into account
the need
to differentiate between conditions that curtail futures and those that
extend
human time. The following examination into the politics of design for
social
innovation is therefore orientated by the question of how useful design
for
social innovation is as a strategy for displacing the established and
unsustainable social relations that we currently have with forms that
can
develop the ability to sustain.
The attention that designers have given to social
innovation or social design manifests in ways that range from largely
techno-centric efforts to address ‘social problems’ (through new or
improved
products designed to assist disadvantaged user groups) to ways of
engaging with
communities or clients of social services to develop more effective
ways of
meeting their needs. Moving beyond these cases of new roles for
professional
design within the ‘social’ field, the recent work that Ezio Manzini has
been
associated with represents an interesting case in which the discourse
of social
innovation has been adapted for use within design. Manzini’s research
agenda is
driven by his conviction that unsustainability requires an approach to
development that can instigate change that is structurally
discontinuous with
the status quo, rather than proceeding as a process of incremental
improvement.
Manzini argues for a shift from a socio-technical system that attends
to
well-being through the acquisition of many products per person to a
system that
is able to attend to the well-being of many people through the
provision of
services, ownership practices, and other social arrangements that
drastically
reduce the overall throughput of material products. The research that
Manzini
and others have published on social innovation, including the current
DESIS
project and the previous EMUDE (Emerging user demands) study, is
significant in
terms of what it reveals about the ability of non-professional
designers to
take responsibility for rearranging their own socio-technical
environments. In
terms of the questions I am trying to address in this paper EMUDE also
represents a useful case study in the deployment of social innovation
as a
means to instigate radical discontinuity in the interest of sustainment.
EMUDE was
a research project designed to test the hypothesis that some cases of
social
innovation represent promising moves towards environmental and social
sustainability.[16]
Coordinated
across eight European universities, EMUDE documented 56 significant
cases in
which small groups had organised novel and effective ways of dealing
with a
diverse range of everyday problems, including childcare, care for the
elderly,
access to locally produced food, alternative transport, new forms of
housing,
and other ways of using shared facilities and services. These case
studies
demonstrated what was proposed as a new form of creativity –
non-specialised diffused
creativity, which was key to the development of diffused social
enterprise.[17]
These
findings were also discussed in relation to various European policy
agendas,
including strategies for reducing the cost of state welfare, addressing
social
marginalisation, transitioning towards knowledge based economies, and
decoupling economic growth from environmental impact.
EMUDE represents a distinctive and
important break with several conventions of design research for
sustainability,
including the way it displaces the technical product and the
professional
designer as agents of change, favouring instead the ability of the
non-professionals to reorganise their everyday social relations (which
in a
Latourian sense must encompass a relation to designed artefacts).
However, it can
be argued that EMUDE is limited by its more conventional and
conservative
characteristics, namely, an apparent aversion to questions of power.
For
instance, in discussing the political implications of diffuse
creativity,
political change is framed in terms of technical questions of good
governance.
The
limitation of this position has been highlighted by Erik Swyngedouw.
Using
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of state/market/civil society interdependency
Swyngedouw frames social innovation in more antagonistic terms:
The
socially innovative figures of horizontally organised stakeholder
arrangements
of governance that appear to empower civil society in the face of an
apparently
overcrowded and ‘excessive’ state, may, in the end, prove to be the
Trojan
Horse that diffuses and consolidates the ‘market’ as the principle
institutional form.[19]
As Swyngedouw acknowledges, this
concept of the misrecognised power-political function of civil society
was also
a key theme in Michel Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. For instance,
in his
lecture series The Birth of Biopolitics Foucault lays out his history
of the
development of twentieth century liberalism, including its effect on
social
ordering and the peculiar role of civil society within this order.[20]
In his description of liberalism Foucault
includes attitudes, practices, methods and procedures of measuring and
enforcing the proper intervention of governmental action. To this we
might add
the engineering, technologies, networks and devices that extended the
liberal
form of indirect social control.[21] Foucault emphasises that the principle of
social
regulation pursued within liberal doctrine was not concerned with
facilitating
the exchange of commodities as such but rather protecting and enhancing
competitive enterprise as a mechanism for development.[22]
Within liberalism, the provision of welfare in the form of social
benefits is a
perfectly reasonable practice on the strict condition that it does not
equate
to a form of collective, redistributive or socialist consumption, and
that it
addresses the symptoms of absolute poverty only and not any cause that
coincides with the ideal conditions for competition.[23]<
Furthermore, according to Foucault the formation of civil society under
liberalism is conditioned by its usefulness as a technique for
resolving
tensions between the economical and juridical roles of government, as
well as a
space to engage in shaping daily practices such as health and education.[24]
The mechanisms of control that
Foucault observed within liberalism were closely related to his concept
of
power. Foucault argued that it is a mistake to limit the concept of
power to
the question of sovereignty, restriction or oppression. Rather he
claimed that
power is diffuse, material, and productive, and consequently may just
as easily
be experienced as a form of choice, truth, need, or wealth .[25]
Control
within a liberal political order therefore can be seen to operate
through
stimulating experiences as much as in any authoritarian form of
repression.
