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.
