Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds

New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century

by Arturo Escobar

In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth. Noting that most design—from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments—currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an “autonomous design” that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. Such design attends to questions of environment, experience, and politics while focusing on the production of human experience based on the radical interdependence of all beings. Mapping autonomous design’s principles to the history of decolonial efforts of indigenous and Afro-descended people in Latin America, Escobar shows how refiguring current design practices could lead to the creation of more just and sustainable social orders.

Genres: Design, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Anthropology, Environment, Research

424 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2018

About the author

Arturo Escobar is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His most recent book is Territories of Difference.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if I didn't understand every single sentence in this book, I have still given Arturo Escobar 5 stars for this text if for no other reason than the incredibly wide scope and intricate depth of knowledge that was clearly demonstrated throughout Designs for the Pluriverse .

This is by no means an easy-entry, introductory text and I certainly struggled to grasp some of the complex concepts being described. I am used to short and sharp paragraphs that don't beat around the bush - and I like this style in academic writing when it's well executed because it makes some complicated ideas a lot more accessible a lower-level reader like myself. However, I was enraptured by Escobar's lyrical writing style - something rarely seen in academic literature. While at first I thought the long quotations of song and poetry were self-indulgent and a result of bad editing, I quickly came to realise that the form of writing was essential in reflecting the message of the content.

Escobar dismantles the Cartesian approach to world design, criticising Cartesian rationality and belief in an objective external world as destroyers of communal and place-based forms of relating. He quotes Greene: "Ecological civilisation is not something to be arrived at, but something ever to be created." Design for a post-carbon world must breathe in the full richness and complexity of human life, a concept which cannot be contained in the rigidity of most academic writing.

It was also satisfying to see not only a dismantlement of the current approaches to world design but also tangible alternatives proposed as a way of embracing the world's "pluriverse" reality. Escobar's 'Transition Imagination Exercise for the Cauca Valley Region in Colombia' in Chapter 6 took a specific, current case of where a multiplicity of narratives (postcolonial, feminist..) had been subjected to erasure by homogenous development discourse and posited a way of transition which would integrate local and relational epistemologies into a sustainable ecological future.

In brief, for a book that tackles such a meta topic, Escobar has delivered a beautifully crafted text that reflects the multifaceted nature of our pluriverse and lays the foundation for those seeking to implement visions of a sustainable ecological future that respects the agency of place.

[Francis Kilkenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ is, in many ways, a frustrating book. Mostly this has to do with the difficulty of the subject. I don’t mean difficulty in that it is difficult to understand, but rather that Escobar is trying to hypothesize and describe a type of design that doesn’t really exist yet, except in fragmentary pieces and hazy potentialities. Thus, the book has the feel of stumbling in the dark on an alien world. There are few placeholder examples from which to orient. A handful of degrowth collectives, a bit more about Columbian movements, but not much else that is concrete. Most of the book is really critical theory, more about what this nebulous future design is trying to escape from rather than what it might be. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a worthwhile effort by the author. It’s just that he is trying to bring something into existence that is only partially here, and that is a very difficult task.

The task is doubly difficult because he is seeking a way out of the near monoculture of modernity into a pluralistic set of worlds and imaginaries. But the grip of modernity is strong. Capitalism and its attendant systems have a choke hold on our world, and any other ways of being are essentially unimaginable. Yet, Escobar tries to imagine these possibilities. He draws upon a broad range of literature and theory, much of it familiar but much also less well known and by a very diverse set of authors. I’m sure it would be enlightening to read the works in this bibliography. Nevertheless, it is clear that the works that Escobar draws upon are themselves struggling with veil of modernity.

Reading this book is worth it if you are willing to grapple with the hidden and oppressed state of the concepts that Escobar describes.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a worthwhile read for the satisfying layout if not the helpful content. Escobar draws you through the current context of design, through changes that could be made, and what currently being developed in a manner that is at times dense, but that tends to come with an analysis of design.

