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The (Mis)Framing of Social Justice: Why Ideologies of Depoliticization and Meritocracy Hinder Engineers’ Ability to Think About Social Injustices
Abstract
Engineers will incorporate considerations of social justice issues into their work only to the extent that they see such issues as relevant to the practice of their profession. This chapter argues that two prominent ideologies within the culture of engineering—depoliticization and meritocracy—frame social justice issues in such a way that they seem irrelevant to engineering practice. Depoliticization is the belief that engineering is a “technical” space where “social” or “political” issues such as inequality are tangential to engineers’ work. The meritocratic ideology—the belief that inequalities are the result of a properly-functioning social system that rewards the most talented and hard-working—legitimates social injustices and undermines the motivation to rectify such inequalities. These ideologies are built into engineering culture and are deeply embedded in the professional socialization of engineering students. I argue that it is not enough for engineering educators to introduce social justice topics into the classroom; they must also directly confront ideologies of meritocracy and depoliticization. In other words, cultural space must be made before students, faculty and practitioners can begin to think deeply about the role of their profession in the promotion of social justice.
... For this segment of the theory synthesis (Jaakkola, 2020), I draw on the cri�cal research on the engineering educa�on and professional culture, which has been shown to be a barrier to broader inclusion of not only neurodivergent and disabled students, but also those with other underrepresented iden��es like gender/sex, race or ethnicity, sexuality, and other iden��es like being a first-genera�on or low-income student (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Heybach & Pickup, 2017;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Liptow, et al., 2016;Riley, 2013Riley, , 2017Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Slaton, 2010Slaton, , 2013Stonyer, 2001;Svyantek, 2016). I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. ...
... For this segment of the theory synthesis (Jaakkola, 2020), I draw on the cri�cal research on the engineering educa�on and professional culture, which has been shown to be a barrier to broader inclusion of not only neurodivergent and disabled students, but also those with other underrepresented iden��es like gender/sex, race or ethnicity, sexuality, and other iden��es like being a first-genera�on or low-income student (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Heybach & Pickup, 2017;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Liptow, et al., 2016;Riley, 2013Riley, , 2017Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Slaton, 2010Slaton, , 2013Stonyer, 2001;Svyantek, 2016). I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. Several papers have pointed out the lack of visibility of disabili�es in engineering educa�on among faculty, students, and staff generally (Riley, 2017;Slaton, 2013;Svyantek, 2016), while a few have focused on neurodivergent student experiences in engineering educa�on (Chrysochoou et al., 2022;Cueller et al., 2022;Kouo et al., 2021;Robert, 2023;Taylor et al., 2019). ...
... For this segment of the theory synthesis (Jaakkola, 2020), I draw on the cri�cal research on the engineering educa�on and professional culture, which has been shown to be a barrier to broader inclusion of not only neurodivergent and disabled students, but also those with other underrepresented iden��es like gender/sex, race or ethnicity, sexuality, and other iden��es like being a first-genera�on or low-income student (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Heybach & Pickup, 2017;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Liptow, et al., 2016;Riley, 2013Riley, , 2017Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Slaton, 2010Slaton, , 2013Stonyer, 2001;Svyantek, 2016). I incorporate engineering history (Frehill;2004;Oldenziel, 1999), empirical research on underrepresented student experiences of exclusions (Blosser, 2017;Cech, 2013;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Faulkner, 2007;Foor & Walden, 2009;Haverkamp et al., 2019;Godfrey & Parker, 2021;Robert, 2023), and conceptual and empirical papers examining cultural values like epistemological rigidity (Baille & Armstrong, 2013;Bucciarelli, 2009;Cech, 2013Cech, , 2014Douglas et al, 2010;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Heybach & Pickup, 2017), and extreme rigor, weeding out, and the meritocracy (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2017;Robert, 2023;Robert & Leydens, 2023;Seron et al., 2018) that have been iden�fied as problema�c to inclusion and access. Several papers have pointed out the lack of visibility of disabili�es in engineering educa�on among faculty, students, and staff generally (Riley, 2017;Slaton, 2013;Svyantek, 2016), while a few have focused on neurodivergent student experiences in engineering educa�on (Chrysochoou et al., 2022;Cueller et al., 2022;Kouo et al., 2021;Robert, 2023;Taylor et al., 2019). ...
... Existing ideologies in engineering culture can impact who identifies as an insider or outsider, causing additional identity work for engineering graduates who are members of under-represented groups. Cech discussed two dominant engineering ideologiesmeritocracy and depoliticizationand how their persistence in engineering can reinforce social systems of disadvantage [23]. Meritocracy is the belief that rewards are distributed as a product of merit, talent, and hard work, as opposed to being a result of systems that impact access to opportunity. ...
... Depoliticization assumes that engineering is exclusively technical, and by extension exists outside of social influence. This results in the privileging of technical work over socially oriented work in engineering and fails to recognize its complexity and heterogeneity [23]. In social identity theory, in-group members and leaders are prototypical of the group's traits/values [15,16]. ...
... This speaks to the importance of explicitly foregrounding EDI when studying professional engineering identity and career paths. Failure to acknowledge the impact of social structures and norms on identity formation and career mobility can reinforce prevailing elements of engineering culture such as the ideologies of meritocracy and depoliticization [23]. When we accept rather than challenge these normative ideologies, we ignore the experiences of engineers who are disadvantaged by broader patterns of privilege in society. ...
In this paper, we present a literature review exploring the intersections of engineering professional identity, engineering career paths, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). In particular, we analyze the engineering career paths literature through the lens of 3 identity theories: role identity theory, social identity theory, and social constructionism. In the end, we found that authors who backgrounded EDI were most likely to highlight traditional roles and individual-level traits as career advancement indicators, whereas authors who explicitly considered EDI acknowledged the impact of social structures and norms on identity formation and career paths. With an understanding that both social and professional identity can impact engineers’ career paths, we argue for the importance of foregrounding EDI in the study of engineering identity and career paths, and recommend future work that deliberately investigates the intersection of these concepts.
... The concept of meritocracy asserts that individuals are rewarded based solely on their individual effort, implying that people get what they deserve in life through their hard work and determination [12], [13]. Conversely, and often unstated, is the implication that those who are unsuccessful are responsible for their lot in life. ...
... This position paper builds upon previous research that identified colorblindness and meritocracy as scripts of Whiteness [15]. We argue that, while meritocracy and colorblindness have been discussed in engineering education research [6], [7], [13], [15], [16], little action has been taken to dismantle meritocracy and colorblindness as pillars upholding Whiteness in engineering. Thus, through a historically contextualized interdisciplinary analysis, we seek to shift the conversation to focus on questioning the ways Whiteness affects pedagogy and research conducted in engineering education research. ...
... Another example in which colorblindness exists in engineering is the assumption that engineering work itself is race-neutral. Governed by the ideal of objectivity [13], engineering work has embraced the idea that color has no role in how engineers design technologies or solve problems. Take for example the problematic use of face recognition technologies for policing of communities of color [44]. ...
... Finally, a powerful group of critical engineering studies scholars have set out to disrupt normative engineering culture without necessarily using the term "culture" as a keyword. Instead, they have identified dominant mindsets, 28 ideologies, [29][30][31][32][33][34] and frameworks, 35-37 that provide us with a window into engineering education and practice. We review a small number of their foundational works here. ...
