mapping the political economy of design...sustainability educator david orr published an...

RSD6 Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2017 working paper. www.systemic-design.net

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Mapping the Political Economy of Design

Working Paper

Dr. Joanna Boehnert

Research Fellow

Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus

University of Surrey

The global challenges of the Anthropocene must be met with deliberative transitional strategies on

all scales of society. Despite the intense difficulties associated with transition to post carbon

economies, these transformations are a basic imperative. The disciplines of both economics and

design are central to the development of sustainable and socially just futures. Both fields are

involved with the production and reproduction of the artifacts, systems and structures that propel

modern ways of living. These provide for the needs and want of populations (or certain

constituencies) and determine human impact on the environment. Both fields require deep reaching

transition strategies to respond to severe environmental and social challenges. Recent literature in

both economics and design draws attention to the relationship between the two fields and their role

in driving climate change and other environmental and social harms and injustices. Some scholars

suggest that the design of the political economy and the political economy of design are at the crux

of both environmental and social problems. Many sustainability theorists contend that deeper

engagements with the complexity of human-ecological relations are necessary to change theory and

practice in the domains of both economics and design to reflect ecological circumstances. By

focusing attention on the political economy of design with mapping practices, this research project

will explore the challenges and opportunities for the design of interventions towards a redirected,

regenerative and distributive economy.

Despite process and technological innovation and a deepening and widening knowledge base, design

in its many forms is not yet sufficiently mobilised towards slowing down and reversing the trajectory

of climate change or other accelerating social and ecological harms. Strategies and opportunities for

deeper interventions have been proposed and over the past year three new seminal publications

have focused attention on the intersection of the economy and design. Design historian and theorist

John Heskett’s posthumous Design and the Creation of Value (edited by Clive Dilnot and Susan

Boztepe) delves into the relationship between value and values. This text brings economic theory to

design and design theory to economics. Oxford economist Kate Raworth’s Donut Economics: Seven

Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017) is a highly accessible text that outlines a proposal

to transform economic thought. In this ambitious work Raworth simultaneously makes a strong case

for image-making and design as transformative means to revision and redesign economic systems.

Sustainability educator David Orr published an introduction in the most recent Routledge Handbook

of Sustainable Design (2018). Orr argues that changes in design practice cannot meet the challenges

presented by environmental problems without attention to the political economy of design. These

texts all emphasis the intersection of economics and design as a lever for transition. I use them to

explain the significance of this research project in this paper.


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The Call for Renewal in Economics and Design

Design and the Creation of Value bringing economic and design theory together to reveal how both

economic value and social values are constructed. The book includes a formidable introduction by

Clive Dilnot that contextualises Heskett’s work and describes its relevance in light of current debates.

Dilnot references Heskett’s description of “a deep schism of mutual incomprehension” between

design and economics (2017, 45) and suggests that

Until this schism is some way crossed…[and the two disciplines] listen to each other, then adequately solving the puzzle and problem of value — and ultimately the project of creating either an adequate design or an adequate economics – remains a best difficult and perhaps impossible (2017, 17).

The book offers two perspectives: “one examining design from the standpoint of economic theory;

the other examining economic theory from the perspective of design” (Heskett 2017, 52). This bridge

helps to open "design to economics and economic thought, but in the same process to being to open

(even in small ways) economics to the critiques and perspectives, intellectual as well as practical, that

design offered” (Dilnot 2107, 3). Dilnot suggests that “design theory and practice has the potential to

add to, extend or provide linkages to economic theory” (Ibid, 6) and address forms of orthodoxy.

Some of the key insights brought by design is the knowledge of generative process and how design

determines function.

From this critically engaged and design oriented perspective, many questions become evident. What

is the economy designed to do? What is its precise function? What does it value? What types of

values, practices and behaviours are encouraged and rewarded by this economic system? What are

the implications of the values encouraged by this system for democracy? Do the rules designed into

the economic system reflect the current understanding of the environmental and social sciences? Is

the economic system working to deliver sustainable prosperity for the vast majority of people in

ecologically sustainable ways? There is unequivocal evidence that the economic system is not

functioning in a way that can enable sustainable futures. Climate scientist warn of severe danger with

business as usual associated with rising carbon emissions. Establishment economist Lord Stern

describes climate change as ‘the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen’ (2007, p. i).

