Historically, Western design as a professional and academic field has been a narrow and exclusive domain that often imagines itself as universal. Striving to define ideals and norms, the modernist lineage of design has proved largely ignorant of its all-pervasive anthropocentrism and exclusionary assumptions, projecting a vision of the world largely defined by a small number of mostly white, male, cisgender designers in the Global North. Instead, the diversity of life-defining aspects – gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, class, social background, physical or intellectual ability, and more – is routinely flattened or ignored in design’s histories, pedagogies, practices, and objects.
Mareis, C. and Paim, N. (eds.) (2021) Design struggles: An attempt to imagine design otherwise. Amsterdam: Valiz.