... Along similar lines, Cech identifies two dominant ideologies in engineering culture that hinder engineers' ability to acknowledge social injustice-depoliticization and meritocracy. 33 Picking up on the notion of merit, Stevens et al. analyzed engineering students' narratives about why they wished to become professional engineers and found a persistent "meritocracy of difficulty" belief paired with justifications for a comfortable engineering lifestyle. 38,39 These empirical findings have deep historical roots. ...
... The survey was much longer than those we typically use in university contexts. It had 69 questions broken into 5 sections: professional background (3-13), demographics (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21), career path (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38), career advancement , and professional belonging/identity (60)(61)(62)(63)(64)(65)(66)(67) We analyzed all three questions for the full sample then disaggregated our findings by an intersectional gender/race variable, following Crenshaw's argument that justice for racialized women requires us to go beyond main effects on gender and race. 60 Other than the response rate for Q65 which was greater among racialized participants than white participants, other questions had roughly similar response rates across demographic groups. ...
... 2. How do the scores on a scenario-based assessment of sociotechnical thinking change from pretest to posttest for the students in the course group and control groups? Our study responds to ongoing calls for equipping students with sociotechnical thinking skills (Cech, 2013;Mazzurco & Daniel, 2020;Swartz et al., 2019;Trevelyan, 2014b). Our findings show that interdisciplinary approaches like humanities-informed engineering may provide opportunities for developing required sociotechnical thinking skills. ...
... Sociotechnical thinking is a skill that enables engineers to understand the complex interconnections between the technical and contextual factors of a problem (Hoople & Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2020). Furthermore, with sociotechnical thinking skills, engineering students can discern how and why technical factors are co-dependent on contextual factors during problemsolving (Swartz et al., 2019), embrace the sociotechnical complexities of a problem (Cech, 2013), and think about how their decision making may impact the society as a whole (McGowan & Bell, 2020). Therefore, it is important to support the development of sociotechnical thinking skills in engineering education. ...
... Future research could focus on ways in which the traditional engineering curriculum can integrate contextual aspects The results of our study suggest that interdisciplinary training in humanities can improve engineering students' sociotechnical thinking, but only a limited number of students take this interdisciplinary course. The rest of the engineering education curriculum still focuses on teaching technical dimensions rather than social dimensions (Cech, 2013;Faulkner, 2000;Pawley, 2009), despite technical engineering decisions responding to and influencing the society. This lack of focus on social and contextual aspects limits engineering students' sociotechnical thinking abilities and thus, they marginalize contextual aspects while solving problems (Riley, 2003(Riley, , 2008Stevens et al., 2014). ...
... The increase in rapport may be because the instructor coming out humanized the instructor and therefore functioned as a positive violation of students' expectations for science instructors (Burgoon, 2015). Science and engineering curricula and class environments are often situated in a culture of depoliticization (Cech, 2013;Hughes and Kothari, 2023), meaning that personal identities and connections between content and social and political topics are often avoided. Importantly, attempts at depoliticization which preclude discussion of social and political topics reinforce dominant ideologies and norms while communicating to individuals with marginalized identities that they are not welcome, and therefore do not actually remove social and political contexts (Cech, 2013;King et al., 2023;Morton, 2023;Morton et al., 2023). ...
... Science and engineering curricula and class environments are often situated in a culture of depoliticization (Cech, 2013;Hughes and Kothari, 2023), meaning that personal identities and connections between content and social and political topics are often avoided. Importantly, attempts at depoliticization which preclude discussion of social and political topics reinforce dominant ideologies and norms while communicating to individuals with marginalized identities that they are not welcome, and therefore do not actually remove social and political contexts (Cech, 2013;King et al., 2023;Morton, 2023;Morton et al., 2023). Attempts at depoliticization are reflected in the general lack of instructor disclosure of concealable stigmatized identities in undergraduate science classrooms (Busch et al., 2024). ...
... If an undergraduate student welcomes this unexpected humanization in a science or engineering course, then this is a positive violation of their expectations and may increase credibility, likeability, and certainty about the interpersonal connection (White, 2008;Burgoon, 2015), which are outcomes associated with increased rapport (Frisby and Martin, 2010;Webb and Barrett, 2014). While mixed reactions from undergraduates may be expected because coming out often challenges norms in S&E due to the depoliticization of science (Cech, 2013; and the politicization of LGBTQ+ identities in the U.S. (American Civil Liberties Union, 2023;Hughes and Kothari, 2023;Trans Legislation Tracker, 2023), our results indicate that an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity would be a welcome challenge to current expectations. Further, increased calls to humanize science (Sjöström and Talanquer, 2014;Costello et al., 2023;Jones et al., 2023) and the growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015;GLAAD, 2017;Goodman, 2018;Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020) may make negative reactions from students less likely. ...
Study I assesses whether LGBTQ+ science and engineering instructors reveal their identities in various contexts and why they reveal or conceal to undergraduate students. Study II demonstrates via undergraduates’ evaluations of a teaching demonstration video that an instructor coming out does not affect perceptions of teaching and improves rapport.
... In V.3 of the survey, there are five items addressing RQ1 and nine items addressing RQ2. Appendix A shows the source of each question-whether it was adapted from relevant existing work on students' perceptions of ethics [19] or depoliticization in engineering [20], or written by the authors. Many of these items-particularly those in Q2-were modified after the first pilot survey. ...
... (Reverse-coded. Adapted from Cech's definition of depoliticization[20].)Q1.2. It is easy to be an ethical engineer in the aerospace industry. ...
... 2 We also do not know if those same early-career professionals have had much discussion of "low promotability" versus "high promotability" work assignments while undergraduate students. In engineering education, coursework on "how to move up the engineering job ladder" may be infrequent because this very type of knowledge itself could be de-prioritized in a largely depoliticized engineering curriculum (refer to [21]), and/or there is discomfort in the possibility that career-advancing work could undermine the learning of, quality of, and commitment to more routine and elemental work that still needs to get done. More broadly, the school-to-work transition itself is so variable and unstructured, fueled by dominant individualistic ideologies espoused even by recent college graduates exposed to more structural ways of understanding the world [22]. ...
... This sentiment-that there is no real rhyme or reason for who gets these assignments-was echoed in others' accounts as well. At the same time, many interviewees described a strongly meritocratic context within which stretch assignments operated, extending out from dominant ideologies in undergraduate settings, including undergraduate engineering settings [21], [25]. Jean's words above underscore this meritocracy narrative-stretch assignments and the chance for important, career-advancing work go to people who "consistently" "get things done well". ...
... Notably, both characters (Reyes and Nagata) come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds but are able to pull themselves out of their oppressed conditions and achieve various levels of success (and influence) through what is depicted as their natural abilities and intelligence. Thus, these narratives reproduce meritocratic ideology that is already pervasive in engineering culture (Cech, 2013;Stevens et al., 2007). In other words, it reinforces the belief that success can be achieved solely through individual talent, ability, and hard work. ...
... This narrative is often alluded to in engineering education with faculty (and students) claiming or positioning certain students (often those from underrepresented groups) as not cut out for engineering or not a right fit for engineering (e.g., Rohde et al., 2020;Secules et al., 2018). This narrative distracts from the very real structural inequities that have and continue to cause non-white and non-male individuals to remain underrepresented in engineering and from social justice and social welfare concerns in engineering (Cech, 2013;Riley, 2007). Unfortunately, these depictions may implicitly reinforce the belief that if women or people of color had the natural talent and intelligence for engineering (like Reyes and Nagata), they too could be successful in engineering rather than acknowledging the systemic barriers in engineering for women of color. ...