The Stern Review is a comprehensive critique of the economics processes that drive climate

destabilisation.

Within this context, it is the responsibility of the professions and disciplines that create modern

(unsustainable) ways of living to respond to deepening social and ecological crisis conditions.

Economics is at the crux of these problems. In his Introduction, Dilnot asks:

Is economics the study of the economy (as economists like to insist, the study of the only possible from the economy can successfully take?) or is economics as a field rally only engaged in modelling (and justifying) the fact that this is a capitalist economy? The question is difficult, and particularly from an operational point of view. It has an urgency in the light of the continuing cycle of economic crises and in the view of the need to rethink what the ‘economy’ is, and how it should be conceived in the light of the necessity to create a sustainable global post-carbon economy, an economy that, while it will, by necessity, use markets, cannot, structurally, also be capitalist, at least in the essentially mercantile (and massively exploitative) forms that we are now experiencing (2017, 14).

Heskett’s work opens a vital debate and yet his analysis indicates that he is only engaged with a

relatively limited type of economic theory. For example, Heskett avoids the problem of power. When

reviewing Friedrich A. Hayek’s economic thought, he avoids considerations of the danger of

corporate monopolies merging with the state to create even more authoritarian structures. Heckett

did not anticipate how Hayek’s theory propel neoliberal governmentalities that undo democratic


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structures and restrict freedom to those who can afford it. Nor did he consider the new types of

social relations and subjectivities that would be constructed in a society run by according to the

structures that Hayek proposed. Despite these weaknesses, Heckett’s contribution is significant for

design theory and this project.

Heskett describes of how design makes artefacts that “embody values” (Ibid, 152), how values inform

how institutions are organised and managed, and how knowledge is generated in institutional

contexts based on “the structure of an institution and the kinds of knowledge it permits, tolerates or

encourages” (Ibid, 155). He explores the relationship between what the economy values (profit) and

the social values produced and reproduced due to the what the economy produces. Heskett insists

that:

Design must be judged in terms of the benefit it brings to life in all its dimensions. To deny the significance of values in this broader sense is to deny design any role in defining viable solutions to human existential problems, effectively condemning it to a supporting role in pursuit of narrowly defined economic aims measured in profit, in other words, relegating design to a technocratic role of putting into effect the ideas of others without a regard for the consequences. Attempting to create the future material and information structure of our culture in these terms, without any values other than the financial, will be a disaster waiting to happen, like sailing a nuclear submarine by the sun and stars. In short, a task of upmost significance is to reconcile the two poles of value and values that are both necessary and integral components of the tasks facing designers (179-180).

This relationship between economic value and social values has been investigated by social theorists.

The Italian autonomist Marxists describe the ways social values are developed as part of the ‘social

factory’ in capitalist states that produce and reproduce particular types of social relations. An

understanding of how social values are influenced by design (which in turn is driven by economics) is

part of taking responsibility of the social and ecological consequences of design practice. Dilnot

remarks: “It remains for others to take up the challenge he [Heskett] has issued” (20). This mapping

project will attempt to respond to this call.

The field of economics itself is under fierce contestation by groups such as New Economy Coalition,

Rethinking Economics, New Economics Foundation, Unlearning Economics, Positive Money and a

swelling international degrowth movement (there are three academic degrowth conferences

planned for 2108). Individual economic theorists such as Herman Daly, Ha-Joon Chang, Joseph

Stiglitz, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Ann Pettifor, Mariana Mazzucato, Steve Keen, Andrew Simms, Jason

Hickel, Giorgos Kallis, Brett Scott, Kate Raworth and many others are challenging economic

orthodoxies and offering alternatives. Raworth’s Donut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-

Century Economist (2017) presents a new approach to economics mindful of both social needs and

ecological boundaries of the planet. Raworth advocates for the use of visualisation and design as

change making practices key to economic transitions. Raworth claims: “Economics, it turns out, is not

a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design” (2017, 170). Both inequality and

environmental devastation are not economic necessities but are the result of the ways in which

economic systems are designed:

But inequality, it turns out, is not an economic necessity: it is a design failure. Twenty-first-century economists will recognise that there are many ways to design economies to be far more distributive of the value that they generate – an idea best represented as a network of flows...ecological degradation is simply the result of degenerative industrial design. This century needs economic thinking that unleashes regenerative design to create a circular – not linear – economy, and to restore humans as full participants in Earth’s cyclical processes of life (Ibid, 28).


