Precarious Objects: Activism and Design in Italy

Precarious objects explores the relationship between design and activism, focusing on counter-precarity cases in Italy. It shows how design objects and practices can resist and respond to precarity, reconfiguring political communication and reimagining everyday life.

Format: Hardback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 02 December 2020
Publisher: Manchester University Press

Precarious objects delve into the intricate interplay between design and activism, shedding light on the narratives inspired by contemporary counter-precarity cases in Italy. As a pervasive category of labor and a global social phenomenon, precarity permeates every facet of life, exerting a profound influence on the production and circulation of a diverse array of material and immaterial consequences. Within this book, three microhistories of counter-precarity unravel existing forms of resistance and resilience to precarity. By employing ethnographies, archives, and interdisciplinary debates from design theory, cultural studies, and geography, this study unveils how design objects and practices redefine political communication and reshape the imagination, production, and circulation of things. Furthermore, it demonstrates how design as a practice can reshape material realities and pave the way for repairing some of the detrimental effects of precarity on everyday life.

Weight: 514g
Dimension: 176 x 252 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526135537