Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds

Escobar critiques the modernist assumption that a single model of development, knowledge and design should organise all lives. He proposes a pluriversal orientation in which communities participate in making worlds according to their own relations, values and territories. The book’s EDI contribution is to extend diversity beyond representation within existing systems toward epistemic and ontological plurality. This matters because design can reproduce colonial power when it universalises Western categories or treats communities as sites for intervention. The text encourages designers to support autonomy, interdependence and locally grounded transition processes. For EDIDesk, it is central to understanding decolonisation as a transformation of design’s assumptions and relationships, not simply the inclusion of more cultural references.