Dissertation Defense | Unsustaining the Commodity-Machine: Commoning Practices in Postcapitalist Design

PhD-Candidate: Selçuk Balamir 
Unsustaining the Commodity-Machine: Commoning Practices in Postcapitalist Design
Supervisors: Joost de Bloois, Jeroen de Kloet
4 May 2021 (15:00), University of Amsterdam

How to disentangle design from capital? To what extent might commoning practices disrupt the Commodity-Machine? How do we prefigure a resilient and regenerative economy? Is there a postcapitalist blueprint for the rapid and just eco-social transition ahead?
This thesis surveys the ways in which design practices can contribute to a postcapitalist transition. I study several contemporary product design projects that develop everyday tools, building systems, and fabrication machinery. Together, they encapsulate peer production, open-sourcing, and the maker movement.
These trends constitute a coherent methodology of commoning, which manifests itself in three ways: shared creation (designing in common), shared governance (managing designs in common), and shared access (holding the means of production in common). I describe how this shared valorisation of labour, knowledge, and artefacts radically alters the political economy of design practices.