By Design or by Disaster TALK: Monday, 1 March, 17:30
Slides (PDF, 250 kb)
There is a wide consensus that the aggravating multiple crises urgently requires a great social-ecological transformation towards more solidary, resilient and sustainable futures. There is much less consensus on how this transformation can and should be enabled. Diverse approaches, concepts and means are debated, among them Degrowth or Postgrowth, Just Transition, Green New Deal, Circular Economy, Economy for the Common Good, Commons and Commoning, Care, Sufficiency, Critical Consumption, etc. These and other approaches go along with both different analyses on causes of the multiple crises and differing visions of future-viable and desirable societies and economies.
In the talk I try to provide overview and orientation by mapping diverse points of critical analysis, transformation approaches and means. I will attempt to outline very roughly the aims, potentials and limitations of some approaches, hoping that this is helpful to understand both complementarities and conflicts. This can be the basis for building bridges and (unconventional) alliances enabling substantial transformative steps, also based on overlapping interests only in specific points (while not suppressing debate on differences). Apart from this, the map can help eco-social designers and other transformation-engaged actors to discuss and decide where to focus their energies on according to their specific capabilities, situations and priorities.
Like all maps of complex issues the map of transformation approaches will be incomplete and wrong – but maybe good enough for provoking enlightening debates, and as a first version of a pragmatic tool, which can be developed further and adapted to diverse purposes.
Kris Krois is heading the transdisciplinary Master in Eco-Social Design at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. Together with students and teachers as well as with partners from design, art, science, activism and entrepreneurship, he is co-developing design practices, tools and structures that contribute to socio-ecological transformations towards more solidary, resilient and sustainable modes of living and production. Since 2013 he is organising the annual conference By Design or by Disaster. Blog: designdisaster.unibz.it. He is a founding member of the research cluster tans–form, of the Zukunftspakt–Patto per il Futuro, of lab:bz and of Scientists for Future South Tyrol. He is engaged in diverse transformation-oriented arenas, always trying to draw things, ideas and actors together for unfolding positive societal changes.