Talk About Good Engineering

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Levels of Culture

Abstract

In my contribution to a roundtable on "levels of culture" in everyday life, I present material from my ethnography of a research and development (R&D) lab for an international audio engineering firm. Through transcripts of conversation about emerging engineering work within the lab and attendant actions, I discuss the use of local talk in the presentation and argumentation of what constitutes good engineering within contemporary audio. How do local interactions with an explicit, though uncertain goal reveal the meanings of these situated actors? Beyond the more mechanical descriptions of knowledge work found in studies of science and technology, what are the value-oriented statements or gestures found in the rational actions of engineering? More than simple affirmations of what to do, I argue these observations serve a hermeneutic understanding of ethics in practical negotiations of meaning, and in this way demonstrate the different levels of meaning - from mechanical to moral - embedded in conversation about what constitutes "good" engineering work.

Author

• Joseph Klett, Yale University