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Raworth calls for a new economy that “works with, not against, the cycles of life that those

boundaries seek to protect” (Ibid, 62). This new economy can be designed to be prioritise distributive

and regenerative values.

An economy that is distributive by design is one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands. An economy that is regenerative by design is one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth’s life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries. This is our generational design challenge (Ibid, 128-129).

This new economy must be informed by contemporary understanding of the ecological and Earth

sciences (unlike the ideas that were prevalent when industrial capitalism was developed). Raworth

describes fundamental flaws in the current model that propel the cycle of crises of capitalism. The

economic system itself that must be re-designed according to other values than the accumulation of

profit (Ibid, 18). Raworth describes strategies of redesigning economic systems based on an

engagement with ecologically informed design. The design of the economy must mimic ecological

processes to work in sync with its ecological context.

David Orr is a leading sustainability theorist who has often focused on how design can be a means of

addressing sustainability transitions. In the book chapter ‘The Political Economy of Design in a Hotter

Time’ Orr argues that “all design exists in a larger framework of political economy by which costs and

benefits are distributed within society and across generations” (2018, 4). These frameworks function

in ways that encourage particular types of the values and practices (that have social and

environmental consequences). Sustainability is a problem that

is not in the particular techniques of design, which have become very sophisticated, but in the haphazard structures – economic, political, social – in which design occurs, which slows the effort to take ecological design to the necessary scale. The rules of the system permit change only at the margins, which is to say only slight adjustments in the coefficients of change but none at the level of social structures and system design... To really improve the human prospect the precepts of ecological design must inform politics, governance, law, and economics (Orr 2018, 8).

Economic structures limit or encourage sustainable design. Orr emphases that designers must help to

“design social systems that work for, not against, natural processes” (Ibid, 8). Designers concerned

with sustainable transitions must focus attention to the design of the system that determines what is

designed (Boehnert 2014). In this project, mapping the political economy of design is an attempt to

identify points of intervention to catalyse these transitions.

Orr’s focus on ecological literacy is foundational to my own approach to sustainable education for

design and is a basis for the Ecocene concept as a design response to the scientific Anthropocene

(Boehnert 2018). The Ecocene describes an era of where the generation of new futures is driven by

ecologically literate ways of knowing that inform the design of sustainable transitions. The Ecocene

shifts focus from analysis of the problems to development of solutions. It has an ontology,

epistemology and ethic emerging from ecological thought and it will be generated by ecologically

literate design. I will make a suggestion or where Ecocene design might fit in Raworth’s new

economic model at the end of this paper.

The Rhetorical Power of Economic Models and Maps Sustainability practitioners have long relied on the use of images to display relationships in complex

adaptive systems on various scales and across different domains. The economy and the political

economy of design are complex intersecting systems. They can be modelled and mapped with

visualisation practices that facilitate interdisciplinary analysis. Creating new models of the political


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economy is a means of understanding its basic structures. Mapping the economic processes can be a

means for analysing system dynamics and identifying possible leverage points. There is a long

tradition of systems work using visualisation strategies. Raworth quotes systems theorist Donella

Meadows:

The future can’t be predicted...but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned … We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than can ever be produced by our will alone.” (Meadows, 2009, 169–170 quote by Raworth 2017, 130).

System mapping techniques illustrate systemic processes such as flow and feedback with stylised

representations that can help to identify tensions within dynamic systems. The dynamics that propel

environment problems can be mapped. Mapping is an investigative method that enables the

development of interventions.

