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OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVES 

The seminar proposes a critical examination of political components of design as it articulates technology and society. 
Design is often understood on the surface as an activity producing more or less useful or ornamental things - outside the scope of its entanglements with questions of policy, trade, labor, gender, resources, power structures. Yet, designers can hold an agenda in these matters and designed artefacts and systems can affect how people live, communicate and act. We will also through case studies look at This seminar thus proposes to uncover the material dimension of politics. Through case studies, observations of situations, film excerpts, exercises, guest lectures and essays, we will look at those entanglements as well as address systems that may not seem 'designed' as such but that present components of being planned and organised for a particular purpose. 

We'll look at some of these entanglements in The 12 sessions of the seminar are structured around 3 sections: 

  1. Spaces, Artifacts and Ecosystems held by Verena Ziegler

  2. Technoculture and Society held by Dr Jean-Baptiste Labrune

  3. The Design of Trade held by Dr Joëlle Bitton

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Session 01 – 18.02 Observation I 

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Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes.




Session 09 – 29.04 Accelerationism 

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Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes.


Session 10 – 06.05 - Labor Market in West Africa On the History and Empowerment of West African Workers 

Guest Lecture: Dr Cassandra Thiesen-Mark, Universität Basel
Details & Readings tba

This lecture considers the history of the inclusion of West African labourers in the global economy: what specific mechanisms and terms defined this process? What was the promise of the creation of a system of free wage labour? And how convincing was its implementation in this part of the world? It will cover the current and past struggles of these male and female by exploring how they have managed to secure sources of power and security in the overwhelming absence of state- or employer-related social welfare mechanisms.

Readings:
  • Kate Meagher, Laura Manna and Maxim Bolt, Making the Right Connections: Globalization, Economic Inclusion and African workers, Journal of Development Studies, 2016.
  • Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, “Labour Recruitment in the Nineteenth Century: The Place of Practicality” (Ch. 2), Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital: Mechanized Gold Mining in the Gold Coast Colony, 1879-1909, University of Rochester Press, 2018).

Readings to be read in advance and preparation of notes.

Session 11 – 13.05 - Commodities Trade

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