Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENTin the specific historical convergences that brought engineerstogether with other practitioners and stakeholders andput their various forms of knowledge into contact with oneanother. How did these projects emerge and what contributedto their broader significance? Who had stakes in their developmentand outcomes? What were the outcomes, and forwhom?It makes a difference to the status of engineering work thatmany hydroelectric dams in the United States were built duringthe New Deal as means to revitalize economic growth andemployment while many hydroelectric dams in what has beencalled the ‘developing world’ were built during the geopoliticalcompetitions of the Cold War. In the first case, the focuswas on using engineers within the home country to facilitaterecovery from the Depression, positioning the engineers asagents of collective welfare, sometimes even granting themheroic status (e.g. Hoover Dam). 28 In the second, the projectwas often an explicit negotiation between political and economicleaders in two different countries, one agreeing toaccept technological assistance in exchange for political andeconomic commitments, and the other using engineering toextend and maintain political and economic influence throughassistance. In this latter case, the meaning of engineering workwas frequently more ambiguous, depending upon who wasmaking the judgement. Yet even in the first case, the dominantaccounts of collective benefit and heroic achievementdo not take account of the perspectives of those for whomhydroelectric power counted as a loss rather than a gain. It isprobably safe to say no development project exists in whichevery stakeholder wins or finds their interests and identitiesaffirmed. For those who do not benefit or who contest itslarger societal missions, the image of development can be adistinctly negative one.Another type of question is philosophical. How do engineersinvolved in development projects define and understandthe engineering content of their work, whether explicitly orimplicitly? And how and why does that matter? For example,the achievement of effective low-cost, low-tech solutions forthe removal of arsenic – a more recent type of developmentproject – may be the product of engineers actively exchangingknowledge with members of local communities, non-governmentalorganizations, and other fields of technical expertise,e.g. chemistry. Might engineers who are trained to see themselvesprimarily as technical problem solvers find themselvesat a disadvantage in effectively engaging groups who understandand define problems differently than they do? Mightthey be reluctant, if not actively resistant, to critically engagingthe larger contexts within which they undertake developmentwork? Would it make a difference if engineers emerged fromdegree programs and other mechanisms of formation expect-28 Billington, David P. 2006. Big Dams of the New Deal Era: a confluence of engineering andpolitics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.ing to work with people who define problems differently thanthey do, including both engineers and non-engineers? Wouldit make a difference if they emerged with a commitment toengage in collaborative activities of problem definition andsolution? 29Social, cultural, and political questions about engineers andengineering often blend together, with different researcherscalling attention to distinct dimensions. One common interestis in engineering identities, i.e. how participating in engineeringprojects contributes to reorganizing and restructuring theidentities of engineers. Continuing our examples, one mightask: how did construction of the Aswan High Dam contributeto furthering or transforming the identities of both Soviet andEgyptian engineers? Did the Soviet engineers understand theirwork as action in the service of socialism, sharpening a focuson successful completion of the dam itself? Did completionof the dam enhance a sense of nationalism among Egyptianengineers, stimulating further interest in engineers and engineeringeducation across Egypt? 30 Or for engineers involved inthe El Cajón Dam in Honduras, how might actively engagingmembers of local communities and possibly selecting Europeancomponents and expertise have affected the standingand career aspirations of participating Honduran engineers?To what extent did they understand themselves in relationto other engineers, other technical experts, and members ofthe local communities they were developing their technologyto serve? 31 In general, engineering studies researchers areinterested both in what is included in development projectsand what is left out, in whose perspectives gain authority andwhose do not, and in what is ultimately emphasized and whatremains relatively hidden.In coming years, a key reason for the relative invisibility ofengineers, their location and work as technical mediators,could become a crucial site for the examination of engineeringwork. 32 The work of mediation between science and technologyhas long been dismissed as a relatively unimportant29 For accounts of two educational efforts in this direction, see Downey, Gary Lee, Juan C.Lucena, Barbara M. Moskal, Thomas Bigley, Chris Hays, Brent K. Jesiek, Liam Kelly, JaneL. Lehr, Jonson Miller, Amy Nichols-Belo, Sharon Ruff, and Rosamond Parkhurst. 2006.The Globally Competent Engineer: Working Effectively with People Who Define ProblemsDifferently, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 95, No. 2, pp.107–122; Downey,Gary Lee. 2008. The Engineering Cultures Syllabus as Formation Narrative: Conceptualisingand Scaling Up Problem Definition in Engineering Education. University of St.Thomas Law Journal (special symposium issue on professional identity in law, medicine,and engineering) Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 101–1130; and Schneider, Jen, Jon A. Leydens,Juan C. Lucena. 2008. Where is ‘Community’?: Engineering Education and SustainableCommunity Development,” European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol.33, No.3,pp. 307–319.30 Moore, Clement Henry. 1994. Images of Development: Egyptian Engineers in Search ofIndustry. Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press.31 Jackson, Jeffery. 2007. The Globalizers: Development Workers in Action. Baltimore: JohnHopkins University Press.32 Downey, Gary Lee. 2005. Keynote Address: Are Engineers Losing Control of Technology?From ‘Problem Solving’ to ‘Problem Definition and Solution’ in Engineering Education,Chemical Engineering Research and Design, Vol. 83. No.A8, pp.1–12.170