This is a book summary for the Pluriversal Design Book Club. It is a short contextualized introduction to Paulo Freire’s magnum opus. The main feature of this introduction is a visual scheme to frame the historical-dialectical relationships developed throughout the book: oppression, banking education, and colonization. This scheme also considers the emergence of third forces from contradictions. In this case, liberation, critical pedagogy, and cultural synthesis.
This book inspired Participatory Design pioneers in the 1970s and continues to be an inspiring reading for young design students of today. That is probably because this book frames participation as a means to fight oppression rather than merely reaching a consensus, being creative, or having fun. It provides a clear political agenda for Participatory Design: expanding democracy to include the historically excluded from design processes. What comes from this agenda is always full of activist energy.
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