... For engineering practice to center issues of social justice, future engineers must learn to center the contexts in which their design takes place and consider different sociotechnical possibilities (Cech, 2013;Riley 2008). They must engage in expansive thinking, which entails breaking free from "status quo narratives and attend[ing] to science and technology from a human-centered, systems-level perspective" (Radoff et al, 2022, p. 2). ...
... Heba, Arami, and Adya's engagement with epistemological uncertainty meant that they could collectively question and consider possibilities for including different aspects, especially those that were hard to quantify, like transboundary equity. Given that complex social and political contexts are often considered tangential to engineering work (Cech, 2013), we see the students questioning what and how to value different political aspects in their engineering modeling as productive beginnings of questioning the sociotechnical dualism prevalent in engineering. In their in-class discussion, the group's agreement to try to quantify aspects of transboundary equity meant that the students had to engage with uncertainties relating to the process and outcome of including political aspects in their engineering modeling work. ...
... Figure 1 shows these existing connections (solid lines) and invisible connections (dotted lines). Generally, in engineering education literature, the issue of institutional prestige has been rendered invisible despite literature questioning the cultural impact of the engineering meritocracy on engineering education (Cech, 2013). Whether institutional prestige-seeking is playing a more salient role in STEM student mental health remains a largely unexamined question, especially from the perspective of STEM students. ...
... However, we also showed how these gaps are particularly salient for underrepresented students in STEM disciplines that epistemologically rest comfortably in quantitative measurements and explanations (Bucciarelli, 2009;Godfrey & Parker, 2010;Riley, 2017) and a hierarchical meritocracy that is culturally regarded as both normal and necessary for producing quality engineers (Cech, 2013(Cech, , 2014Riley, 2017;Seron et al., 2018). All three participants sensed a tension in the linkages between institutional prestige seeking and paradoxical campus DI&A discourses and fears of diluted rigor through accommodation of disabilities and intentional recruitment of underrepresented students. ...
... Educators have identified dimensions of engineering culture that impede attention to equity in engineering courses. These barriers include a culture of competition over collaboration [9], [13], [14]; whiteness, masculinity, and heteronormativity [10]; the belief that engineering is neutral and meritocratic [3], [7], [10], [15], [16]; and prioritization of technical knowledge over social understanding [3], [7], [10], [13], [14]. To challenge these conceptualizations, educators have suggested interventions that refute narrow understandings of engineering practice, including guidance on how to introduce social justice and equity into course content and practice (e.g., [7], [11], [13], [17] - [21]), and recommendations for inclusive teaching practices (e.g., [5], [6], [10], [14], [20], [22], [23]). ...
... There is more literature on equitable pedagogy (e.g., [2], [5], [6], [10], [14], [22], [23], [25] - [28]) than on equity-centered engineering content (e.g., [7], [8], [11], [13], [17] - [21], [29] - [31]), though we argue that both are necessary in order to prepare students to be equity-oriented in their engineering practice. Additionally, there are different approaches to centering equity in engineering courses, e.g., sociotechnical content (e.g., [7], [9], [12]), Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) curricula (e.g., [19], [31]), macro-ethics (e.g., [18]), universal design (e.g., [17]), engineering for social justice (e.g., [8], [13], [15], [34]), etc. Given the variety of terms and approaches, we first sought to define our goals for equity-centered engineering curriculum and instruction. ...
... A call for broader engineering skills is reflected in the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) student outcomes, a few of which directly denote the importance of students' ability to identify the ethical, cultural, and social impact engineers have on society [5]. However, engineering education continues to underemphasize or even omit nontechnical aspects of engineering practice [3], [6], [7]. Insufficient attention to sociocultural content in engineering classes can limit students' ability to become holistically competent engineers [8] and potentially result in the development of future engineers whose designs further perpetuate social and systemic inequities, such as environmental pollution or inefficient designs that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and risks human lives [9]. ...
... In alignment with the other branches of STEM, engineering has traditionally been perceived as an objective, apolitical, and neutral discipline. Engineering has long been viewed as a technical space that is independent of social or cultural considerations and should remain devoid of such matters [7]. However, integrating more sociocultural dimensions into engineering requires a substantive change in the undergraduate curriculum, which is currently heavily dominated by technical knowledge such as fundamental math and science theory, and related skills [1], [2], [16], [17]. ...
... Not only is there an underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups, but there is a culture that upholds the myth of meritocracy and notions of depoliticization. The ideology of depoliticization posits that engineering should be disconnected from socio-political contexts and remain purely technical, assuming that when these realms are integrated, engineering can be tainted [20]. The myth of meritocracy reinforces the idea that an individual's success is solely because of merit, indicating that those who fail do so due to a lack of merit, as opposed to inequalities. ...
... The myth of meritocracy reinforces the idea that an individual's success is solely because of merit, indicating that those who fail do so due to a lack of merit, as opposed to inequalities. These ideologies reinforce one another, and are deeply ingrained in the culture of engineering education and contribute to the reproduction of inequalities within engineering [20], [21]. Meritocracy and depoliticization are upheld not just by institutions and departments, but by faculty and staff making transformational change in graduated education hard. ...
... Marginalization of trans students in chemistry is heightened by STEM discipline cultural ideologies that falsely define their knowledge domains as purely technical, apolitical, asocial, and meritocratic, rendering scientists' personal identities as irrelevant to their scientific work. 19,20 However, science is a social project and failure to confront trans oppressive norms in STEM culture leads to the replication and reinforcement of transphobia, gender binarism, and gender essentialist beliefs. 21 In practice, these assumptions about the proclaimed neutrality of STEM enforce a cisheteronormative culture that has been likened to "don't ask, don't tell,'' where LGBTQ+ scientists are made invisible or actively excluded. ...
... 11,23,[25][26][27][28] Furthermore, STEM students are socialized into reproducing these ideologies as part of the process of "becoming" a STEM professional through official pedagogical materials, institutional policies, and interactions with faculty and peers. 20,29,30 Miller and coauthors reported a pervasive "dude/bro culture" in STEM departments that "assumed heterosexuality and prized masculinity." 31 Queer and trans students in their study were forced to weigh the social rewards and consequences of participating in, resiting, or blending into the cisheteronormative culture in STEM, with some participants even excusing these norms as an apparent coping mechanism. ...
Transgender, nonbinary, two spirit, and gender-expansive students are marginalized in higher education and have significantly different college experiences than their cisgender peers. Through in-depth interviews, this research illuminates the nuanced experiences of transgender students navigating academia in chemistry graduate programs, revealing the disparities between institutional rhetoric and tangible support. From grappling with the absence of inclusive policies to the burdens of advocating for institutional change, participants confronted systemic barriers that impeded their academic and personal growth. This study underscores the imperative for transparent and proactive support structures within academic departments to foster an environment where transgender and nonbinary individuals can thrive. As the political landscape intensifies with escalating threats to transgender rights, this research serves as a clarion call for academia to confront and ameliorate the challenges faced by marginalized populations in STEM fields.
