Sasha Costanza-Chock talks about Design Justice

Sasha Costanza-Chock talks about Design Justice in this Just Infrastructures featured talk.

Design is key to our collective liberation, but most design processes today reproduce inequalities structured by what Black feminist scholars call the matrix of domination. Intersecting inequalities are manifest at all levels of the design process. Design justice focuses on the ways that design reproduces, is reproduced by, and/or challenges the matrix of domination (white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and settler colonialism). Design justice is also a growing community of practice that aims to ensure a more equitable distribution of design’s benefits and burdens; fair and meaningful participation in design decisions; and recognition of community based design traditions, knowledge, and practices.

In this talk, Dr. Costanza-Chock presents an overview of their new book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, published by the MIT Press in 2020. The book is an exploration of how we might re-imagine design to be led by marginalized communities as a tool to help dismantle structural inequality, advance collective liberation, and support ecological survival.

About Sasha Costanza-Chock

Sasha Costanza-Chock (they/them or she/her) is a researcher and designer who works to support community-led processes that build shared power, move towards collective liberation, and advance ecological survival. They are known for their work on networked social movements, transformative media organizing, and design justice. They are a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Senior Research Fellow at the Algorithmic Justice League (ajl.org), and a Steering Committee member of the Design Justice Network (designjustice.org).

Sasha’s newest book, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, is available from the MIT Press (Open Access: https://design-justice.pubpub.org​).

You can find more of Sasha’s work at http://schock.cc​.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist at futurist.com and a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, researcher, and media producer. He helps trillion-dollar companies, progressive governments and the media shift their mindset from “what is” to “WHAT IF…” The result is empowered employees, new innovative products and incredible growth that leads to more revenues and a more resilient future.

Nikolas advised Robert Downey Jr.’s team for the ‘Age of A.I.’ documentary series, starred in ‘SMART DRUGS – a Futurist’s journey into biohacking’, and features on CTV, Global News, Sirius XM regularly. His mind-expanding research and opinion can be found on BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Sputnik and Venturebeat. 

Nikolas provides the opening chapter – ‘Start with Dystopia’ in a new book – ‘The Future Starts Now: Expert Insights into the Future of Business, Technology and Society’ for Bloomsbury. He is currently researching and writing a new book that equips executives and world leaders with insights and foresight tools to imagine disruption, strengthen strategic planning, and see unforeseen risks.

Nikolas is a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – The RSA. The organization has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years with notable past fellows including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, and Tim Berners-Lee.