This description has parallels with Slavoj Žižek’s ideological
explication of
the injunction ‘enjoy!’ – free consumption without an externally
enforced
prohibition not only authorises solicitation into unsustainable
consumption but
may also produce a more fastidious and politically debilitating form of
self-regulation.[26]
This
suggests that power antagonisms and techniques of subliminal
(ideological) and
explicit (police, welfare, social services) control are always
constitutive
elements within any social relation. As such, the reluctance of social
design
literature to acknowledge these factors, or, as is the case in EMUDE,
to limit
discussion to a question of technique – as the efficiency and
effectiveness of
governance – elides the question of how power itself is materially and
symbolically organised and what kind of effects and forms it produces.
An
introduction into the politics of design for social innovation
An issue that follows from the
elision of power in EMUDE is the possibility of imagining a form of
action that
may be critical for instigating discontinuous change (change that
displaces an
established structural order for something new), namely, the
possibility of
political action. As was the case with sociality, politics is yet
another
complex concept that demands more sophisticated treatment than can be
given
here. For our purposes though it will be useful to examine some of the
consequences of Hannah Arendt’s distinction between the social and the
political.
For Arendt, social concerns were
synonymous with the classical Greek idea of economics.[27] In ancient
Even with this brief description we
can observe a resemblance between Arendt’s conception of politics,
Foucault’s
description of the dispersed nature of liberal control, and the elision
of
power within the EMUDE that calls into question the ability of social
innovation to disrupt the continuity of our current situation. Despite
the
value of the EMUDE approach to understanding sociality and design, the
tacit
politics of the project appears to be (neo)liberal, both in the
character of
the economic rationale and the associated reduction of politics to
state
(economic) management. With its emphasis on diffuse enterprise, active
welfare,
and interest in the livelihood of stakeholders, the language of the
EMUDE
findings are remarkably close to much of what Foucault describes as the
liberal
form of social discipline. This affinity is problematic considering
that it is
a characteristic of liberalism to tolerate change only in so far as it
does not
threaten forms of social organisation that protect its fundamental
economic
interests.[29]
The identification of diffused social
innovation supports the notion that self-initiated change is possible
for
people who can (or must) make their own opportunities, but it does not
suggest
an explicit challenge to a governmentality driven by a productivist
agenda.
Therefore, because it is concerned with changing the provisions of
daily life
within (rather than beyond) the strictures of (a)political practices,
even an
approach as progressive as EMUDE still remains allied to the structural
conditions that maintain hegemonic unsustainability.
As an example of design for social
innovation, the amenability of EMUDE towards resolving problems within
(not
against) liberalism, and the reluctance to imagine alternative
practices of
organising (for) political power is a telling limitation vis
á vis the need for discontinuous change. Some of the
limitations that stem from not recognising power and politics as
agencies
within social relations include an inability to differentiate between
who/what
(as assemblages of individuals and artefacts) can act towards
sustainable
futures and who/what maintains the status quo, and an inability to work
explicitly towards mobilising assemblages of sustainment against
established
orders. If this is indeed the case, then it is reasonable to suggest
that
design for social innovation lacks the kind of political gravitas
required to
initiate a serious disruption to structural unsustainability.
By drawing a relation between
Foucault, Arendt, and the early conclusions that concern the relation
of design
to sociality, we can observe that design is important for understanding
both
sociality and politics. Because it gives form to power, conditions of
control,
and contested ways of living, the character of design practice is
inherently
political.[30]
Ignoring
the politics of design(ing) draws the risk of being orientated by
default
towards the maintenance of existing structural conditions. The
suggestion we
find in Arendt’s philosophy is that because humans only ever have sense
of
worldhood through their association with things and other people it
should be
expected that design has a role to play in developing political
ontologies,
including the kind of radical ontology that is able to recognise and
mobilise
against the unsustainable.