... This paper directs attention to two engineering students who matriculated in the same engineering program at the same institution and seeks to highlight the importance and significance of place and space on transgender and gender non-conforming undergraduate engineering experiences, as well as the struggles that result from combating the depoliticization of engineering culture. The depoliticization of engineering culture and its negative impact on students with politicized identities have been documented [4], [5], [6]. One of the most significant findings from previous phases of this research is that each student's identity, location, political worldview, and support system influenced widely different experiences for TGNC students [7]. ...
... Research has documented the ways in which engineering culture endorses a separation of technical issues and social/political issues, with discussion of LGBTQIA+ inequality, or even LGBTQIA+ identity, being perceived as a threat to this depoliticization of the profession [13], [4], [5], [6]. Navigating this culture is particularly problematic for TGNC engineers, who are unwillingly categorized with a deeply politicized identity. ...
... Engineering exists as a discipline that has been characterized as depoliticized and meritocratic, ideologies which run counter to those that typically undergird participation in labor unions and the undertaking of liberatory structural alterations [6][7][8]. Riley has discussed how prevailing forms of rigor in engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research reproduce inequality and function primarily to discipline, demarcate boundaries, and demonstrate white male heterosexual privilege, as well as the need to seek alternatives for evaluating knowledge [9]. Slaton and Pawley further demonstrate ways that prevailing standards for engineering education research are assembled from politics that run counter to and stigmatize qualitative and small-n studies [10]. ...
... Perceptions of depoliticization, meritocracy, and majorism were believed to reduce strike participation from engineers (theme 1) Cech [6] described ways in which prominent ideologies within engineering culture negatively impact the ability of engineers to think about social injustices. These ideologies include depoliticization, the belief that social and political issues are tangential to engineering labor, and meritocracy, the belief that the social system functions properly and rewards the talented and hard-working. ...
... While better attention to value congruence within organizations could help increase address these issues, undergraduate engineering education might also be contributing to value incongruence as students transition to engineering careers. Engineering school and practice espouse different values reflected in their respective cultures [38] [39]. For example, where academic goals emphasize student learning and development, industry goals are often driven by profitability, productivity, and benefits to the broader organization. ...
... Research estimates that a failure to empower employees in their work costs U.S. businesses up to $550 billion annually [62]. The interaction between value incongruence and empowerment is critical because it highlights a space where engineers might experience tensions that their engineering education makes them ill-equipped to address [24] [38]. Notably, Chatman [63] postulates that a person can successfully overcome potential adverse effects caused by person-organization value incongruence-and even influence the organization's values to be more like their own-if they feel empowered (i.e., perceive themselves as having self-efficacy and control) over the situation. ...
... Instructors may need help determining what definitions and examples of engineering ethics are appropriate for their students due to the broadness of the topic in both the literature and the accreditation documents. Other instructors may be grounded in the tradition/assumption of engineering as apolitical and objective (Cech, 2013). While those instructors may be comfortable teaching traditional engineering ethics case studies such as the Challenger disaster or the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, they may be less likely to include issues that appear to align more with social justice discourses, such as systemic racism in algorithms (Benjamin, 2019;Noble, 2018) or recent movements to modernize and address harm in engineering graduation rituals (Retool the Ritual, 2023). ...
... In the program under study, these competencies have been integrated within the design curriculum, as a stand-alone core course, and through some integration within the technical curriculum. However, the realms of technical and social are often separated (in this program and otherwise), and this is often critiqued in the literature -the inadequate incorporation of social elements with the technical [16], [17]. Interestingly, practicing engineers describe practice as much more sociotechnical in nature than students [18]. ...
In this work-in-progress research project, the perspectives of program alumni are examined, with the goal of better understanding how this important stakeholder group values engineering knowledge and pedagogy in the large undergraduate engineering program from which they graduated. Perspectives were gathered through extensive semi-structured interviews with alumni of the program, who represented a range of post-graduate outcomes and time since graduation. This paper focuses on alumni perspectives on the following themes, which are of special interest to the program under study: (1) views on the relationship between science and engineering within the context of undergraduate engineering education; (2) perceptions of multidisciplinarity; and (3) beliefs about the role of ethics and social and environmental impact in the program. Understanding the perspectives of alumni, who can connect their experiences forward to their post-graduate working lives, illuminates new perspectives on program design and engineering knowledge.
... The term sociotechnical has migrated to engineering education from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) but is understood and applied in multiple ways. Frequently, it is not defined by itself but in opposition to that which it critiques: the artificial separation of the technical and social dimensions of engineering, which has been theorized as a technical/social dualism (Faulkner, 2007) that depoliticizes engineering knowledge and practice (Cech, 2013). Educators use the term "sociotechnical" to refer to both engineering itself as well as to the habits of thinking they seek to nurture in students (Adams et al., 2011). ...
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of engineering educators in the United States and Colombia designed and led a two-week virtual “field session” for engineering undergraduate students that aimed at achieving the same educational outcomes as those from the previous in-country field session. Our NSF PIRE funded Responsible Mining, Resilient Communities (RMRC) project uses multi-country, interinstitutional, and interdisciplinary collaboration to train U.S. engineering students to co-design socially responsible and sustainable artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) systems with mining communities and engineers in Latin America. Drawing from pre- and post-field session student interviews, essays, and survey responses, this article analyzes how the virtual 2020 field session and the in-person 2019 session influenced students’ global sociotechnical competency. We offer a conceptualization of global sociotechnical competency that synthesizes notions of global engineering competency with theories of socially responsible engineering that emphasize problem definition and solution with underserved communities. Our research suggests that whereas many educators raised concerns about the efficacy of virtual formats for student learning and professional development, the 2020 session was effective for enhancing students’ abilities to identify stakeholders and methods to engage them, as well as for using sociotechnical coordination while engaging in problem definition. While the small number of student participants cautions against making broad generalizations, the virtual (2020) and in-person (2019) students experienced similar increases in self-reported empathizing practices with the intended users of their designs; a desire and ability to integrate social concerns into their design; a desire and ability to work with people from different backgrounds; and self-efficacy in engineering. The virtual students were less likely, however, than their in-person counterparts to desire a humanitarian engineering career. While the small number of students raises questions for extrapolating the results of our findings, our research does signal fruitful areas of future research for making humanitarian engineering projects more equitable and effective, even in virtual settings.
... One problem found that limits students' exposure to social justice is the decontextualization of problems within the engineering curriculum [1], [15], [16], [2]. While straightforward problems are helpful in allowing students to focus on concepts and principles, they do ignore the relevant social information affecting the situation that could inform a more comprehensive solution. ...
... For well over a decade, there have been numerous critiques of the social/technical dualism present in engineering education and calls to disrupt it [1]. Researchers have varying motivations for this focus, including to better prepare students for engineering practice, which is inherently sociotechnical [2]; to increase the sense of belonging of historically excluded students, who are more likely to be interested in the social aspects [3]; and to create better societal outcomes that consider justice [4,5,6]. Attempts to disrupt the social/technical dualism and the apolitical nature of traditional engineering education have included revising stand-alone ethics courses and adding sociotechnical components to traditional engineering courses, such as design courses [7][8][9][10]. ...
