Fostering Commonfare. Entanglements Between Participatory Design and Feminism

This paper addresses the role of critical theories to knowledge-making and worldmaking practices in design research. We discuss the agential and performative power of feminist technoscience sensibilities in shaping a European participatory design
project – called Commonfare – which aims to confront the risk of social exclusion as a
result of precariousness, low income, unemployment, which is increasingly affecting
the European population. More specifically, we explore the entanglement of critical
approaches and material practices shaping aspects of the project through three
empirical examples – related to the formation of the project consortium, the
methodological approach adopted by partners, and the organisation of information
as part of the design process – that attend to feminist concerns in technoscience and
design in that they come to terms with issues of positionality, embodiment, situated
knowledges, relationality and materiality. We conclude by arguing that cultivating the
inseparability between knowledge-making and world-making practices is a promising
and primary concern for any design research committed to fostering alternative
futures.