You might consider a critical reading of Thaler and Sunstein's book "Nudge".
And as a relative outsider, I'd love to hear what folks from this list think about my own feeble efforts to theorize design! I also don't have the chance to teach design courses in my current position, so I would be very interested in what design students think of my attempts.
From the abstract of my 2009 paper, cited below: "... I argue that designers and social scientists should pay more attention, not only to design’s ability to produce a material economy, but also to produce the enduring structures and complimentary subjectivities of neoliberal social order. This reveals the phenomenon of design AS discipline; design as a social technology acting upon the potential actions of “free” populations."
2009 “Convincing Visions: Designscapes, Power and urban Development”
In Architecture: Architecture is a Thing of Art, Conference Proceedings. Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Southeast Fall Conference, October 8-10, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Savannah, GA.
2007 “Design as Power: Paul Virilio and the Governmentality of Design Expertise”
Culture, Theory, and Critique, 48(2): 175-198.
Juris Milestone, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
Temple University
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On Feb 21, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Doris Kosminsky wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm writing a text and preparing a course in Design Theory and would be glad
> to hear opinions, comments and ideas of the members of this list.
>
> I think that design never had a theoretical corpus of its own, although it
> made use of some theories borrowed from other fields, like the gestalt from
> psychology. I also recognize a great value over the Product Language Theory.
> Besides this, in the last decades, with the advent of the post-modern and
> the concept of the end of the great narratives, even those theories were
> questioned. My question is, which theories would you think are still valid
> in design teaching nowadays?
>
> Thank you and best wishes,
>
>
> Doris Kosminsky
> Professor - Escola de Belas Artes
> Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ
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