An inference that follows from both this point and the critique of EMUDE offered above is that designers, researchers, theorists, and educators working within or in association with the field of social innovation must view their practice in terms of its political agency. To offer a sense of what this might mean I would draw a distinction between pragmatic social intervention and a praxiological politics. While the former may allow people to cope more easily with their everyday challenges, the socio-technical assemblages it forms would be politically heterogenous and open to manipulation. For instance, within a liberal political order a pragmatic social innovation may be useful for relieving the burden of state expenditure without threatening established power relations or economic interests. A praxiological politics on the other hand, would be concerned with consciously generating politically autonomous socio-technical assemblages that are antithetical to the unsustainable. These assemblages would need to be elastic enough to cope with change and crisis but resistant to political co-option. Designers in this sense, professional or not, may seek to engage at various levels with the political implications of space, visibility, time, labour, consumption, production, finance, exchange, and ownership. Designers might also take on the role of mediating between groups taking action, government institutions, and other significant actors.[31] Furthermore, designers could use their expertise to visualise, advocate and promote alternative social policies, development agendas, and importantly, new ways of practicing politics.
Conclusion
The
objective of the paper was to register the need to examine the relation
of
design to sociality both as a question in itself and in relation to the
politics of sustainability. The mainstreaming of social innovation
discourse
makes this a topical subject but beyond the immediacy of these
developments
there is an obvious need for the rigorous examination of the social
significance of design. This agenda must be driven by the need to
understand
the kind of designing required in order to achieve social relations
that are
more sustainable and more equitable. As a contribution to this agenda I
have
argued that power and politics are significant blind spots in the
theory of design
for social innovation. Furthermore, I suggest that this oversight has
the
potential to limit the ability of actors to instigate discontinuous
change in
the interest of sustainability.
Regarding
social innovation itself, the idea of innovation not simply being a
technical
phenomenon is important to engage with as it signals that the sociality
of
things and people should be a matter of interest for designers and
design
researchers. As such I have also suggested that design should be
considered
within any approach to social innovation because designed artefacts are
a
necessary element of sociality. However, regarding the need for
discontinuous
change, a significant limitation in current approaches to design for
social
innovation is its political amenability. Rather than being a sign of
success,
the fact that social innovation has been so widely adopted as a
legitimate
development practice may indeed be a sign of its usefulness to
established
political orders. For those who recognise the need for discontinuous
change
this amenability suggests that social innovation is politically inert
and
therefore lacks the ability to galvanise action against structural
unsustainability. Social innovation is evidently a useful way to
produce
valuable ‘social’ outcomes, but so long as it persists in trying to
achieve its
objectives via apolitical means its potential to instigate radical
change will
continue to be compromised.
Matthew Kiem is
an independent researcher and writer who teaches design studies at
[1] Social
innovation is
understood as the development of novel social arrangements that meet
everyday
needs. Social innovation may include other forms of innovation but it
is not
necessarily driven or reliant upon technological change. For a useful
overview
of the social innovation literature see Jürgen Howaldt & Michael
Schwarz. Social
Innovation: Concepts, Research Fields and International Trends.
[2] See for
instance Tim
Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt, ‘Design Thinking for Social Innovation’,
Stanford
Social Innovation Review, Winter 2010, pp. 31-35. For popular
commentary on these
developments see Bruce Nussbaum, ‘Is humanitarian design the new
imperialism’, Co.Design,
www.fastcodesign.com, 7 July
2010, viewed
14/8/2010, Cameron Tonkinwise, ‘Politics please, we’re social
designers’, Core77,
www.core77.com, 1 September
2010, viewed
2/9/2010, and Kevin McCullagh, ‘Is it time to rethink the t-shaped
designer’, Core77,
www.core77.com,
24 September 2010
[3] This would
include work
by many significant thinkers in the traditions of philosophy, social,
cultural
and media theory, including Marx, Heidegger, the
[4] Clive
Dilnot, ‘Design as
a socially significant activity: an introduction’. Design Studies 3: 2,
1982
[5] Dilnot, op
cit., p. 145
[6] For another
argument
regarding this point see Anne-Marie Willis, ‘Ontological designing –
laying the
ground’. In A. Willis (Ed.), Design Philosophy Papers: Collection
Three.
Ravensbourne, Qld: Team D/E/S, 2007, pp. 80–98
[7] Included
within the varieties
of effect that a form may have is the experience of being out of joint
with the
dynamic of a situation. This may occur because of ‘bad’ or
inappropriate design
or because the situation itself has changed, as for instance when a
previously
ubiquitous object or practices become obsolete or anachronistic because
of
changes to technological infrastructures as was the case with food
preservation, letter writing, typewriters, floppy disks, and analogue
televisions.
