Park Doing (Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University)

Technological interventions that promote social justice and sustainability are promoted by engineering colleges and engineering societies as evidence of enlightened, ethical, engineering practice.  I am currently following, as a practitioner and observer, a waterworks project in Honduras that is sponsored by a United States rural water association in conjunction with a Honduran agency and Cornell University engineering professors and students.  Analysis of claims of what the project is, what it does, and how that is known as they are put forth in the course of the project is instructive for considerations of ethics in engineering since such claims are put to use to bolster assertions of the enfranchising and sustainable nature of the project.  Issues arise when incorporating research from the history of technology into engineering ethics since conceptions of technology and knowledge production, like technological determinism, that are usually argued against by historians of technology can be put to ethical use by practitioners.  Conversely, conceptions argued for by historians of technology can be put to unethical use by practitioners.