Politics of the Everyday - (Designing in Dark Times) by Ezio Manzini (Paperback)

About the Book

A manifesto for a collaborative design practice to empower people and communities to address the urgent social and political problems that confront us today.

Book Synopsis

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 Quotes

"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

About the Author

Ezio Manzini founded DESIS Network, the international network of design for social innovation and sustainability. He is Distinguished Professor of Design for Social Innovation at ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona; Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy; and Guest Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, and Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. His previous book Design, When Everybody Designs. An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation was published by MIT Press in 2015.