[8] Andreas
Reckwitz, ‘Toward
a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist theorizing’.
European
Journal of Social Theory. 5: 243, 2002, p. 243–263
[9] For
instance, Comfort,
Cleanliness, and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality.
[10] For more on
this point
see Carleton Christensen, ‘The material basis of everyday rationality –
transforming by design or education?’, in A. Willis (ed.), Design
Philosophy
Papers: Collection Three, Ravensbourne, Qld: Team D/E/S, 2007, pp. 40–53
[11] Bruno
Latour, Reassembling
the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
[12]“Society and
technology
are not two ontologically distinct entities but more like phases of the
same
essential action”, ‘Technology is Society Made Durable’ in A sociology
of
monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination. J. Law (ed.).
[13] Bruno
Latour, Reassembling
the Social, p. 5
[14] The effect
of material
and expressive qualities is a reference to a distinction made by Manuel
DeLanda
in A New Philosophy of Society.
[15] Pierre
Bourdieu, Distinction:
A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice, Routledge
Kegan
Paul, 1986
[16] Manzini,
Creative
Communities. ‘Executive summary: creative communities and the diffused
social
enterprise. The socio-technical innovation in bottom-up perspective’,
in Creative
Communities. Towards Active Welfare and a Distributed Economy, 2006, p.
7.
Accessible at http://81.246.16.10/videos/EMUDE/EMUDE%20final%20report.pdf.
[17] “Diffused
social
enterprise: this is diffuse enterprise that auto-produces social
quality, where
the term ‘diffuse enterprise’ indicates people who, in their everyday
life,
organise themselves to obtain the results they are directly interested
in; and
the expression ‘to auto-produce social quality’ refers to the process
whereby,
through actively seeking to resolve their problems, people enhance a
project
that has the side effect of (more or less deliberately) reinforcing the
social
fabric.” Manzini, Creative Communities, note 3, p. 8
[18] See for
instance Eivind
Stř & Pĺl Stradbakken, ‘Political challenges: to create frameworks
of
social enterprises’, in Creative Communities, pp. 160-162
[19] Erik
Swyngedouw. ‘Let the
People Govern? Civil Society, Governmentality and
Governance-Beyond-the-
State’. Paper submitted to: URBAN STUDIES (special issue SINGOCOM)
c2004.
Available at http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/colloquium/humboldt.pdf.
p.42. See also Erik Swyngedouw, ‘Governance innovation and the citizen:
the
Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state’, Urban Studies 42: 11, 2005,
pp.
1991-2006
[20] Michel
Foucault, The
Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collčge de France 1978-1979.
[21] Chris Otter.
‘Making
liberal objects’. Cultural Studies 21: 4, 2007, pp. 570–590
[22] “In other
words, what is
involved is the generalisation forms of ‘enterprise’ by diffusing and
multiplying them as much as possible, enterprises which must not be
focused on
the form of big national or international enterprises of the type of
big
enterprises of the state. I think this multiplication of the
‘enterprise’ form
within the social body is what is at stake in neo-liberal policy. It is
a
matter of making the market, competition, and so the enterprise, into
what
could be called the formative power of society.” Foucault, The Birth of
Biopolitics, p.149
[23] Foucault,
The Birth of
Biopolitics, pp. 203-206
[24] Foucault The
Birth of
Biopolitics, p. 295 and Erik Swyngedouw, ‘Let the People Govern?’, p. 14
[25] “In other
words, rather
than ask ourselves how the sovereign appears to us in his lofty
isolation, we
should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually,
progressively,
really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms,
forces,
energies, materials, desires, thoughts etc.” Michel Foucault,
Power/Knowledge:
Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977.
[26] Slavoj
Žižek, ‘Superego
and the Act: A lecture by Slavoj Žižek’, August 1999, www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/the-super-ego-and-the-act/,
viewed 6/5/2011
[27]See The Human
Condition, Chicago: The
University of Chigago Press,1998, and The Promise of Politics, J. Kohn
(ed),
[28] See
‘Epilogue’ in The
Promise of Politics, pp. 201-204
[29] Tony Fry,
Design as
Politics,
[30] Tony Fry,
‘Design and the
political’, Design Philosophy Papers, Issue 6, 2003/04. See also Design
and
politics op cit.
[31] For an
example of what
this might mean see Louise Crabtree, Sustainable Housing Development in
Urban
Australia: exploring obstacles to and opportunities for ecocity
efforts, Australian
Geographer 36: 3, 2005, pp. 333–350