期刊名称：International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace
印刷版ISSN：1927-9434
出版年度：2012
卷号：1
期号：2
页码：137-151
语种：English
出版社：Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace - ESJP
摘要：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.
关键词：boundary work; Grand Challenges; interdisciplinary collaboration; National Academy of Engineering; sociotechnical practice; technical-social division; textual analysis
