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A review by singingmousai
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
I want to give this a higher score, because I do think that the work being done and presented here is incredibly important and I do not regret picking this book up on a whim from the library. But the cadence in which it's written makes that kind of difficult for me.
What really shines here are the examples presented of real-world organizations and the work they are doing in their communities. These vignettes REALLY helped me wrap my brain around the explanations of terms and schools of thought presented by the author, which were quite dense and repetitive and at times difficult to understand. I know that's kinda just how academics talk, but it raised the barrier for entry into understanding many of the book's topics quite a lot for the layman, which seems a bit counterintuitive to the book's goal of shifting design focus away from the academy and into grassroots community organizations populated mostly by everymen and the working class.
I understand that a lot of the critiques the author puts forth are not necessarily meant to be cleanly resolved and are instead meant to spark dialogue and encourage more mindful and conscientious design practices. This is fine, and I think it's important to rage against the popular mindset of every issue or critique needing an immediate clean-cut solution. However, at times I think some of the jabs aimed at other movements miss the forest for the trees. In general I found that several sections sort of went in circles, critiquing certain organizations, movements, schools of thought, etc. for not taking all of the author's concerns into consideration, only to turn around and say that some of these critiques are unresolvable, which sometimes (not always) made it feel like a moot point. That said, I do think the author's insistence on academics and suchlike needing a much more intersectional approach to their work is extremely relevant and needs to be said as much as possible, so maybe I'm just being a pedant here.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not built for understanding theory. In general this was a very informative read and introduced me to some great organizations whose newsletters I signed up for right away! It's fine that it didn't hit all the marks for me, as it clearly did for many other readers.
What really shines here are the examples presented of real-world organizations and the work they are doing in their communities. These vignettes REALLY helped me wrap my brain around the explanations of terms and schools of thought presented by the author, which were quite dense and repetitive and at times difficult to understand. I know that's kinda just how academics talk, but it raised the barrier for entry into understanding many of the book's topics quite a lot for the layman, which seems a bit counterintuitive to the book's goal of shifting design focus away from the academy and into grassroots community organizations populated mostly by everymen and the working class.
I understand that a lot of the critiques the author puts forth are not necessarily meant to be cleanly resolved and are instead meant to spark dialogue and encourage more mindful and conscientious design practices. This is fine, and I think it's important to rage against the popular mindset of every issue or critique needing an immediate clean-cut solution. However, at times I think some of the jabs aimed at other movements miss the forest for the trees. In general I found that several sections sort of went in circles, critiquing certain organizations, movements, schools of thought, etc. for not taking all of the author's concerns into consideration, only to turn around and say that some of these critiques are unresolvable, which sometimes (not always) made it feel like a moot point. That said, I do think the author's insistence on academics and suchlike needing a much more intersectional approach to their work is extremely relevant and needs to be said as much as possible, so maybe I'm just being a pedant here.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not built for understanding theory. In general this was a very informative read and introduced me to some great organizations whose newsletters I signed up for right away! It's fine that it didn't hit all the marks for me, as it clearly did for many other readers.