The Difficulties and Possibilities for Engineers working toward Social Justice

1. Association for Practical and Professional Ethics The Difficulties and Possibilities for Engineers working toward Social Justice Donna Riley Smith College

2. Introduction Engineers make a world of difference

3. Think Impact Engineers make a world of difference

4. Engineering and Social Justice:Not a new conversation • Labor Analysis (Veblen 1921) • Peace (Einstein-Russell 1955) • Military-Industrial Complex (Mills 1956) • SESPA/Science for the People 1970s • Intersections with movements: labor, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental, anti-nuclear, peace….

5. Who am I? • Engineer • Activist • Probably not in that order. And more… • Attempted to bring together…. • As women & engineering? • As engineering & policy • Ideological and epistemological clashes • Intersectionality, gender vs. women • Conservatism - “more engineers in government” ?? • “Engineers”

6. Difficulty: will engineers co-opt social justice? • Even well intentioned efforts may reproduce problematic power relations • Engineers must undertake epistemological shifts • Open to other ways of knowing • Power/knowledge • Listen, and ask who is and is not at the table

7. Perspectives: Epistemic Frames • An engineer and a sociologist were determining the height of the town hall…. • Positivism • (How) can engineers own the critique? • Other ways of knowing • Acknowledging • Respecting • Incorporating (not co-opting) • Relational and transformational • Social captivity and complicity with structures of power

8. Social Justice and Engineering “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” • Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. April 4, 1967 • Possibilities lie in difficulties of assumed ideologies permeating engineering

9. Militarism: Difficulties • What’s the difference between civil engineers and mechanical engineers? • Engineer, n. a constructor of military engines (14thc.); one who designs and constructs military works for attack or defense. • “We are the largest single supplier to the U.S. Department of Defense…We also happen to be one of the nation’s largest employers of engineers….” – Lockheed Martin • Cultural co-construction throughout manufacturing, labor, engineering pedagogies, masculinities

10. Militarism: Possibilities • Continued analysis of difficulties • Shifting national priorities • Role for professional societies? • Challenging funding patterns • Peace Engineering – Vesilind • Peace in ABET, ethics codes – Catalano

11. Neoliberalism and Consumerism: Difficulties Neoliberalism – free-market extremism that minimizes governmental role in regulating trade, protecting workers and environment, providing social services Privatization of public goods such as clean water Inevitability of globalization, technology as progress

12. Consumerism - Difficulties • “engineers’ political tendencies lean toward the corner office and executive parking space” • No pro bono tradition – some efforts at volunteerism - recruitment • Public service tradition undermined lately with no-bid contracts, etc. • Aspirations still follow law, medicine – why not social work, public health? • Class and gender hierarchies • Planned Obsolescence – Sloan/GM, Gilette, Apple • Production of poverty • Now with child labor

13. Consumerism and Neoliberalism: Difficulties in Development • “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” (Prahalad) • Promises to end poverty by making poor into consumers… • Skin-lightening cream sold to the poor as “empowerment” • Bechtel and Bolivia’s water privatization disaster • Steep price hikes, poor with no access to water • Bechtel sued when Bolivia backed out due to water revolt

14. Possibilities: Examining neoliberal contexts of “Engineering-to-Help” • Why the current surge in interest? • How do we enable neoliberalism? How could we resist? • Power relations • Constructing participation and colonialism revisited • What constitutes development? Who decides? • What are the dangers of having engineering-specific NGOs? • Examining Assumptions • Transparent critiques of current projects’ models and values (including and especially our own) • Expertise, action over inaction, individualism, capitalism, technological determinism/progress • Can professional societies take policy stands, e.g., against water privatization?

15. Racism: Difficulties • Discourse: economic and/or nationalistic justifications for addressing underrepresentation • Focus on recruitment, retention, mentoring - assimilation of individual to a racist system – enabling? • Widespread conceptualization of racism as individual/isolated vs. structures of power • Presumptions of raceless technology, despite research revealing otherwise: • Historical - caravels, cotton gin, IBM Holocaust punch cards, Robert Moses bridges, etc. • Contemporary - cameras render Blacks invisible, ask if Asian eyes are blinking…

16. Racism: Difficulties • Ideological and institutional bases of engineering’s color line (Slaton) • Case 1 – UMD segregation of campuses, under-resourcing of black campus, black ineligibility for engineering careers • Case 2 – Progressive elements can’t overcome gender and race workforce hierarchies at UIC and IIT – disciplinary boundaries maintain whiteness • Case 3 – Texas A&M “Color-blindness” - raced standards of rigor, merit

17. Racism: Opportunities • Resistance • HBCUs – PVAMU/NASA partnership celebrated black heritage and created nationally renowned research centers after decades of underfunding • Structural understandings of racism allow for new strategies for resistance • Making race more visible in engineering • How might engineers’ responses to Katrina or to international development work change? • How could the landscape of environmental justice change with engineers’ understanding and resisting raced standards of rigor and raced disciplinary boundaries? • Points to epistemic shifts as well as new analytical tools, skills

18. Conclusion • Risk of Co-optation is high due to epistemologies and institutional structures of engineering • Even a few voices might provide important anchoring • Highlights importance of non-engineer involvement • Co-optation is common in social justice movements • No one is pure, everyone is welcome – but to do social justice work with integrity, we all have responsibilities to resist complicity with power, privilege • It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.” –Phil Ochs

19. For Further Reading • Riley, Donna. Engineering and Social Justice, Morgan and Claypool 2008. • Baillie, Caroline and George Catalano, Engineering and Society: Working Toward Social Justice. Morgan and Claypool, 2009. See also the rest of Morgan and Claypool’s series on Engineers and Society, Caroline Baillie, ed. • Nieusma, Dean and Donna Riley, Designs on Development: Engineering, Globalization and Social Justice, Engineering Studies 2(1): 29-59, 2010. See also the rest of this special issue on Engineering and Social Justice. • Slaton, Amy. Race, Rigor, and Selectivity in US Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line. Harvard, 2010. • Veslind, Aarne, ed. Peace Engineering: When Personal Values and Engineering Careers Converge. Lakeshore Press, 2005.