Open AccessThe Unbalanced Equation: Technical Opportunities and Social Barriers in the NAE Grand Challenges and Beyond
Author(s) -
Dean Nieusma,
Xiaofeng Tang
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international journal of engineering, social justice, and peace
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1927-9434
DOI - 10.24908/ijesjp.v1i2.4314
Subject(s) - social engineering (security) , grand challenges , expansive , civilization , dominion , engineering ethics , relevance (law) , domain (mathematical analysis) , social justice , sociology , environmental ethics , political science , engineering , law and economics , computer science , law , mathematics , computer security , philosophy , mathematical analysis , compressive strength , materials science , composite material
The US National Academy of Engineering’s 2008 report, Grand Challenges for Engineering, puts forward a provocative vision of future civilization and engineering’s role in it. Notably, the report signals a trend in engineering toward more explicit and direct engagement with enduring, complex social problems, offering intriguing opportunities for exploring the relationship between engineering and questions of social justice. This paper makes one such exploration by analyzing the report’s explicit framings of engineering-for-social-problem-solving and the implicit assumptions underlying such framings. It shows how the report frames the non-technical factors as external to—and often barriers for—engineering. In contrast, technical challenges, even immense ones, are framed as wholly within engineering’s dominion and as opportunities for both engineering and human civilization as a whole. The paper argues that Grand Challenges signals contemporary tensions in the profession as it seeks an expansive domain of influence and relevance while at the same time narrowly circumscribing what engineers should be accountable for knowing and doing.