Abstract
Tracing the emergence of neoliberalism, Michel Foucault introduced the concept of environmentality to describe a form of power in which control is exercised through the design of an increasingly technologically mediated environment to ensure economic circulation. Decades in, environmentality has reshaped how our habitats are conceptualized, designed, and perceived. In many levels, design has stopped being an independent autonomous task to be integrated and automated within the operative nature of our milieux. This integrated design operates through infrastructural semiotics, i.e. texts, codes, guidelines, indicators, benchmarks and protocols as well as other ecologies of biological, social and machinic signs like notifications and nudges that do not represent space but actively organize matter, orienting bodies and shaping the spaces of possibility around them. This article begins by conceptualizing and historicizing environmentality's integrated design and concludes with an analysis of ISO standards as infrastructural semiotics with world-making agency.
Keywords
environmentality, operationalism, semiotics, technosymbiosis
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.992
Citation
Jalon Oyarzun, L. (2026) Environmentality's integrated design: ISO standards as infrastructural semiotics, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.992
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Environmentality's integrated design: ISO standards as infrastructural semiotics
Tracing the emergence of neoliberalism, Michel Foucault introduced the concept of environmentality to describe a form of power in which control is exercised through the design of an increasingly technologically mediated environment to ensure economic circulation. Decades in, environmentality has reshaped how our habitats are conceptualized, designed, and perceived. In many levels, design has stopped being an independent autonomous task to be integrated and automated within the operative nature of our milieux. This integrated design operates through infrastructural semiotics, i.e. texts, codes, guidelines, indicators, benchmarks and protocols as well as other ecologies of biological, social and machinic signs like notifications and nudges that do not represent space but actively organize matter, orienting bodies and shaping the spaces of possibility around them. This article begins by conceptualizing and historicizing environmentality's integrated design and concludes with an analysis of ISO standards as infrastructural semiotics with world-making agency.