Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

classical pragmatism, particularly the work of John Dewey, has been foundational to the development of design as a discipline, although rarely directly acknowledged within the literature on design (Dixon 6–7). Recognizing the ways in which the dominant design paradigm reproduces coloniality and modernity (Akama et al. 60–62), I argue that going back to design’s roots in pragmatism can aid in building a more embodied, situated, and pluralistic design practice. In an attempt to counter the epistemic and ontological injustices perpetuated by design, I support the effort of redesigning design by drawing on pragmatist thinking to present alternative design practices aimed at building reflexivity. In doing so, I bring forward demonstrations of how design practice might act as “engaged philosophy,” practically addressing issues in their social context (Hamington and Bardwell-Jones 1–6), with the aim of supporting intentional adaptation within a pluralistic, democratic society.

Before I begin, it is important for me to position that I am writing this from Oslo, Norway, the city with the largest urban population of Sámi people, an Indigenous people that inhabit and have been stewarding the land across large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia for thousands of years. I grew up as a settler of Dutch ancestry on the land of the Anishinabewaki and Mississauga First Nations on Turtle Island, or what is now commonly known as Ontario, Canada. I am grateful for the opportunity to work and learn on these lands and thankful to all of the generations of people who have taken care of this land. I also want to acknowledge the historic and present-day injustices faced by Indigenous peoples, which require our collective responsibility and commitment to challenge and address. Recognizing the ways in which our democracies are entangled in coloniality, working intentionally toward decolonizing our societal structures is fundamental to respecting plurality with democracies.

The design practice and research that I present here has taken place within the context of health and care systems in Canada, Sweden, and Norway. This work is positioned in relation to institutionalized Western medical systems that continue to perpetuate epistemic and ontological injustice, justifying the exclusion of divergent ways of knowing and being. Health care systems are recognized as carriers of modernity, perpetuating social structures that reflect care as a commodifiable resource (Gallagher 65–67). Design is entangled within these systems both implicitly, through the intentional actions of a wide variety of health care stakeholders, and explicitly in the work of a growing number of professional designers hired within Western health care systems (Mager 9; Molloy 16–18). Take, for example, Bardwell-Jones’s study of placental ethics within hospital settings in Hawai‘i. She illustrates how the universal health policies associated with “modern” biomedical approaches can actively undermine local knowledges, in this case, of Indigenous Hawaiians (103). Here, I position this research in response to Bardwell-Jones’s call for health care administrators to cultivate epistemic humility and resistant imaginations (108). I bring forward design practices that may aid in integrating the incommensurability of a perplexing situation (Addams 20) and support people’s ability to stay curious about other ways of being within and across diverse communities.

I enter into this dialogue by first opening up the conversation about the role of the dominant design paradigm in advancing “the modernity project” and highlighting the need to decolonize design. I move into explorations of how we might redesign design by focusing on building reflexivity and sharing stories of alternative design approaches that draw on the thinking of both classic and feminist pragmatists. Finally, I end with a discussion of the role of design as an everyday world-making practice that can aid in resisting epistemic injustice and ontological occupation to nurture plurality amid democracy.

The Need to Redesign Dominant Design

Design is an intentional world-making practice in which people shape their environment and, in turn, the environment shapes people (Willis, “Ontological Designing” 70). The dominant Eurocentric design practice emphasizes commercialized, standardized, and disembodied practices of designing, inadvertently, and sometimes even overtly, contributing to the erosion of democratic life. As highlighted...