Har tittat lite i Adrian Fortys Objects of Desire: Design and society since 1750.

Fortys bok från 1986 anses, som jag förstått det, fortfarande vara central inom designstudier. I ett nytt förord, från 2005, skriver Forty:

Looking back at the book now, I am aware of some features that at the time seemed right, but which might, with hindsight, have been done differently. In particular, there is throughout a heavy emphasis on upon design as an aspect of production, as the outcome of decisions made by the producers of goods. While I would still defend this as a way to understand the reasons why commodities look as they did, there is no doubt that if we look at commodities as a social medium, at what happens when they start to circulate in the world – the other main theme of the book – we find that the motives of designers and manufacturers and the intentions they have for their products all too often remain unfulfilled once consumers take possession of them.

Han hänvisar här till vad som hände inom sociologi och cultural studies efter 1986, fram till mitten av nollnoll-talet – Dick Hebdige osv – alla de som visat på att konsumenter inte bör ses som duperade av producenter. Det nya förordet avslutas:

Books about history, though, are themselves historical objects, and like all history books, this one belongs to a particular moment.

Detta är intressant att borra vidare i. Vad säger Fortys fokus om 80-talet? Detta är ju, trots allt, en bok som i undertiteln säger sig studera relationen mellan ”design och samhälle”. I introduktionen pekar han på hur att skriva historia är att undersöka förändring, och att i denna spelar design en roll. Så,

the history of design is also the history of societies: any account of [historical] change must rest upon an understanding of how design affects, and is affected by, the processes of modern economies.

Frågan om ekonomi är central. Innan Forty var det ovanligt att koppla design till just ekonomi:

the study of design and its history has suffered from a form of cultural lobotomy which has left design connected only to the eye, and severed its connections to the brain and to the pocket. It is commonly assumed that design would somehow be soiled if it were associated too closely with commerce, a misconceived attempt at intellectual hygiene that has done no good at all. It has obscured the fact that design came into being at a particular stage in the history of capitalism and played a vital pan in the creation of industrial wealth. Limiting it to a purely artistic activity has made it seem trivial and relegated it to the status of a mere cultural appendix.

Just as little attention has been given to design’s influence on how we think. Those who complain about the effects of television, journalism, advertising and fiction on our minds remain oblivious to the similar influence of design. Far from being a neutral, in­offensive artistic activity, design, by its very nature, has much more enduring effects than the ephemeral products of the media because it can cast ideas about who we are and how we should behave into permanent and tangible forms.

Den senare poängen – relationen mellan det tänkta och det designade/byggda – är något som jag alltmer blivit intresserad av. (Se tidigare poster om metaforer och tankebilder.) Fortys sätt att länka samman design med ekonomi och tänkande var – ytterst tidstypiskt – att koppla till strukturalismen.

The Structuralists argue that in all societies the troublesome contradictions that arise between people’s beliefs and their everyday experiences are resolved by the invention of myths. […] Barthes showed how […] apparently familiar things signify all kinds of ideas about the world. Unlike the more or less ephem­eral media, design has the capacity to cast myths into an enduring, solid and tangible form, so that they seem to be reality itself. […] manufactured goods embody innumerable myths about the world, myths which in time come to seem as real as the products in which they are embedded.

Så, vi kan se hur Forty (1986) är situerad i en särskild tid, och ett särskilt perspektiv på relationen mellan kultur och ekonomi. Denna perspektiv är ännu högst relevant: Designade artefakter kan alltjämt förstås som myter som givits form. De är proteser som stöjder en viss verklighetsuppfattning. Samtidigt finns det idag samhälleliga tendenser som gör att relationen mellan design och samhälle kan skrivas på andra vis. En sådan tendens är den som fått namnet ”neuroliberalism”.

I Neuroliberalism: Behavioural Government in the Twenty-First Century – publicerad 2017 – beskrivs denna tendens, som har en särskild relation till nyliberala regeringstekniker.

First, neuroliberalism is a reaction to neoliberalism. In one context, neuroliberalism reacts to the neoliberal depiction of humans as rational market actors: instead claiming that human behavior is composed of a much more varied set of rational and “irrational” drivers. In another context, neuroliberalism reflects a response to some of the socio-economic problems that neoliberalism have produced [som personlig skuldsättning, klimatförändringar, ohälsosam livsstil] (4)

Second, we claim that in many of its iterations, neuroliberalism continues to support the market- based orthodoxies of neoliberal government. […] continue to support market-based values and modes of operation. (5)

Här är lite bilder från en gammal twitter-tråd om begreppet:

Sure, it’s a bit gimmicky, but the notion of “neuroliberalism” is useful for summing up a lot of recent work on affect, “the political economy of propensity” (Thrift), “design for government” etc. This is from Whitehead et al (2018): pic.twitter.com/L1gdJZKm3Y

— Karl Palmås (@karlpalmas) April 21, 2019

One final point on the rise of #neuroliberalism – from Jones & Whitehead (2018), in Environment & Planning D. These are the stakes of this movement within the art of government: pic.twitter.com/bh2M3tUs0q

— Karl Palmås (@karlpalmas) April 21, 2019

Vi kan alltså förstå neuroliberalismen som ett begrepp som tar den fenomenala spridningen av ”nudging” och liknande beteendetrixande på allvar. För mycket riktigt – något har ju hänt när regerandeformer inte längre syftar till att främja homo oeconomicus-agerande, utan snarare till att exploatera det faktum att vi inte agerar i linje med denna modell. Den dominerande discipin som mobiliserats i denna tendens är såklart beteendeekonomin, men design är en viktig del i sammanhanget.

While behavioural economists were concerned primarily with the internal computational limit of human reason that generated error-prone decision making, the field of cognitive design approached things from the opposite direction. While behavioral economists looked within humans for the causes of our predictable forms of irrationality, cognitive designers were much more concerned with the ergonomic environments in which we live our lives. (66)

Alltså – när nudgare pratar om ”valarkitekturer” etc så är detta idéer som spåras till designfältet – här nämns Donald Normans arbete som centralt. En studie av relationen av design och samhälle idag bör rimligen undersöka designens plats i denna nya regeringsteknik, som ju även märks inom privat sektor (men då i relation till kunder, inte medborgare).

Det finns mycket att säga om detta, men arbete pågår kring att bygga in detta i ett kommande projekt. Mer om detta vid annat tillfälle.