Abstract
Many designers today (including ourselves) are experimenting with how their practice can engage in meaningful ways with the complexity of pressing social and environmental issues. Being very much concerned with the politics and power relations that run through such issues, in this paper we will explore what points of orientation the framework of the ‘commons’ and that of ‘community economies’ – seen from an autonomist and feminist Marxist perspective – can offer when working on socially and politically engaged projects. We mobilise these two frameworks as possible entry points through which eco-socially just modes of reproducing livelihoods can be fostered. Moreover, we will consider how they can encourage designers to more directly activate their skills to support human activities that move our societies towards eco-social justice.
Keywords
eco-social justice, commons, community economies, vectors
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.96
Citation
Franz, F., and Elzenbaumer, B. (2016) Commons & community economies: entry points to design for eco-social justice?, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.96
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Commons & community economies: entry points to design for eco-social justice?
Many designers today (including ourselves) are experimenting with how their practice can engage in meaningful ways with the complexity of pressing social and environmental issues. Being very much concerned with the politics and power relations that run through such issues, in this paper we will explore what points of orientation the framework of the ‘commons’ and that of ‘community economies’ – seen from an autonomist and feminist Marxist perspective – can offer when working on socially and politically engaged projects. We mobilise these two frameworks as possible entry points through which eco-socially just modes of reproducing livelihoods can be fostered. Moreover, we will consider how they can encourage designers to more directly activate their skills to support human activities that move our societies towards eco-social justice.