... The divide and conquer tactic of individualization, as this unionized construction worker points out, has been a key ideological means for corporate owners to control and diminish the collective power of workers. Cech has discussed how such individualization takes the form of a culturally hegemonic ideology of meritocracy amongst US engineers, wherein inequity is justified by a belief that success in life is the result of individual talent, training, and motivation [24]. Meritocratic beliefs meld with ideological business professionalism to rationalize, justify, and normalize the control corporate owners exert over engineering workers, underpinning the concern with status amongst engineers that has been a large inhibitor toward unionization [6]. ...
... Current engineering education research on identity and sense of belonging has identified several engineering mindsets such as technical narrowness, meritocracy, the perceived "value neutrality" of engineering practice, and the profession's pervasive identification with corporate-military values which can directly and indirectly perpetuate inequities for engineering undergraduates [1], [2]. The razor-sharp emphasis on technical education at the cost of developing human-centered engineers and the insistence that engineering is a value-neutral practice leads to what is known as the socio-technical divide. ...
... As Leydens and Lucena have shown [35], engineering educators and students who want to integrate social justice or sustainable community development into engineering first need to understand the engineering ideologies, mindsets, attitudes, and assumptions that get in the way of these integrations. Integrating RT in engineering research is no exception as the ideologies of meritocracy and depoliticization [36] and engineering mindsets [37] will get in the way. For example, the ideology of depoliticization, which creates a valuation of the technical over the social, will lead those under its influence to view RT processes and products of lesser value that those carried out through traditional engineering research. ...
... Others have highlighted the importance of considering together the technical and social dimensions of engineering, as opposed to two different systems, describing "social empathy and care as essential aspects of engineering education and practice [12]. These efforts have emerged as prioritized and contextualized views of engineering that account for the broader social, cultural, and political context shaping the discipline [12], [13] - [15]. Table 1 shows a non-exhaustive summary of recommendations and their central focus provided by equity and justice-oriented scholars. ...
... studies on engineering professional identity consider DEI explicitly in their work, and comment on the impact of engineering culture on identity formation. For example, Cech discussed how two dominant ideologies in engineering culturemeritocracy and depoliticizationcan reinforce social systems of disadvantage [14]. Meritocracy is the belief that rewards are distributed as a product of merit, talent, and hard work, as opposed to being a result of systems that impact access to opportunity. ...
... Many URM faculty engage in CER and work to help their communities, and these faculty are seen as trusted allies to enhance the adoption of EnvE technology [24], [25], [26]. CER requires intrinsically more holistic approaches that challenge the typical engineering culture that views itself as expert, technophilic, depoliticized, and disengaged from public welfare [27], [28], [29]. Evidence suggests that URMWF who utilize CER methods often have the rigor of their scholarly activities questioned or discounted as service [30], which can have deleterious consequences for early and mid-career faculty. ...
... Further, the invisible nature of CSIs requires instructors to disclose them to students for any potential benefits to come to fruition. Yet, talking about identities is often avoided in scientific contexts in order to appear objective and apolitical (Seymour and Hewitt, 1997;Cech, 2013;Christe, 2013;Seymour and Hunter, 2019). This extends to science departments, where faculty report rarely revealing CSIs such as LGBTQ+ identities (Yoder and Mattheis, 2016;Cooper et al., 2019). ...
Few college science instructors reveal concealable identities to students, causing undergraduates to perceive exaggerated underrepresentation of those identities.
... Instead, it is fairly common for engineers (in training) to understand engineering activities and the technologies resulting from those activities as value-neutral and apolitical (Cf.Cech, 2013). ...
While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education.
... Among engineers, who are one of the main contributors for technology development, there is a belief that technology is politically neutral and value-free, and its technical and social aspects are separate and independent (Cech 2013;Faulkner 2000;Godfrey 2014). This paradigm is described as technical-social dualism (Swartz et al. 2019), and it leads to the understanding that as long as an artifact or process meets the technical requirements and is safe for humans, it will be beneficial to society and engineers are doing their job (Stieb 2011). ...
Sociotechnical thinking (STT) has recently emerged in response to technical-social dualism. It is defined as the ability to identify, address, and respond to both social and technical dimensions of engineering. As the number of publications on STT increases, so does the need to map the literature. This paper provides a scoping literature review of STT in engineering education, focusing on research purposes, methodologies, findings, and potential gaps. Our examination of 25 papers indicates that research on STT in engineering education covers a variety of purposes and methodologies. Key findings in the literature provide a better understanding of students’ demonstration of and barriers to developing STT, the intersections between STT, engineering identity and culture, characteristics of STT, challenges and opportunities for teaching STT, and how prior knowledge and emotional connections can facilitate students’ development of STT.
... As Cech [38] put it, "Those who wish to participate in the engineering profession must not only learn the proper skills and competencies required of practice in the field, they must learn to 'fit in' with the culture of engineering by adhering to these ideologies." And over four years of exposure to these cultural values, Cech [39] diagnosed a "culture of disengagement" from the wider world, resulting in a gradual but profound diminishment of students' desire to do good in the world. ...
... Intersecting social identities [23] like age, gender, and race as well as academic and professional disciplines and degree attainment generate a hierarchy of power in STEM that is difficult to study due to the complex relationality between these various social identities [24]. This difficulty is increased when examined in relationship to the culture of engineering, which is apolitical, ahistorical, and locked in a positivist mindset that research finds often denies the space to acknowledge how different bodies experience engineering culture [11], [25]. However, higher education in general rests on limited understandings about the complex intersections of social identities and racialized conceptions about intelligence and ability that influence who is deemed "gifted" or "at risk" [26]. ...
... Multiple studies of engineering practice have underlined the necessity of integrating social and technical considerations in engineering work [3], [10], [11]. Yet, such sociotechnical integration has historically been difficult to achieve in the engineering curriculum. ...
This research highlights the potential for instructors with depression to have a positive impact on students in their college science courses.
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between engineering faculties’ perception of the diversity climate and their turnover intentions at R1 (Research 1) universities across the U.S. We sampled 1,101 tenure-track engineering faculty for this purpose. Data analysis showed that an engineering faculty’s demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, race/ethnicity, professor rank, age, engineering areas, marriage status, and tenure-track status) are associated with their perceptions of the diversity climate. Furthermore, results from structural equation modeling analyses show that faculty with higher perceptions of organizational fairness and inclusion reported a lower desire to turn over. Implications for the results are discussed.
Keynote during SEFI 2024. Video-recording is available here: https://mediaspace.epfl.ch/media/SEFI+Day+1+Keynote+-+Johanna+L%C3%B6nngren/0_5172k6kl
The impersonal nature of high-enrollment science courses makes it difficult to build student-instructor relationships, which can negatively impact student learning and engagement, especially for members of marginalized groups. In this study, we explored whether an instructor collecting and sharing aggregated student demographics could positively impact student-instructor relationships. We surveyed students in a high-enrollment physiology course about their perceptions of their instructor a) distributing a demographic survey, and b) sharing aggregated survey results in class. We found that 72% of students appreciated the demographic survey, and 91% thought it helped their instructor get to know them. Further, 73% of students expressed that the instructor sharing aggregated demographic data in class positively impacted their overall course experience, and over 90% thought both the collection and sharing of demographic data was appropriate. Most students felt both parts of the intervention increased their sense of belonging in class, increased how connected they felt to their instructor, and made their instructor seem more approachable and inclusive, but also made some students feel more different from their peers. Women and non-binary students felt the demographic survey increased instructor approachability more than men, and liberal students felt the survey increased instructor approachability more than non-liberal students. Compared to men, women and non-binary students were more likely to report that taking the survey increased instructor inclusivity and made them feel less different from their peers. Based on these results, collecting student demographic information and sharing it in aggregate may be a practical, effective way to enhance student-instructor relationships.
