Politics of the Everyday

About the Author

Clive Dilnot is professor of Design Studies at Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA. Recent publications include Ethics? Design? (2005) and the text for Chris Killip: Pirelli Work (2007).

Eduardo Staszowski is associate professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, and Director of the Parsons DESIS Lab, New York, USA. He is the co-editor of the Designing in Dark Times series and of the book Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (Bloomsbury 2020).

Product Description

Each of us develops and enacts strategies for living our everyday lives. These may confirm the general tendency towards new forms of connected solitude, in which we work, travel and live alone, yet feel sociable mainly by means of technology. Alternatively, they may help to create flexible communities that are open and inclusive, and therefore resilient and socially sustainable.

In Politics of the Everyday, Ezio Manzini discusses examples of social innovation that show how, even in these difficult times, a better kind of society is possible. By bringing autonomy and collaboration together, it is possible to develop new forms of design intelligence, for our own good, for the good of the communities we are part of, and for society as a whole.

Review

“Ezio Manzini's book is remarkably timely and much-needed. He shows that another world is possible, not through top-down policy making but through everyday social innovation. Project-based democracy is a concept we'll be hearing a lot more about.” ―Pathik Pathak, Director of the Social Impact Lab at the University of Southampton, UK

“The reader will be rewarded by sticking with Manzini as he struggles to bring autonomy and collaboration together in new communities of "design intelligence" that can serve as the building blocks for broader social development. His nuanced discussion offers new perspectives on one of the great challenges of our time... Recommended.” ―CHOICE