The Heskett /Didnot /Boztepe and Raworth texts both use images to display economic models. The

images serve to highlight similarities and differences in different types of economic thought and

policy. Raworth describes the value of using images to conceptualize – and reconceptualise economic

ideas, models, theories and systems. The book’s epigraph states: “The most powerful tool in

economics is not money, nor even algebra. It is a pencil. Because with a pencil you can redraw the

world” (Raworth 2017, 8). She writes

Everybody’s saying it: we need a new economic story, a narrative of our shared economic future that is fit for the twenty-first century. I agree. But let’s not forget one thing: the most powerful stories throughout history have been the ones told with pictures. If we want to rewrite economics, we need to redraw its pictures too, because we stand little chance of telling a new story if we stick to the old illustrations...From prehistoric cave paintings to the map of the London Underground, images, diagrams and charts have long been at the heart of human storytelling. The reason why is simple: our brains are wired for visuals. Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it speaks,’ wrote the media theorist John Berger in the opening lines of his 1972 classic, Ways of Seeing.23 Neuroscience has since confirmed the dominant role of visualisation in human cognition... It is hardly surprising, then, that imagery has played such a central role in the way that humans have learned to make sense of the world (2017, 17-18).

The rhetorical power of visual framing is a strong theme throughout Raworth’s book (which starts

and ends with comments about drawings).

Figure 1. Samuelson’s 1948 Circular Flow diagram, which depicted income flowing round the economy as if it were water flowing round plumbed pipes. (Raworth 2016, 24).

Raworth goes on to explain how diagrams have played a central role in establishing orthodox

economics theory. A noteworthy example is Paul Samuelson’s 1948 Circular Flow diagram (figure 1),

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which depicted income flowing through the economy as if it were water flowing around plumbed

pipes. The pipe metaphor links the idea of flows in the economy to the flow of water as a mechanical

physical process. This visual metaphor connects economic processes to the physical sciences in

obscuring ways. The economy is not based on ‘natural laws’ as much as it is on political decisions

based on philosophical assumptions. The economy is a system designed to work specific ways. The

more abstracted version of the circular flows diagram (figure 2) demonstrates the ideological

assumptions on which modern economic policy was developed. Raworth notes the “power of

imagery, and its ability to overturn deeply held beliefs” (Ibid, 18). Her diagrams of revised economic

models, including the iconic donut visual metaphor, challenge the dominant model and offer an

alternative vision (figures 6, 7 and 8). These models are in introduced in the next section.

Figure 2. The Circular Flow diagram (from Samuelson 1948 in Raworth 2017) “for 70 years was the defining depiction of the macroeconomy” (Raworth 2016, 56).

Mapping the Political Economy Visualisation practices can communicate insights on structure and dynamics of economic processes.

The two diagrams below (Figure 3 ‘Conceptions of Human–Natural Relations: Hierarchy of Systems’

and Figures 4 ‘The Embedded Economy’) both illustrate the hierarchical order of embedded systems.

They display the economic system as embedded within and dependent on the social and ecological

systems. While it is true that the social and ecological systems are both impacted by the economic

system, the social order will continue to exist (in some form) as long as humankind does not become

extinct and the environment will survive with or without the social or the economic orders. Clearly

the environment is the context in which all other systems functions (despite the fact that it is

routinely dismissed as a source of value). Sustainability theories have describing the relationships

between the three economies as embedded. These relationships are illustrated in a different way in

Figure 5 (The Stable/Unstable Constellations of the Three Domains), first published in Vandana

Shiva’s Earth Democracy (2005).


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Figure 3. Conceptions of Human–Natural Relations: Hierarchy of Systems. EcoLabs, 2014

Figure 4. The Embedded Economy. EcoLabs, 2015

Figure 5. The Stable/Unstable Constellations of the Three Domains. EcoLabs, 2015 – following Shiva (2005).


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Figure 6. Embedded economy by Kate Raworth (2017, 60).

Raworth uses the circular visual representation of nested embedded systems in her diagram (Figure

6). She describes this image as the “Embedded economy, which nests the economy within society

and within the living world, while recognising the diverse ways in which it can meet people’s needs

and wants” (2017, 60). The embedded economy diagrams updates Samuelson’s 1948 Circular Flow

diagram by making the social and ecological context explicit; dividing the economy into four domains

(market, household, state and commons); and depicting some basic dynamics between the various

spheres and domains. This model expands the scope of economic thought by focuses attention on 1)

the economy as embedded in social and ecological systems and 2) the economy as comprised of

three other domains outside the ‘market’. These models are catalysts for the debate Raworth is

inciting.