I primarily read this through the lens of someone interested in sustainability, in the broader sense, not only environmental. I was curious how one could apply (at then unknown) proinciples to building and/or sustaining of technology (I’m a software engineer by day), communities, relationships, etc. With this in mind, I found the most following ideas salient.
- “The more tradition is weakened, the more subjects must learn to design their own lives…”
o As a millenial this resonated with me given the popular writing about how we are “killing” industries. We are simply finding our own ways to navigate the world, some to the detriment of it.
- “Questions of class, gender, race, and coloniality are notoriously absent from design theory and practice, and so is that of design’s dependence on capitalism.”
o Previously, design would have not taken into account the inclusion of divergent opinions, but now they are more needed than ever to sustain capitalism. There are a couple of strategies I observe at work here- the ergonomic neutralization of design (e.g. Apple products) and, alternatively, personalization (style personalization services like Stitch Fix). Companies increasingly make their product fit everyone, or only one. (There is more to speak on here.)
- “We create reality by participation and action.”
o Exactly what it says. Since I read this at the start of 2020, I have resolutions on my mind, so it is also a call to action and increase physical engagement with the world. Being digitally distant is simply not enough.

[Oren · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your work brings you in contact with technology or design, I highly highly recommend this book.

I've been involved in a lot of community and political projects over the years as a tech worker, and this book has offered an expansive kind of ethical foundation that I always felt lacking. It's a brilliant marriage of poetic liberatory visions for our future(s), along with earnest pragmatic study of what's possible in design processes.

It's a clearly structured series of political-philosophic arguments with thorough citations, references, index, and notes. Aside from some obscure words here and there, it's easy-to-read conversational prose, with song lyrics, cultural references, poetry and inspiring quotes throughout (many presented in Spanish and translated into English).

It weaves together hundreds of old & new frameworks from social justice, decolonial, and ecological movements as it proposes a compelling and earnest intervention against modernity's project of technocratic patriarchal capitalist destruction, with several potential escape routes, several case studies, and some rubrics and models for practical applications.

My copy of the book is heavily dog-eared and covered in highlighters circling so many richly imaginative, nourishing, and hope-giving passages. It's a book that opens doors. I cannot over-hype this text!

[Jillian Acreman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I sincerely hated every minute of this book, but it’s for a book club at work and we get to go out for lunch to discuss. And I cannot stress enough how much I love the folks in my group 🤗 (FYI content was great, delivery was a major eye roll).

[Noelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

TO FREEDOMMMMM!!!!!!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have chilled the ideological rhetoric here and there, still really good though

[Gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Designs for the Pluriverse is essentially Arturo Escobar’s post postmodern manifesto. Dense yet clear to read, it reframes design as an ontological activity. Which is to say, design is not just the shaping of objects, systems, or technologies, but also a force that can reproduce or disrupt the modern underpinning of global capitalism, extractivism, and technological solutionism.
At its core, the book critiques modernity’s rationalistic tradition. In this lens, even human-centered design is inadequate if it fails to question the ontology that defines “the human” as separate from ecological and social worlds. The result is alienation from the biophysical conditions on which life depends.
Ontological design counters this by rejecting objectivist, detached views of reality in favor of relational, situated, relocalized, and plural ways of knowing and being (forms of of knowledge that modernity systematically devalues). Ontological designing is therefore “a philosophical discourse about the self—about what we can do and what we can be.”
Overall, a great read!! I'll certainly be returning to this one as my self study on these topics continue.

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit more philosophical and metaphysical than “Whose Global Village”, emphasizing the idea of radical interdependence (rather than dualist and/or individualist views) and designing for “A world where many worlds fit”. I liked that the author builds a lot on the ideas of south-american academics, indigneous and afrodescent people, which I did mostly not know of before.

The author discusses the problems of a one-world world, in which only one way of knowing and ontology is accepted: That of western science – which then serves as foundation for instrumental changes and designs.

The designs for the pluriverse which the the author has in mind is different than the common understanding of the term today, which is very modernist and expert driven. It could rather be understood as planning and iterating in a community-based way, focused on a negociated/negociatable outcome.

People who like Varela, Ingold or Whitehead will find quite some familiar ideas.

[Kimathi Muiruri · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only thing I know to say about this book is that it taught me at 18 years old how to hope and why to fight for the more beautiful world which our hearts know is possible.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Designs for the Pluriverse' is quite an ambitious book which in many ways tries to join together, or at least recognise the connections to a broad range of theory, philosophy and practice to acknowledge the challenges of design in the world, whilst positing an approach for design that can create the space and opportunity for many worlds, or at a simpler level, many perspectives to how our world can work.

