Tricky design: the ethics of things
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 57 - 976100
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- ISBN
- 9781474277181
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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B - Design Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book addresses Clive Dilnot’s challenge to ‘think well about the ethics of design’. Fisher’s sole-authored introduction demonstrates the scope and depth of his editorial contribution. Resulting from several years’ editorial work, its conceptual framing positions it in relation to a range of related disciplines. Editorial contributions ranged from structuring and shaping the content to working with authors to develop the theoretical implications of early drafts – e.g. Kimbell’s use of the metis concept.
DRS ‘OPENSiG’ was the platform for building the academic community that the contributors comprise, which is international, diverse in career stage and in the perspective that they take on Design’s tricky ethics.
‘Concealed Trickery: Design and the Arms Trade’, Chapter 1, confirms the book’s orientation towards contentious instances of design. It focuses on the globalised trade in weapons evident in international arms fairs, ‘public’ events with strict entry criteria, often the focus of protest against the global arms industry’s consequences for international relations. Drawing on the anthropology of technology and STS it points to the ‘normalising’ effect of design that crosses between the objects made for warfare and civilian designs, connecting to contemporary protest against trade in arms in public discourse as a consequence of the relationship between Design’s institutions and the arms industry: (https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/artists-remove-work-from-design-museum-exhibition-in-protest-at-arms-firm-function-a3902956.html). Reprising the assumption discussed in the introduction that design is inherently beneficent Fisher’s editorial overview links it to subsequent chapters particularly Keshavarz’s on design and ‘bordering’ and Dant’s on the materiality of weapons.
Tricky Design was selected as ‘featured content’ on the Bloomsbury Design Library in August 2019, after a symposium at the Design Museum in June 2019, Tricky Design: Design Ethics for a Complex World, which attracted an audience of 70 and funding from the Design Research Society. It appeared in paperback in January 2020.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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