Tricky design : the ethics of things / edited by Tom Fisher and Lorraine Gamman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Tricky Things responds to the burgeoning of scholarly interest in the cultural meanings of objects, by addressing the moral complexity of certain designed objects and systems. The volume brings together leading international designers, scholars and critics to explore some of the ways in which the practice of design and its outcomes can have a dark side, even when the intention is to design for the public good. Considering a range of designed objects and relationships, including guns, eyewear, assisted suicide kits, anti-rape devices, passports and prisons, the contributors offer a view of design as both progressive and problematic, able to propose new material and human relationships, yet also constrained by social norms and ideology. This contradictory, tricky quality of design is explored in the editors' introduction, which positions the objects, systems, services and 'things' discussed in the book in relation to the idea of the trickster that occurs in anthropological literature, as well as in classical thought, discussing design interventions that have positive and negative ethical consequences.0These will include objects, both material and 'immaterial', systems with both local and global scope, and also different processes of designing. This important new volume brings a fresh perspective to the complex nature of 'things', and makes a truly original contribution to debates in design ethics, design philosophy and material culture.

Foreword -- Clive DilnotIntroduction -- Design's Tricky Ethics, Tom Fisher and Lorraine Gamman Section One, Tricky Thinging Chapter 1: Civilian and Military: Design Across an Ethical Horizon, Tom FisherChapter 2: Designers and Brokers of the Mobility Regime, Mahmoud KesharvarzChapter 3: Trickery in Design: Cooptation, Subversion and Politics Nidhi Srinavas & Eduardo StaszowskiChapter 4: Guns and morality: Mediation, Agency and Responsibility, Tim DantChapter 5: The Magic that is Design, Cameron Tonkinwise Section Two: Tricky Processes, Tricky PrinciplesChapter 6: Designer/Shapeshifter: A De-colonial Redirection for Speculative and Critical Design, Luiza Prado de O. Martins; Pedro J.S. Vieira de OliveiraChapter 7: Making 'Safety', Making Freedom: Design and Contested Futures, Shana AgidChapter 8: The Nature of 'Obligation' in Doing Design with Communities: Participation, Politics and Care, Ann Light and Yoko AkamaSection Three: Tricky PolicyChapter 9: Designing Policy Objects: Designer as Anti-Hero, Lucy Kimbell Chapter 10: Tricky like a Leprachaun -- Navigating the Paradoxes of Public Service Innovation, Adam Thorpe Chapter 11: Understanding Suicide and Assisted Dying -- Why 'Design for Death' is Tricky, Lorraine Gamman & Pras Gunasekera Chapter 12: The Quest for Purity, 'Clean' Design and a New Ethics of 'Dirty' Design, Jeremy KidwellConclusion -- Lorraine Gamman and Tom Fisher.

Print version record.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide