This is a timely exploration of the traffic between design and activism in the context of precarity – a social and material condition brought about by the growth of temporary, informal and irregular work. The book shows how design objects and practices open up possibilities to recode and reconfigure the effects of precarity.

List of platesAcknowledgementsIntroduction: design, activism and precarity 1 MayDay! MayDay! Precarious objects and parades 2 Serpica Naro: precarity in the fashion system 3 Making otherwise: WeMake, a makerspace in Milan ConclusionSelect bibliography Index

Precarity is a problem that touches all aspects of life, regulating the production and circulation of a range of material and immaterial effects. As a category of labour and of global social experience in general, it calls for new modes of intervention and new alliances. Precarious objects documents three microhistories from contemporary Italy that provide generative counterpoints to precarity. The book begins with an analysis of how objects designed and circulated in EuroMayDay parades created a shared understanding of precarious experiences. It then goes on to examine the case of Serpica Naro, a design intervention that revealed the precarity at the heart of the fashion system and developed an alternative, collective approach. Finally, the book moves on to an analysis of the makerspace ‘WeMake’, exploring how practices based on open source tools, collaboration and cooperation can re-orient some of the material and social aspects of precarity.Drawing on ethnographies and archives and bringing together debates from design theory, cultural studies and geography, Precarious objects shows how design objects and practices can recode political communication and redirect how things are imagined, produced and circulated. It also reveals how design as a practice can reconfigure material conditions and suggest ways to repair some of the effects of precarity on everyday life.