The Biopolitics of Design: Examining How Designed Objects Shape Health Behaviours in Nigerian Urban Slums

Designed objects, environments, and systems exercise biopolitical influence over human bodies and health behaviours through their material affordances, spatial configurations, and embedded normative assumptions. This doctoral study develops a Biopolitics of Design framework and applies it to examine how the designed material environment of Nigerian urban slum settlements shapes health behaviours, risk exposures, and wellbeing outcomes for residents of Ajegunle in Lagos, Sabon Gari in Kano, and Oredo in Benin City. Drawing on Foucauldian biopolitics, design theory, public health anthropology, and urban studies, the research employs a multi-site ethnographic methodology combining extended participant observation, material culture analysis of one hundred and forty-eight health-relevant designed objects and environments, photo-elicitation interviews with ninety-six residents, and spatial health risk mapping across the three sites. Analysis reveals how designed objects including water containers, cooking stoves, latrine structures, and waste receptacles exercise regulatory power over bodily practices, disease exposure patterns, and health-seeking behaviours in ways that systematically reproduce rather than alleviate health inequalities. The Biopolitics of Design framework developed from this analysis introduces three original theoretical constructs: material health governance, design-mediated risk inscription, and object-enabled resistance. Each construct illuminates a distinct dimension of the relationship between designed material culture and population health in resource-constrained urban settings. Contributions advance design theory, critical public health scholarship, and urban social science in Nigerian and broader African contexts. Keywords: biopolitics, design theory, urban slums, health behaviours, Nigeria.