It is a revised English translation of the author's 2016 book Autonomía y diseño: La realización de lo comunal, which was published in Spanish with a Creative Commons license.

[3] In the book, Escobar criticizes capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy and proposes such approaches as 'design for transitions' and 'autonomous design' to address some of the challenges facing humanity and bring about cultural, economic, and political transformation.

The book draws on the works of such authors as Ivan Illich, Tony Fry, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, and Thomas Berry, among others.

The second section offers a critique of Cartesian rationalism and dualisms such as mind-body and argues for developing a more relational pluriverse.

[3] However, it was criticized for being hard to read and its excessive use of jargon, which was claimed to render it inaccessible to designers and development practitioners who could have most benefited from it.