Globalization: Promises, Discontents & New Futures
2018 - 2019 Academic Year
Curated by:
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Mariana Amatullo,
PhD, Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management, School of Design Strategies, Parsons, The New School
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Andrew Shea,
Assistant Professor of Integrated Design, School of Design Strategies, Parsons, The New School
In today’s global world, change is happening at breakneck speed. Fluidity and interdependence are the hallmarks of our time. The imperative to connect knowledge with action in support of a common purpose, creating and promoting a better life for the majority of human beings on the planet, has never been greater.
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Our growing consciousness of global connectivity is intricately associated with a set of complex social processes that we have come to know as “globalization.” Far more than the simple phenomenon of people, ideas, and goods moving easily across borders — a process as old as the ancient Silk Road– globalization in the 21st century has become both buzzword and contested concept at once. It involves rapid social change occurring simultaneously across a number of interconnected dimensions: in the world economy, in politics and international development, in communications and technology, in the physical environment and in culture. Globalization is impacting every facet of our lives, and raising urgent new questions: Should we take comfort in the fact the world is becoming a more interdependent place? What is design’s role as a knowledge domain amid our current complexity? Can we imagine alternative futures for people to thrive across arbitrarily drawn borders and social and cultural divides?
The 2018-2019 Stephan Weiss Lecture Series is an invitation to explore a more nuanced understanding of globalization and the interactions between the local, national, regional, and global that it presumes. It will also be an opportunity to take stock of the good and the bad brought about by globalization, and its relationship with the power dynamics and ideologies driving/shaping our fast-changing world. Presentations and panel discussions will provoke/encourage critical reflection on the evolving role of our institutions, and the responsibility of individual and collective actions in nurturing participatory processes of innovation and change. The series will encompass wide-ranging themes including: women’s reproductive and gender rights and wellbeing; distributed governance and the future of our cities; designs for the pluriverse in the Global North and the Global South; and innovative responses to meet the needs of displaced and refugee populations. The 2018-2019 Weiss Lectures will feature practitioners, activists and scholars engaged in pathbreaking explorations of the promise and pitfalls of globalization.
Tuesday, 6:30–8:30pm
4.23
Location: 63 5th Avenue,
UL102 Starr Foundation Hall
Design as the Healing of the Web of Life: Against Globalization
Register Here
Arturo Escobar is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is affiliated with two doctoral programs in Colombia, on Design and Creation (Universidad de Caldas, Manizales), and on Environmental Sciences (Universidad del Valle, Cali). His main interests are: political ecology, ontological design, and the anthropology of development, social movements, and technoscience. Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked closely with Afro-Colombian social movements in the Colombian Southwest. His most well-known book is Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, 2 nd Ed. 2011). His most recent book is Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018).
