Engineering Countries and the problem of Globalization
Speaker:
Gary Downey
12 Sep 2012
7:00 PM
Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall
Gary Downey was trained as a mechanical engineer and a cultural anthropologist and considers himself an ethnographic listener interested in engineering studies. He is the author of The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits among Computer Engineers, the multimedia textbook Engineering Cultures, and co-editor of Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Downey is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech and winner of the 2011 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. Part of the Technology, Globalization and Culture Series.
Why is every nuclear plant in the U.S. custom-designed? How could engineering be the highest-status occupation in France and yet be ranked barely above manual labor in the United Kingdom? How did German engineers come to value precision? What makes Japanese engineers fear inferiority? Global engineering offers the seductive image of engineers figuring out how to optimize work through collaboration and mobility. Its biggest challenge, however, is more fundamental and difficult: to better understand what we value as engineers and why. The making of engineers has been first and foremost about the building of countries. Those who teach engineering are also teaching values.