I admire Escobar's attempt at trying to bring together many different strands, and when I have reflected upon the book, many of the things he attempts to address are similar considerations I reflect upon often in my work (albeit far less theoretically or academically). His worldview mirrors my own in some respects - that for many different worlds to exist there must exist autonomy, that systems thinking can be an effective approach to understanding how autonomous humans, communities, organisations, collectives etc. can exist both independently of and in connection with other groups of organisations. In my view, whilst Escobar's writing is anti-capitalist, and he does provide examples of how autonomy can lead to anarchy, he doesn't explicitly state he is an anarchist. That said, I find this work to be another chapter in my linking of systems to anarchy and how this can be a worldview for people. His work is political, inclusive, yet incredibly philosophical and because he draws on Afrodescendant, indigenous, Latin American and feminist perspectives his work is a notable shift from a liberal one world Westernised world view. I felt reading the book that he was thinking about similar things to me, but from very different perspectives, and yet I could see what he could. That's interesting for me, because I think it strengthens his work that many worlds can exist and yet different people can see the same things.

His book has a starting position, that everything in the world is designed, and in relatively recent human history it is designed from an increasingly patriarchal, then capitalist perspective. He is clear that design therefore needs to be rethought, and that designers, no matter how well meaning are often operating from a capitalist paradigm which needs to be unlearnt. He draws on feminist, ecological, indigenous, anti-racist and anti-capitalist theory to critique this ever increasingly similar world. Whilst some of the ideas in his book, particularly in relation to co-design and systemic design, and also complexity theory and emergence are more widespread now he is quite clear about the impacts of the design space in current Western thinking.

One of the core ideas in the book that really resonated with me was the notion of 'defuturing', in that as the Western neo-liberal world 'develops', technology and capitalism almost coalesce into a single view of the world, and that rather than being 'futuristic', we are actually contracting our worldview into something much smaller. Consider, a decade on from writing, how much AI has defutured us? Or how media consolidation, or politics have become increasingly similar. There's a line in here that suggests it is easier to imagine the end of the world then it is to imagine our current world being radically different. In my view he doesn't criticise Marxism enough, but he does nod to the idea that Marxist thinking in many ways is still a single view of the world and cannot account for variation between peoples and communities. So I am quite struck with this notion, that rather than having the correct answer, we must seek to have many answers co-existing at once, and these worlds can co-exist together. He isn't explicit here but I took from the book that communities can pre-configure the world they want as they go, and need to resist external forces of oppression - both physical, but also psychological and spiritual.

So there is lots to like as we wander through this book. There are more writers and theories that interested me than I can ever read. I loved the exploration of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Valera's work on autopoiesis and the notion, that by interacting with the world we are both creating reality and designing the world. I did laugh in the book at one point where Escobar tries to simplify Maturana, as he is sometimes impenetrable because quite often in this book I was struggling to follow Escobar. I loved that he'd touch on Gaia theory, living systems theory and poetry and music and the stories of people outside the defutured west. The words of the Zapatista's are prominent throughout the book and their struggle (and creating a 'world within a world') is clearly a prominent influence.

The reason why I am not giving this a higher rating though is because at times I found the book quite hard going. I felt I had to think about every sentence, that words were made up, or that I didn't quite understand. Now that may be more of a reflection on me as a reader but I often had to think, 'what is being said here'. I do think that the book is aimed squarely at the academic reader, and whilst there is a strong critique of design theory throughout it is clearly aimed at those same students of design theory. (I of course, was recommended this book by a friend, who is in design academia). At times I felt the book was more of a pitch, or course outline, for 'Pluriverse Design Theory', which, I imagine would be fascinating - and despite my criticisms I am thinking that Escobar would be a fascinating person to share a pot of tea with. I felt I had to work hard to find the moments of wisdom.

To put into context, a few years ago I had an insight that, 'work was just a series of little conversations', which is really asking people to consider how things really get done in organisations, how relationships occur and how dynamics interact with each other. If people studied the conversations they would learn far more than any process documentation, policy or business rule. Anyway, this simple idea is shared by Escobar, but he makes this point by writing about four long-winded sentences, and a long quote about the written word being a reality-creating translation tool and I found myself reading it aloud laughing. Because, if the book was aimed at a general audience this could be much more concise and understandable.

My other main criticism, is that I don't quite know what to do with the learning. There are relatively few practical examples of pluriversal design (my own knowledge of the Zapatistas really supplemented the reading in the book), and whether it is the design of building, organisations, communities or just tools the really useful advice was condensed into about two pages.

