- Research
- Activism
- Dissemination
- Zine
Each of the plans are displayed below. Click on them for the larger picture.
Fire it Up has produced a great zine on anti-oppression. To download it, click here.
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Dean and Donna are featured on the RPI website.
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]]>ESJP as a movement:
Then the conference participants were encouraged to go talk to their critical friend about goals for this conference. Katy cited the lack of industry partners as a point of concern, while others felt that their goal of learning more was very much reached as there was lots of information to process. My critical partner had the goal of rejuvenating during the conference by meeting old and new friends, which she did meet during the conference. Dean was interested in contributing to the sustainability of the ESJP community during the conference. Lizzie felt that she had several critical conference friends and they contributed greatly to her thinking.
Caroline pointed to Donna to address the critique of industry partners being absent. Donna said that “During this conference, many forms of oppression were put on the table like racism. It doesn’t mean white people aren’t welcome, it just means they have to acknowledge racism and deal with it. In the same way, capitalism is a form of oppression. Folks from industry are welcome as long as they are willing to critique capitalism”.
Caroline says that ESJP must allow those who are members of this “community” or “movement” to critical engage with dominant discourses in engineering and challenge the “business as usual” model in the engineering world. Dean added that it’s not just being critical of the corporate world but also critical of dominant institutions and structures.
Caroline addressed the issue of tension between newcomers to the social justice space and those who have more experience with it. Then she talked about ongoing activities in the ESJP network:
- PAR Research – Dean’s PAR project
- Book series
- Workshops
- Zine
- Online modules
- Next Conference
Peter: The business case solution doesn’t provide a long-term solution. But we should ask ourselves if it works towards justice right now? It’s not a great long-term or complete solution, but it works towards that goal.
Jen: There’s a tension in the case of Rico between the community and the greater community of those who will be supplied with the electricity.
Donna: Energy deregulation in the US has caused many problems. You have deregulation without competition so energy is very expensive and controlled by monopolies.
Jen: Rico is not a wealth community so they could not run a energy coop like some other communities in Colorado.
Lily: I’m from Engineers against Poverty and we work to make the “business case” in the developing world because we think it’s important.
Arias: I’d love to see more of these histories but I think engineers sometimes concentrate too much on the technical fix and not enough in defining the problem.
Darko: I think we need to make the business case because they won’t change unless you force them to by showing that they can’t afford to.
Jon: I feel that one theme running in all these comments is the “triple bottom line” (social, environmental, economic). In some case studies, one or more of these factors are considered more than others.
Caroline: I think we’ve spent too much time thinking of the economic factor. We, as a community, need to be more worried about the social and environmental. Then maybe….maybe….we can talk about economics. We need to actually critique this economic factor much more. I want to smash the triple bottom line because it’s not easy equal categories. It’s more a muddle.
Jen presented her work with a community group in Rico, United States developing geothermal energy sources. It’s some recent work that shes gotten involved with just this past summer.
She started her presentation by talking about our current energy moment in which coal accounts for 49% of our energy production and renewables account for 3% while energy consumption seems to be going up. What is our future look like then with respect to energy?
To answer this question, Jen looked at historical models of energy extraction. For example, oil was extracted in a model that valued speed, optimization of extraction, profit, privately-owned. In her new project, Jen sees the possibility of a new model of energy extraction that values community.
Citizens of Rico are concerned with where the profits will go, where the energy will go, who will own the system.
Engineers and Industrial Smoke
Juan asked the question if social justice and engineering are incompatible fields? If so, are there moments in history where engineers were concerned with justice? Juan points to the Progressive Era (1880-1920) in the United States an an example of the moment. He drew from various histories such as David Stradling’s “Smokestacks and Progressives”.
Through David’s history and other histories, Juan found out how smoke was associated with industrialization and progress during the rapidly industrializing Progressive Era. Of course, this smoke led to environmental pollution and health problems. Engineers were not concerned with it until women’s groups began to define the problem for engineers and physicians. By the mid 1910s, engineers began to agree that the smoke problem has technical fixes and smoke control can make business more efficient. During this moment, engineers began to equate efficiency (smoke reduction) with profits. In this way, engineers were legitimized (at least in the eyes of industrialists) as researchers.
Juan concluded his presentation by asking if:
- When engineers perform technical work in terms of efficiency, are they being agents of social justice?
- Could we look at other existing stories of engineers in similar ways? What would be their political function in the classroom?
- In the process of defining a problem and its solution from lay to expert terms, non-engineers are marginalized. What does that mean for engineers interested in justice?