Background
Latinos/as/xs continue to face many barriers as they pursue engineering degrees, including remedial placement, lack of access to well‐funded schools, and high poverty rates. We use the concept of arrebatos to describe the internal reckoning that Latino/a/x engineering students experience through their journeys, particularly focusing on the impact of socioeconomic inequalities.
Purpose
To bring counternarratives in engineering education research focusing on the experiences and lived realities of low‐income Latino/a/x engineering students. These counternarratives are an important step in interrogating systemic biases and exclusionary cultures, practices, and policies at HSIs and emerging HSIs and within engineering programs.
Methods
Pláticas were conducted with 22 Latino/a/x engineering undergraduates from four different universities in the US Southwest. These pláticas were coded and analyzed drawing from Anzaldúa's theoretical concept of el arrebato . Special attention was given to participants' arrebatos triggered by their college experiences as low‐income individuals.
Results
Analysis indicates that Latino/a/x engineering students' a rrebatos arise from events that shake up the foundation of their own identity, including an institutional lack of sociopolitical consciousness. This lack of consciousness becomes evident not only in individuals' attitudes toward these students but also in institutional policies that put them at a further disadvantage.
Conclusions
Findings have implications for engineering programs, particularly at HSIs and emerging HSIs regarding the creation of policies and practices that aim to secure the retention of low‐income Latino/a/x engineering students and alleviate the systemic barrier they face by affirming the practice of servingness.
Barriers to equity, diversity, and inclusion remain in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for historically underrepresented and marginalized individuals. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of women and LGBT+ academics and PhD students in the United Kingdom. Specifically, this article examines systemic challenges and support that 82 participants who identified as women and/or LGBT+ academics and PhD students have experienced in their STEM environments and throughout their careers. In this qualitative study, we employed intersectionality theory to frame a thematic analysis of interviews and focus groups. Our findings indicate that the experiences of participants are characterized more by inequities than by support from colleagues, peers, and higher education institutions. Inequities are widespread and intersectional, and have a cumulative impact whenever individuals endure multiple and potentially escalating challenges—which include hard‐to‐spot disadvantages, stereotypes, prejudice, as well as harassment, bullying, and discrimination. Participants’ accounts illustrate the benefits of different support mechanisms but also the limitations of initiatives to support marginalized individuals and groups in STEM that are not systematically embedded across institutions. Based on our findings, we present two conceptual models to better understand systemic challenges and their consequences for women and LGBT+ academics and PhD students in STEM, as well as to inform more holistic support mechanisms to create more inclusive STEM environments. Implications from the study highlight institutional accountability as key to improving climates and transformative change.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequities within higher education. This study examined how first-generation students, compared to their continuing-generation peers, navigated institutional resources such as programs and academic advising during the pandemic. To examine institutional resource barriers, usage, and helpfulness for students, the study analyzed survey data of 524 students at a four-year private university in the United States. Results showed that lack of time, awareness, and access to institutional resources were barriers for first-generation students in using institutional resources. Furthermore, qualitative findings reveal factors that first-generation students found helpful in their college career: transparency of institutional resources on campus, initiative from institutional figures in reaching out to students, and holistic support for academic, personal, and professional development.
Background
Existing research points to the role of Eurocentric epistemic values—scientific objectivity, value‐neutrality, depoliticization, and technical rationality—as a cornerstone of engineering ways of thinking, knowing, and doing. However, less is known about the role of Eurocentric epistemologies in team communication and decision making.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine how dominant Eurocentric epistemologies shape individual‐ and team‐level design thinking and, by extension, students' learning in engineering design education.
Method
This work draws on a critical ethnography in which I observed three focal design teams during a semester‐long design project in a cornerstone design course. Following the conclusion of the design project, I conducted semi‐structured interviews with each member of the focal teams, asking students to reflect on incidents, their thinking, and team dynamics during the individual and team design processes.
Findings
At the individual level, students' concerns about adhering to Eurocentric epistemic values made them hesitant to pursue design ideas. These concerns also shaped their design thinking, communication, and decision making at the team level, leading students to withhold or not advocate for ideas. Finally, students appeared to leverage the normative supremacy of Eurocentric epistemologies in engineering rhetorically to exert influence over their team's design decisions.
Conclusions
If engineering education is to create a more just and inclusive learning environment for engineering students, we must construct learning environments that allow students to draw on all their epistemic resources during the learning process. This study suggests the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies is a barrier to that end.
Background
Engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well‐being of the public impacted by the technologies they design and maintain. In an increasingly complex sociotechnical world, engineering educators and professional institutions have a duty to train engineers in these responsibilities.
Purpose/Hypothesis
This article asks, where are engineers trained in their public welfare responsibilities, and how effective is this training? We argue that engineers trained in public welfare responsibilities, especially within engineering education, will demonstrate greater understanding of their duty to recognize and respond to public welfare concerns. We expect training in formal engineering classes to be more broadly impactful than training in contexts like work or professional societies.
Data/Methods
We analyze unique survey data from a representative sample of US practicing engineers using descriptive and regression techniques.
Results
Consistent with expectations, engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in engineering classes are more likely than other engineers to understand their responsibilities to protect public health and safety and problem‐solve collectively, to recognize the importance of social consequences and ethical responsibilities in their own jobs, to have noticed ethical issues in their workplace, and to have taken action about an issue that concerned them. Training through other parts of college, workplaces, or professional societies has comparatively little impact. Concerningly, nearly a third of engineers reported never being trained in public welfare responsibilities.
Conclusion
These results suggest that training in engineering education can shape engineers' long‐term understanding of their public welfare responsibilities. They underscore the need for these responsibilities to be taught as a core, non‐negotiable part of engineering education.
Multiple studies call for engineering education to integrate social justice into classroom instruction. Yet, there is uncertainty regarding whether integrating these social topics into engineering curriculum will support or detract from the learning of technical concepts. This study focuses on evaluating how reframing technical assessments to include social justice concepts impacts student learning and investigates how well students integrate social justice into engineering decision making. Using a within-subject design, in which students were exposed to both conditions (questions with and without social justice context), we evaluate how social justice framing impacts overall student learning of technical topics. Social justice prompts are added to homework questions, and we assess students’ demonstration of knowledge of original technical content of the course, as well as their ability to consider social justice implications of engineering design. In the earlier homework assignment, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in learning when technical concepts were framed to include social justice. As the students became more familiar with social justice considerations, their learning of technical concepts became comparable to that of students who did not have the social justice components in their assignment. Their evaluation of the social implications of technical decisions also improved.
History: This paper has been accepted for the INFORMS Transactions on Education Special Issue on DEI in ORMS Classrooms.
Funding: This work was supported by the Carnegie Mellon University’s Wimmer Faculty Fellowship and the National Science Foundation [Grant 2053856]. D. Nock also acknowledges support from the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, where she is an energy fellow.
Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2022.0030 .
