Discursive

Exploring how can be used for good—prompting self-reflection, igniting the imagination, and affecting positive social change. Good provides solutions to problems. It improves our buildings, medical equipment, clothing, and kitchen utensils, among other objects. But what if could also improve societal problems by prompting positive ideological change? In this book, Bruce and Stephanie Tharp survey recent critical practices and propose a new, more inclusive field of socially minded practice: discursive . While many consider good to be unobtrusive, intuitive, invisible, and undemanding intellectually, discursive instead targets the intellect, prompting self-reflection and igniting the imagination. Discursive (derived from “discourse”) expands the boundaries of how we can use —how objects are, in effect, good(s) for thinking. Discursive invites us to see objects in a new light, to understand more than their basic form and utility. Beyond the different foci of critical , speculative , fiction, interrogative , and adversarial , Bruce and Stephanie Tharp establish a more comprehensive, unifying vision as well as innovative methods. They not only offer social criticism but also explore how objects can, for example, be used by counselors in therapy sessions, by town councils to facilitate a pre-vote discussions, by activists seeking engagement, and by institutions and industry to better understand the values, beliefs, and attitudes of those whom they serve. Discursive sparks new ways of thinking, and it is only through new thinking that our sociocultural futures can change.