Integrating Social Justice and Political Engagement into Engineering

Abstract

Many engineering activists have emphasized the need to reframe engineering as a sociotechnical field in order to expand engineers' contributions to social justice and peace. Yet, reframing engineering as sociotechnical does not always lead to critical engagement with social justice. We provide several examples of how “social” aspects have been brought into engineering in a depoliticized manner that limits engagement with political and social justice goals. We link these examples to Cech’s three pillars of the “culture of disengagement” in engineering: social/technical dualisms, meritocracy, and depoliticization. We argue that reframing engineering as sociotechnical addresses the first pillar, the social/technical dualism, but does not necessarily include the second and third pillars. We propose that all three pillars can be addressed through integrating explicit attention to political engagement and social justice in efforts to reframe engineering as a sociotechnical field. Doing so can increase engineers’ capacity to contribute to social justice and peace.

Cultivating solidarity for action on social justice in engineering

“…Sydney, reflects on this below and demonstrates the emergence of our praxis of engineering social justice. In addition, it lends evidence that purposefully refuting apoliticism can reengage engineers with social justice (Niles, 2020).…”

A Multi-level Review of Engineering Ethics Education: Towards a Socio-technical Orientation of Engineering Education for Ethics

“…Following Kim et al's (2018) and Niles et al's (2020b) suggestion, further research is also needed to understand why engineering students are disengaged from the societal and public welfare role of engineering, and which strategies can reverse this trend. It is also important to examine the effectiveness of various teaching approaches for enhancing students' reception of the subject, given that it was identified as a challenge for engineering ethics instructors (Harding et al, 2009;Polmear et al, 2018;Romkey, 2015).…”

“…Nevertheless, as Tonso ( 1996 , p. 218) points out, culture is an everchanging system of meaning, which holds the promise for improving engineering education towards more inclusive ways or a broader understanding of the engineer’s societal role. We already witness efforts in this direction, represented by non-mainstream currents in engineering that engage the social and ethical dimensions, evidenced by research in engineering studies and practices like community engagement (Lucena et al, 2010 ; Schneider et al, 2008 ), humanitarian engineering (Lucena et al, 2003 ; Mazzurco & Daniel, 2020 ), decolonial movements (Cordeiro Cruz, 2021 ; Kutay et al, 2018 ) or social justice (Baillie, 2020 ; Karwat, 2020 ; Karwat et al, 2015 ; Larsen & Gärdebo, 2017 ; Nieusma, 2013 ; Niles et al, 2020a ; Riley, 2008 ). 7…”

Enacting socio-technical responsibility through Challenge Based Learning in an Ethics and Data Analytics course

“…This aim aligns with the 4 th SDG goal on quality education and UNESCO's vision on education for 2030 [3], the vision of developing the ethics dimension in education set under the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission [4], as well as the recent statement on the role of ethics in human societies and their governing institutions by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies [5]. Despite the increasing number of voices advocating for the renewal of the engineering curriculum, there is still progress to be made, as existing initiatives are considered to fall short of their transformative ideals [6] and the uptake of this process has been slow [7]. The paper thus puts forward an example of how Challenge Based Learning can be used to promote engineering students' sense of professional responsibility.…”