Abstract
A social contract defines a body of rights that people respect in order to share resources and collaborate in a mutually beneficial way. Sometimes, social contracts are embodied explicitly in laws. However, social contracts are often implicit and may originate from many sources. One such source is designs themselves, whose designers have particular views about the social arrangements that people should operate under. Recall that Dieter Rams thought that designers should aim to bring about a humane world. Such views are often embodied in design movements that suggest an ideal world that designers should attempt to foster in their work. Modernism, as noted earlier, suggests that there is a universal, industrial lifestyle that good design should tend towards. Ideals like this may be called social agendas. A social agenda is not a set of cultural expectations that designs may satisfy but an ideal that designs promote for people to follow. Several examples of social agendas in design are discussed, but the list is open-ended.
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Notes
- 1.
Julier (2008), p. 75.
- 2.
Quoted in Julier (2008), p. 76.
- 3.
Forty (1986).
- 4.
Forty (1986), pp. 65–66.
- 5.
Forty (1986), pp. 207ff.
- 6.
Forty (1986), pp. 216–217.
- 7.
Vanek (1975).
- 8.
Rosenfeld (1999), p. 48.
- 9.
Hoffman (1999), p. 7.
- 10.
Rees (2013).
- 11.
Cf. Wansink (2013).
- 12.
Cf. Crawford (2015).
- 13.
Hales (2002).
- 14.
Lidwell and Mancasa (2009), pp. 54–55.
- 15.
Guinness World Records (2006).
- 16.
Dunaway (2015), pp. 79–95.
- 17.
Deterding et al. (2011).
- 18.
Volkswagen (2009).
- 19.
Morozov (2013).
- 20.
Packer (2013).
- 21.
Ungerleider (2015).
- 22.
Saval (2014), pp. 45ff.
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Shelley, C. (2017). Social Agendas. In: Design and Society: Social Issues in Technological Design. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52515-0_7
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