Making Things Public

"This collection itself presents a significant public assembly, joining such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, and Peter Sloterdijk with the likes of Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. Ranging from the distant past to the troubled present, this collective effort examines the atmospheric conditions in which things are made public, and reinvests political representation with the materiality it has been lacking. This book, and the ZKM show that it accompanies, aims to trigger new political passions and interests in a time when people need, more than ever, new ways to have their voices heard."--BOOK JACKET.

Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood? Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park. The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change. This book will motivate not only neighborhood activists and concerned citizens but also urban planners, developers and policy-makers.

"An annotated edition of John Dewey's work of democratic theory, first published in 1927. Includes a substantive introduction and bibliographical essay"--Provided by publisher.

Offers a collection of essays on philosophies and strategies for defining, leading, and managing projects. This book explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. It does not cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy.

In 2005 Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel produced 'Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy', an exhibition and publication on processes of democratic representation and public access in the network society and the role of things, of objects, issues and art within these processes. Based on the principle that art and design are core functions of democracy, 'Open' looks at how these can be made present in the public domain and what kind of dynamic relationships they maintain with it. What has changed in how art has been made public since the 1970s? How can the public interest be a subject for art and design? What does an ecology and morality of things look like today? With contributions by Bernard Stiegler, Peter Peters/Ruth Benschop, Fiona Candlin, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Noortje Marres, Jeroen Boomgaard, Sher Doruff, Yvonne Dröge Wendel, Pascal Gielen, Mariska van den Berg and others.00.

Building on recent debates in critical social theory and international relations, Making Things International I: Circuits and Motion presents twenty-five essays that engage the global, the local, and the international through the lens of objects. It represents the first substantial new materialist intervention in global politics and international relations, offering a diverse and provocative set of reflections on how different objects create, sustain, complicate, and trouble the international. Problematizing the stuff of global life, Making Things International focuses on contemporary materialist scholarship on the international realm. The first of two volumes, these original contributions by both new and established scholars examine how war, diplomacy, trade, communication, and mobile populations are made by things: weapons, vehicles, shipping containers, commodities, passports, and more. The authors demonstrate how mundane, everyday objects—not normally understood as international—are in fact deeply implicated in how we think of the world: blood, garbage, viruses, traffic lights, clocks, memes, and ships’ ballast. Contributors: Michele Acuto, U College London; Peter Adey, Royal Holloway U of London; Rune Saugmann Andersen, U of Helsinki; Jessica Auchter, U of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Mike Bourne, Queen’s U Belfast; Kathleen P. J. Brennan; Elizabeth Cobbett, U of East Anglia; Stefanie Fishel, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Emily Gilbert, U of Toronto; Jairus Grove, U of Hawai‘i at Manoa; Charlie Hailey, U of Florida; John Law, Open U; Wen-yuan Lin, National Tsing-hua U; Oded Löwenheim, Hebrew U of Jerusalem; Chris Methmann; Benjamin J. Muller, U of Western Ontario; Can E. Mutlu, Bilkent U; Geneviève Piché; Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie U; Katherine Reese; Michael J. Shapiro, U of Hawai‘i at Manoa; Benjamin Stephan; Daniel Vanderlip; William Walters, Carleton U; Melissa Autumn White, U of British Columbia; Lauren Wilcox, U of Cambridge; Yvgeny Yanovsky.

Drawing widely from contemporary social and critical thought, Making Things International 2 offers provocative interventions into debates about causality, connection, and politics through the notion of assemblage. Political assemblages, especially those that cross national borders, can be catalyzed by a host of surprising sparks. Present-day global systems are complex and interdependent, but the worn tools of traditional international relations theory are unsuited to the task of understanding how objects, ideas, and people come together to create, dispute, solve, or perhaps cause these political configurations. Contributors to this volume bring to their work a new sensitivity toward issues of power, authority, control, and sovereignty. The companion volume, Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion, used things, stuff, and objects in motion to capture the material dynamics of global politics and to demonstrate the importance of the material. This volume builds on that conversation by examining objects that incite political assemblages. Specific subjects include fighter jets, smartphones, tents, HTTP cookies, representations of North Korea, and histories of the diplomatic cable, the orange prison jumpsuit, and container shipping. Contributors: Rune Saugmann Andersen, U of Helsinki; Josef Teboho Ansorge; Claudia Aradau, King’s College London; Helen Arfvidsson; Alexander D. Barder, Florida International U; Tarak Barkawi, London School of Economics; Peter Chambers; Shine Choi, Seoul National U; Sagi Cohen; Thomas N. Cooke; Anna Feigenbaum, Bournemouth U; Andreas Folkers, Goethe–U Frankfurt; Fabian Frenzel, U of Leicester; Kyle Grayson, Newcastle U; Nicky Gregson, Durham U; David Grondin, U of Ottawa; Xavier Guillaume, U of Edinburgh; Emily Lindsay Jackson, Acadia U; Miguel de Larrinaga, U of Ottawa; Debbie Lisle, Queen’s U Belfast; Mary Manjikian, Regent U; Nadine Marquardt, Goethe–U Frankfurt; Patrick McCurdy, U of Ottawa; Adam Sandor; Nisha Shah, U of Ottawa; Julian Stenmanns, Goethe–U Frankfurt; Casper Sylvest, U of Southern Denmark; Rens van Munster, Danish Institute for International Studies; Elspeth Van Veeren, U of Bristol; Srdjan Vucetic, U of Ottawa; Juha A. Vuori, U of Turku; Tobias Wille.

Drawing from the work of Dewey, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, this book aims to relate a series of philosophic insights to the practice of engaging in design research for change. These insights are explored and presented as a set of potential strategies for grounding transformative design research within an intellectual context which both embraces and celebrates experience, process and uncertainty. Chapter by chapter, through theory, practical examples and case studies, an accessible narrative opens up around the coupled themes of existence and experience, language and meaning and knowing and truth. The outcome is a rich and detailed perspective on the ways in which philosophy may afford design research for change a means to both explain, as well as understand, not only what it is and what it does, but also what it could be. The book will be of interest to scholars working in design studies, design theory and design research.