It did make me think often reading the book, and I kind of love Escobar's wandering around architecture, anthropology, 'now let's talk about Bob Marley' and I imagine his library is fantastic. It's a brave and ambitious attempt which I am not sure he succeeds at, and I believe his thinking deserves to be more well known (or at least the ideas in the book), though for a general reader, you may struggle to get out of the introduction.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

All'inizio della lettura non ero molto convinta dell'originalità di questo testo, ma andando avanti mi sono resa conto del lavoro magistrale compiuto da Escobar.
Il testo è un’opera collettiva che propone una critica radicale al paradigma dominante dello sviluppo economico e sociale di matrice occidentale. Il volume raccoglie moltissime voci di studiosi, attivisti, leader indigeni e intellettuali, offrendo un ampio spettro di pratiche alternative al modello neoliberale, estrattivista e monoculturale imposto a livello globale.
Il termine “pluriverso”, ispirato al motto zapatista “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos”, indica infatti una prospettiva che riconosce la coesistenza di molteplici visioni del mondo. In contrapposizione alla logica univoca del progresso lineare e della modernità eurocentrica, il volume articola una serie di proposte che valorizzano la diversità culturale, ecologica, epistemica e politica.
Tra i concetti centrali legati alle conoscenze indigene ci sono il Buen Vivir (dall’America Latina), l'Ubuntu (dall'Africa subsahariana), la decrescita, l’ecologia relazionale, la sovranità alimentare, i femminismi decoloniali e le pratiche dei beni comuni. Tutti questi sono modi di pensare che vogliono "decolonizzare l'immaginario" e trovare soluzioni locali e sostenibili per il benessere.
Il Pluriverso è come un dizionario politico-filosofico, ma anche uno strumento pratico e militante: non è solo una riflessione teorica, ma un invito a cambiare i nostri sistemi economici e sociali, partendo dalle pratiche che nascono nei territori, nelle relazioni e nelle comunità. ✊🌱

[Ra Mc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Building on Bruno Latour’s Actor–Network Theory, Arturo Escobar argues that reality is composed of networks of relations and interdependencies. No entity, human or non-human, exists independently. In simple terms, beings are relations before they are things: “Nothing preexists the relations that constitute it.”

Escobar critiques the modern One-World World (OWW), which assumes that we all inhabit a single world, structured by one underlying reality (one nature) and multiple cultures.
Design is not neutral within this framework. When it remains anthropocentric and grounded in modern dualisms, design actively reproduces this singular world and contributes to ecological and social crises.
For Escobar, design is fundamentally a practice of world-making, not merely object-making. He calls for Designs for the Pluriverse, which is design approaches that support multiple worlds, grounded in radical interdependence, autonomy, and place-based relations among humans, non-humans, environments, and infrastructures.
As he argues, "Design is ontological in that all design-led objects, tools, and even services bring about particular ways of being, knowing, and doing."

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a quite nice definition of "ontology" as the author uses the term, on page 92 of the paperback edition. If I had been his editor I might perhaps have referred to this definition on the book cover, since, although the term is mentioned once by a reviewer, and may have entered into the shared language of academics, it is nothing like what the unabridged Websters makes of it.
The book is full of neologisms, which are frustrating because you can't look them up. Occasionally this extends to simple bad grammar, which I blame on the editor, and do not mention out of hostile intent.
The book is very well worth reading. I want to help build the future too.

[Vincent Samsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arturo Escobar thinks of the earth from its heart. The professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina is critical of development strategies whose outcome is not only the abuse of earth (such as monocultures replacing biological diversity), but also the displacement of indigenous populations and thus the destruction of its communities and culture.

In this brilliant book "Designs for the Pluriverse" Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice that is deeply attuned to justice and the earth. In short: A design theory that enables us to live with this planet – not against it.

[Serveh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arturo Escobar's constructive and thought provoking book for rethinking design ontologically, which itself has changed my thoughts/world ontologically.
Transition design needs to deepen its critique of capitalism and liberalism and its awareness of the ways in which it still shelters modernist commitments such as belief in the individual, anthropocentrism, and reliance on political processes that depend, by their very nature, on the ontology of subjects and objects. Northern transition design visions need to think decolonially and postdevelopmentally.

