Grand Challenges for Heterogeneous Engineering

• In Event: Heterogeneity, Humility and Hegemony: Reflections on Engineering Life

Abstract

In describing 'heterogeneous engineering,' Law (2011) calls for practices that allow "thinking about the social, the technological, and the natural, all together." While recognizing that technical decisions are simultaneously social ones is arguably necessary for truly effective engineering, in practice the tendency to separate out the social and the technical is pervasive. Key proponents of synthetic biology present their aspirations in terms that capture the deeply interwoven social, technical and natural worlds, self-consciously situating their technical aspirations alongside desires to catalyze broad social change. In this provocation, I draw on examples where the synthetic biology community has attempted to carve out spaces that promote heterogeneity, and discuss the (often systemic) challenges associated with keeping these spaces open. These examples raise questions for STS practitioners about appropriate scales of focus for study and intervention (Joly 2015) if concerned with conditions for enabling heterogeneous engineering. In addition to engaging ethnographically with the novel aspects of a field and the micropolitics of its development, I suggest we should attend to broader structural elements – including funding, pedagogy, and the political economy of innovation – if seeking to understand and/or shape the possibilities for heterogeneous engineering.

Author

• Emma Frow, Arizona State University