The unique breed of particle physicists constitutes a community of sophisticated mythmakers--explicators of the nature of matter who forever alter our views of space and time. But who are these people? What is their world really like? Sharon Traweek, a bold and original observer of culture, opens the door to this unusual domain and offers us a glimpse into the inner sanctum. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674063488
This article used the concept of discursive positioning to explore the narrative construction of professional identities among women engineers. The analysis of interviews with 15 women in a variety of engineering specialties suggested that they adopt a variety of distinct and sometimes contradictory positionings to present themselves as qualified professionals. In general, participants were reluctant to acknowledge gender relations as consequential for their careers and were also ambivalent about the implied focus of this research on female engineers as a “marginalized group.” A case is made for including and examining female engineers’ selfdetermined identities to arrive at more adequately complex descriptions of their work realities.
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent. Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.
The class analytic tradition has come under increasing attack from postmodernists, anti-Marxists, and other commentators who argue that the concept of class is an antiquated construction of declining utility in understanding modern or postmodern inequality. In large part, this state of affairs might be blamed on class analysts themselves, as they have invariably represented the class structure with highly aggregate categories that, for all their academic popularity, have never been deeply institutionalized in the world outside academia and hence fail the realist test. By defaulting to nominalism, the class analytic tradition becomes especially vulnerable to critique, with postmodernists in particular arguing that academics have resorted to increasingly arcane and complicated representations of the class structure because the site of production no longer generates well-organized classes that academics and others can easily discern. The purpose of this chapter is to outline a neo-Durkheimian alternative to such postmodernism that points to the persistence of class-like structuration at a more disaggregate level than class analysts have typically appreciated. It follows that class analysis is well worth salvaging; that is, rather than abandoning the site of production and concentrating exclusively on other sources of attitudes and behavior (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender), one should recognize that the labor market is indeed organized into classes, albeit at a more detailed level than is conventionally allowed. © Cambridge University Press 2005 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
If every individual in a society has been fairly rewarded, does this guarantee that rewards have been fairly distributed in the society as a whole? Surprisingly, it does not. It is our contention that people use different criteria to assess microjustice (the fairness of rewards to individual recipients) and macrojustice (the aggregate fairness of reward in a society).
Much has been made of the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers, but is engineering education actually succeeding in this task? Does the professional socialization of engineering students train them to take seriously their professional responsibility to public welfare? This paper examines this vital question by systematically testing whether programs successfully emphasize ethical, engaged engineering practice to their students, and whether such programmatic emphasis actually cultivates in students a sense of social consciousness and a belief in the importance of their professional engagement in public welfare. This paper utilizes unique quantitative longitudinal panel data which follow cohorts of engineering students at four diverse institutions (MIT, UMass, Smith and Olin) for four years. In order to determine if professional socialization cultivates engaged and socially conscious engineers, I analyze (a) whether engineering programs actually emphasize ethical engagement in issues of public welfare, (b) whether students' social consciousness and belief in the importance of public engagement increase over the course of their college careers, and (c) whether programmatic emphasis is causally related to these changes. The results suggest there is much work to be done: Not only do programs lack an emphasis on ethical engagement, this lack of emphasis is causally related to a reduction in students' social consciousness and their belief in the importance of public engagement over the course of their college careers. The silver lining to this story is that professional socialization does appear to be effective at changing students' beliefs. If programs are able to increase their emphasis on ethical engagement, this research suggests that engineering programs have the capacity to produce more publically engaged, socially conscious engineers.
It has been commonly assumed that an advanced formal education bestows a more enlightened perspective that is less vulnerable to the narrow appeals of intergroup negativism. Other investigators have argued that education increases commitment to democratic norms, but only at a superficial level. We review the arguments from that debate and then subject them to empirical test with national survey data on the intergroup beliefs, feelings, predispositions for personal contact, and policy orientations of men toward women, of whites toward blacks, and of the nonpoor toward the poor. The results of that comprehensive analysis fail to support the view either that education produces liberation from intergroup negativism or that it produces a superficial democratic commitment. With that ascertained, we depart from the confines of past debate and propose a fresh approach that rests on different assumptions about the nature of both intergroup attitudes and educational institutions. We argue that dominant social groups routinely develop ideologies that legitimize and justify the status quo, and the well-educated members of these dominant groups are the most sophisticated practitioners of their group's ideology. We interpret our data from this perspective and suggest that the well educated are but one step ahead of their peers in developing a defense of their interests that rests on qualification, individualism, obfuscation, and symbolic concessions.
Teaching about social stratification and social inequality is fundamental to any curriculum in sociology. Yet often students are not as excited about these courses as they are about others. In order to engage students in active learning, I developed a course that used a variety of pedagogical strategies designed to provide experiential and service-learning situations to help students connect readings such as those by Marx, Olin Wright, and Davis and Moore with the situation of social class in contemporary United States. Students were required to keep journals of their experiences, and their journal entries provide the data for this paper. Though there is considerable room for improvement, the data suggest that the pedagogical tools employed were successful in promoting a deeper level of learning around issues of inequality, particularly social class inequality, as it exists in the United States.
As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller "The Bell Curve" (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. "Inequality by Design" offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s.Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--"Inequality by Design" shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.
The ethnographic study performed by Bruno Latour engaged him in the world of the scientific laboratory to develop an understanding of scientific culture through observations of their daily interactions and processes. Latour assumed a scientific perspective in his study; observing his participants with the "same cold, unblinking eye" that they use in their daily research activities. He familiarized himself with the laboratory by intense focus on "literary inscription", noting that the writing process drives every activity in the laboratory. He unpacked the structure of scientific literature to uncover its importance to scientists (factual knowledge), how scientists communicate, and the processes involved with generating scientific knowledge (use of assays, instrumentation, documentation). The introduction by Jonas Salk stated that Latour's study could increase public understanding of scientists, thereby decreasing the expectations laid on them, and the general fear toward them. [Teri, STS 901-Fall; only read Ch. 2]
Outstanding Academic Title: Choice, 2006
Winnter of the Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology
Winner of the 1993 Ludwik Fleck Prize presented by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).Among books on the arms race, Donald MacKenzie's stands out for its welcome demystification of the "black box" of nuclear weapons technology. MacKenzie follows one line of technology - strategic ballistic missile guidance - through a succession of weapons systems to reveal the ordinary workings of a world that is neither awesome nor unstoppable. He uncovers the parameters, the pressures, and the politics that make up the complex social construction of an equally complex technology.MacKenzie argues that it is wrong to assume that missile accuracy (or any other technological artifact) is a natural or inevitable consequence of technological change. By fostering an understanding of how the idea of accuracy was constructed and by uncovering the comprehensible and often mundane processes that have given rise to a frightening nuclear arsenal, he shows that there can be useful and informed intervention in the social processes of weapons construction. He also shows in what sense it is possible, contrary to the common wisdom, to "uninvent" technologies.Examining the technological politics of the transition from bomber to ballistic missile, MacKenzie describes the processes that transformed both air force and navy ballistic missiles from moderately accurate countercity weapons to highly accurate counterforce ones. He concludes that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has ever accepted the idea of deterrence as the public understands it."Inventing Accuracy" is based on 140 interviews with guidance and navigation technologists, navy and air force military officers, and defense officials Robert McNamara, James Schlesinger, McGeorge Bundy, and John Foster. It brings to light the confluence of forces, both physical and social, that gave rise to a selfcontained system of missile navigation, and it discusses the major U.S. groups involved in the early development of inertial guidance and navigation.Donald MacKenzie has published a number of influential articles on statistics, eugenics, and missile technologies. He is Reader in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.