[Bernardo Van de schepop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cornerstone for any participatory initiative

The book challenges conventional Western design thinking by advocating for a fundamentally different approach to design that embraces multiple ways of being in the world - what Escobar calls the "pluriverse." Drawing from decolonial theory and Latin American thought, Escobar argues that design should move beyond serving market-driven modernization to instead support the creation of multiple worlds and ways of living.

[Eric Nehrlich · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the writing style is academic and jargon-y and a bit long-winded, I appreciated reading this critical take on design as an extension of patriarchal, colonialist, capitalistic modernism, and the possibilities of other worlds in the "Pluriverse" he shares, inspired by Latin American feminists and indigenous resistance movements.

[Deden Himawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

buku keren,cocok untuk pegiat LSM

[Christi Britten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read for designing a new way forward.

[Derek Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Examines unorthodox ideas through a practical lens

[Jim Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for those looking to acquire a new language for life on this planet.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books has fundamentally changed the course of my thinking.

[Marta]

era para el tfg obviamente así que no comentamos

[Hrabrina Nikolova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!

[Anjali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not easy to comprehend but good concepts discussed.

[Roy Kenagy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes, but this book offers more than it delivers. A triumph of circular assertions.

[Ricardo Avella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like seeing the matrix for the first time.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven't read Escobar since the early 90s when he was part of the anti-globalisation movement. Several decades later the movement has reincarnated into design. I have to hand it to Escobar, it's genius, re-appropriating the term after development has left a bad taste and Marxism just doesn't allow for ecology or climate change in its concept. So, design it is.

Design, I much prefer their Spanish term Disoñar (combo of diseñar to design and soñar to dream, to refer to a shift in perspective that is (take a breath now):
1. anti-modern
2. anti-capitalist
3. anti-judeo Christian
4. anti-development
5. feminist/matriarchal
6. ecological approach with acknowledgement of climate change
7. anti-colonial
8. anti-extractivism
9. anti-Cartesian dualist perspective
10. sustainable (but he shuns this word and the green economy because it has been appropriated in the capitalist setting, agree)

Did I forget anything? (underline the terms you read) if you are looking for a term that can encapsulate all these, pluriverse it is. you can follow the current trend and use the term and be in the know. my book club member remarked that the pluriverse simply means diversity, but let's move on.

This book speaks to fellow academics and is reflected in the language and writing. it is dense but doable. I started with the preface and the introduction and you get a sense of where the book is going. but I was too curious and skipped to the end, chapter 6 and 5 to check out the real life applications of the design concepts that he is talking about. you might be disappointed because there is no actual concrete project explained. you would have to find out for yourself because the utopia is not revealed to us. what does this anti-capitalist economy and community look like? we don't know. that's not important enough it seems.

the focus is on how to create a course on design for the pluriverse and this is where the book shines. the first three chapters is all about a review of literature in the field of design and the anthropology of design and design anthropology. it is solid and good. (I might add a star and this becomes a three star rating). the fourth is a potential syllabi that you can make of a progressive movement in anthropology or design or both.

You might get a sense of my saucy review. I am not the audience for this, not because, some of these ideas do not have merit. Perhaps they are not new but dressed up to be new. not even conceptually. so maybe it might impress young people or people who have never heard of anthropology or design.

their work is situated in the Latin American context specifically among the indigenous groups located in a specific location that has been the target of resource extraction. given their historical experience, it is but right that he rails against it. as I said, very specific. my problem is when you start applying it oh let's say the urban place (I don't mean urban planning), much of the residents might suffer. and I am not sure what he means by the matriarchs are going to save us (just because he was assuming we are already in a patriarchal society), but is another burden solely reliant on free women's labour to organise, without the men? anyway, they are discounting a swath of populations who, without any anchor, will just have to self loathe. it's not a concept I necessarily agree to. in fact, I'm sure the western civilization and progress cannot be separated from the good and just as demanded by Judeo-Christian tenets. the separation leads to what we now see as hyper capitalism that ends in its own destruction. I am not burning the ground down as he suggests. rather I am rebuilding what is being ignored in western civilization.

I do agree that design for the social good has been at the forefront for decades now. can a practice truly be liberated from the market? can it exist in the government offices building us ugly buildings? can an autonomous community emerge in this dense urban jungle? I'm more interested in this conversation.

anthropology is more than applied work. this book has convinced me that our authority rests on much of theory but without ethnography (ethnography as design?!) I don't know what anthropology is.

(truly I'm just inspired by the snarky movie The Roses starring Olivia Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch which I viewed tonight).