The Doughnut Economic model (Figures 7 and 8) illustrate “a global economy that creates a thriving

balance thanks to its distributive and regenerative design” (2017, 230). The models depict the

ecological space available for development as “a social foundation of well-being that no one should

fall below, and an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between

the two lies a safe and just space for all” (2017, 16). The donut concept is the visual metaphor to

Raworth’s formulation of a new economic theory.


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Figure 7. The Doughnut: The essence of the Doughnut: a social foundation of well-being that no one should fall below, and

an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond. Between the two lies a safe and just space for all.

(Raworth 2017, 17).

Figure 8. The Doughnut: a twenty-first-century compass. Between its social foundation of human well-being and ecological ceiling of planetary pressure lies the safe and just space for humanity (Raworth 2017, 41).

Mapping the Political Economy of Design The Mapping the Political Economy of Design project will make system dynamics, flows and

structures visible. As a starting point, I have use Raworth’s diagram Embedded Economy (figure 6) to

visualise where ‘Ecocene design’ might sit as an practice active in all four economic domains (market,

household, state, commons) in an (socially and ecologically) embedded economy. This explicit

theorisation of the household, the state and the commons as alternative economies opens space for

an exploration of how design can function and how design influences the value and the values that

are created in these domains. This model helps us think more expansively about economics and

design outside the market – where other priorities other than the accumulation of profit can be

cultivated.

Figure 9. Raworth’s Embedded economy (modified) displaying Ecocene design - active in all four economic domains.


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Knowledge mapping offers methods (including giga mapping) for groups to work with participatory

processes exploring and capturing dynamic processes as well as details in complex systems. This

project will use system oriented design and knowledge visualisation approaches in a series of

interdisciplinary workshops. It aims to identify and map value and values, sustainability strategies,

obstacles and opportunities for interventions.

Conclusion This research will investigate the relationship between economic value and personal values by

mapping the political economy of design. The research responds to obstacles designers face in

addressing issues of sustainability by focusing attention on the structural forces that determine

which design problems are addressed and which methods are used to address these problems. It will

aim to find points of intervention and design strategies to disrupt system structures that disable

sustainable and socially just transitions – while constructing new projects and structures to work

with, rather than against, ecological circumstances. The research will also serve to develop a stronger

socio-economic theory of design. This works support the design interventions supporting redirected,

distributed and regenerative economies.

This paper describes the theoretical basis of the early stages of an interpretivist research project. The

political economy of design includes the political economy of design research and all too often design

research, like the design industry, avoids attending to environmental concerns that have no

immediate financial return (consequently this research remains unfunded). Although this work could

support the agendas of many environmental NGOs and government agencies, these organisations

are not always aware how design can support their goals and all too often have poor design

infrastructure outside the marketing departments. With funding, this project can engage

interdisciplinary groups to identify economic barriers and opportunities to and for sustainable

transitions. It will provide an overview of the political and economic dynamics that are relevant to

designers concerned with sustainability and analysis that can lay a foundation for an emergent

Ecocene.

References

Boehnert, J. (2014) Design vs. the Design Industry, Design Philosophy Papers. London: Bloomsbury,

12 (2), pp. 119–136.

Boehnert, J. (2018) Design, Ecology, Politics: Towards the Ecocene. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Heskett, J. (2017) Design and the Creation of Value. C. Dilnot and S. Boztepe (ed.), London:

Bloomsbury Academic.

Meadows, D. (2009) Thinking in Systems. London: Earthscan.

Orr, D. (2018) The Political Economy of Design in a Hotter Time. In R. B. Egenhoefer (ed.), Routledge

Handbook of Sustainable Design. London: Routledge, pp.3-10.

Raworth, K. (2017) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.

London: Random House Business Books.

Shiva, V. (2005) Earth Democracy. London: Zed Books.

Stern N (2007) The Economics of Climate Change – The Stern Review. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

mapping the political economy of design...sustainability educator david orr published an...

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