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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- *removed* 00943
- Thesis Title
- Breathing Injustice
- Author
- Todd Linkner
- E-mail
- linkner.t AT northeastern.edu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Master of Fine Arts in Information Design and Visualization
- Year
- 2020
- Number of Pages
- 105
- University
- Northeastern University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Tad Hirsch
- Supervisor e-mail
- tad.hirsch AT northeastern.edu
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Sara Wylie, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Jennifer Gradecki
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- College of Arts, Media and Design
- Copyright Ownership
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- breathinginjustice.info/Linkner2020-BreathingInjustice.pdf
- Keywords
- design, critical design, discursive design, situated design, workshop, asthma, environmental health, environmental justice, empathy, social determinants of health, transdisciplinary
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Asthma is a powerful lens to explore the intersections of pollution, social geography, and the long-standing impacts of structural racism. The burden of asthma is unequally distributed across geographies characterized by race, ethnicity, and economic status. While health professionals widely accept that outdoor air quality and indoor environmental conditions aggravate asthma symptoms, this contributes to a biomedicalized view of the disease that treats its symptoms but fails to address its root causes. With the biomedical view, patients or parents of children with asthma are given the responsibility for managing their illness by maintaining constant vigilance to avoid environmental triggers. We can instead cultivate a focus on the root causes in the environment for which we have a shared societal responsibility. Research shows that the triggers that exacerbate the symptoms of asthma don’t represent the full extent of the environmental causes. Because the contributing causes and impacts reach beyond the individual, asthma is best understood as an illness that affects communities. The sociologically produced disparities of the disease are exposed in the environment and can be addressed by collective action.
I have designed an open-source workshop centered around a simple device to explore asthma as a sociologically produced disease using the breath as a physical interface. The workshop simulates spatialized socioeconomic and environmental factors and their impact on the experience of asthma. This approach is intended to build social cohesion around the root causes by framing asthma as a collective illness, rather than one affecting isolated individuals. To facilitate the workshops, I designed a kit that includes a curriculum guide for health advocacy organizations and activists. The Breathing Injustice Workshop encourages people to understand asthma from an environmental perspective in order to form publics that can advocate for communities facing an increased burden of the disease.