Gendered barriers to women’s advancement in STEM disciplines are subtle, often the result of gender practices, gender stereotypes, and gendered occupational cultures. Professional socialization into scientific cultures encourages and rewards gender practices that help to maintain gendered barriers. This article focuses more specifically on how individual women scientists’ gender practices potentially sustain gender barriers. Findings based on interview data from thirty women in academic STEM fields reveal that women draw on gendered expectations and norms within their disciplines to discursively distance themselves from other women they perceive as having deviated from such norms and expectations. The types of distancing in which these respondents engage reflect and support gendered structures, cultures, and practices that ultimately disadvantage women and obscure gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of women scientists’ distancing practices for efforts to change the gendered cultures of STEM disciplines.
In this paper we examine contemporary engineering in terms of the discourses within which its practices are framed. The term discourse is used in the sense developed within recent social theory, from the work of Michel Foucault, to refer to the ways social institutions name, define, and regulate the practices which occur in the name of those institutions. We describe our concern that the discourse of engineering education has been dominated by the discourse of engineering science, to the virtual exclusion of other discourses which contribute importantly to the practice of engineering. We argue further that engineers have accepted inappropriate constraints placed upon their profession by the discourses of commerce and science, which have been permitted to define and delimit what engineering is and can be. The result has been a serious limitation in engineers' capacity to examine the social meanings and effects of their work and to self-consciously reflect upon their practice and professional identity. We suggest directions in which the discourses of engineering education and practice need to change so that the engineering profession can achieve the goals stated explicitly in its professional codes of ethics. Our analysis seeks to open the way for change in how engineering is structured, practiced, and taught. By exposing the workings of the constitutive discourses, it is argued, the way is opened for unshackling engineering from its present constraints—freeing the discourse and making critical reflection possible.
There seems to be a general penchant for dichotomous styles of thought in engineering, in which hierarchies and gender are often evident - both symbolically and organizationally. This paper explores these themes, drawing in part on a pilot ethnographic study of software developers. The technical/social distinction is strongly gendered inasmuch as it maps on to masculine instrumentalism and feminine expressiveness. Also, the two sides of this dualism are seen as mutually exclusive such that 'the technical', which defines the core of engineering expertise and identity, specifically excludes 'the social'. Still, the related distinction between specialist and heterogeneous roles becomes valued, and gendered, in contradictory ways. The abstract/concrete dualism is even more contradictory. The privileging of analytical abstraction in science and education sits sometimes uncomfortably alongside the obvious practical importance of, and pleasures in, a hands-on relationship with technological artefacts - conflicting versions of masculinity. Multiple tensions coexist around such dualisms, yet they endure. The concluding discussion considers possible factors related to the co-existence of certainty and uncertainty around technology, and to the performance of gender more generally.
Beliefs have the potential to obscure and legitimate, or to challenge, inequalities of gender and race. Through an analysis of the association between education and beliefs about racial and gender inequality, this article explores for whom education is most likely to foster beliefs that challenge social inequality. Data from the 1996 General Social Survey suggest that education tends to have a greater positive impact on rejection of group segregation and rejection of victim-blaming explanations for inequality than it does on recognition of discrimination or endorsement of group-based remedies for inequality. This pattern is consistent with the view that education reproduces rather than challenges inequality, and it is evident for white men, white women, and African American men. African American women present an exception, which is considered in terms of the unique structural location and historical legacy surrounding African American women's relationship to education.
It is increasingly fashionable to claim that social classes are purely academic constructs that no longer provide much information about lifestyles, attitudes, and other individual-level outcomes. The few available tests of this claim rely on stylized measures of social class that either group detailed occupations into a small number of "big classes" or reduce them to scores on vertical scales of prestige, socioeconomic status, or cultural or economic capital. We show that these conventional approaches understate the total effects of the site of production by failing to capitalize on the institutionalized social categories that develop at the detailed occupational level.
The ongoing retreat from class analysis can be attributed to the declining appeal of aggregate representations of class coupled with the virtual absence of any disaggregate alternatives. When local solidarities are ignored, the weakness of conventional aggregate models is easily misinterpreted as evidence of generic destructuration, and standard postmodernist formulations are accordingly difficult to resist. Although local structuration is often regarded as sociologically trivial, the available evidence suggests that such class analytic processes as closure, exploitation, and collective action emerge more clearly at the level of disaggregate occupations than conventional aggregate classes.
When nations redefine their priorities and re-plot their directions of travel, engineers get worried about the contents of their knowledge. The cultural and historical specificity of their responses illustrates the extent to which the questions of what counts as engineering knowledge and what counts as an engineer are linked tightly together, and also suggests that both may be tied to local images of the nation. After summarizing recent historical work comparing national patterns in engineering knowledge and engineers' work, this essay outlines how a focus on professional identity may provide a way of accounting for national and transnational influences on engineers while avoiding the specter of determinism. Offering brief case studies drawn from France, the UK, Germany and the USA, the authors describe engineers as 'responding' to codes of meaning that live at different scales, including contrasting metrics of progress and images of private industry. The paper is concluded with a brief assessment of some further implications of the analysis of professional identity for work in engineering studies.
It is frequently claimed that women who enter engineering have to ‘fit in’ to ‘a masculine culture’, but there is little systematic evidence on this. This article presents observations about gender dynamics in engineers' everyday interactions, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three companies. The overall picture is mixed. Engineers are generally respectful in their interactions, but there are subtle dynamics which make it easier for (more) men than women engineers to build effective work relationships and to ‘belong’. Topics of conversation are generally quite wide-ranging and inclusive amongst close colleagues, but lean heavily on gender-stereotypical subjects with outsiders. Most engineers take some care not to cause offence to others, but in some workplaces the humour and chat are very sexualised and sexist. Engineering can accommodate a range of masculinities, but some are more influential than others. Throughout, we see that doing the job often involves ‘doing gender’. Workplace cultures not only oil the wheels of the job and the organisation; they can also have a huge bearing on who stays and gets on in engineering. Part II of this article (in a later issue) takes this analysis further, by highlighting an ‘in/visibility paradox’ facing women engineers.
While much is known about the experiences of women and racial/ethnic minorities in male-dominated fields such as engineering, the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identifying individuals remain unstudied. Our article breaks this silence with an exploratory study of the ways LGB students at a major research university in the western United States both experience and navigate the climate of their engineering college. Based on interviews and focus groups, we find that both pervasive prejudicial cultural norms and perceptions of competence particular to the engineering profession can limit these students' opportunities to succeed, relative to their heterosexual peers. Nevertheless, through coping strategies which can require immense amounts of additional emotional and academic effort, LGB students navigate a chilly and heteronormative engineering climate by ‘passing’ as heterosexual, ‘covering’ or downplaying cultural characteristics associated with LGB identities, and garnering expertise to make themselves indispensable to others. These additional work burdens are often accompanied by academic and social isolation, making engineering school a hostile place for many LGB identifying students. This research provides an opportunity to theorize categories of inequality within engineering that do not have visible markers, and to consider them within a broader framework of intersectionality.