[Stoves] THE BIG DESIGN QUESTIONS: IS TECH APPRO-PRIATE IF IT VIOLATES CULTURAL NORMS?
Cecil Cook
cec1863 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 28 04:52:42 CDT 2014
Dear Paul. et al,
if you go to the Engineering for Change website at
https://www.engineeringforchange.org and then click on news the E4C
reference to the paper - Appropriate Technologies in a Globalizing World:
FAQs should show up.
Otherwise, you can read the paper which is exploring the tension between
technological appropriateness and well established cultural norms by
clicking on: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=06763244
Here are a few of my reflections on AT in a Globalizing World and the E4C
program which you may find interesting:
It appears to be associated with the cross disciplinary HESE program
(Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship) at Penn State Un
where 3 staff and/or students have recently published a very insightful
interrogation of the increasingly out of date tenets of Gospel of AT
according to the previous generation of abstract technology visionaries,
designers and development activists such as Fritz Schumacher, Ivan Illich,
Bucky Fuller, Murray Bookchin, and many others.
Crispin did you read this article yourself or only recommend that I should
read it on your behalf. I think it should be shared with the WB CSI team
ASAP.
My quick take on the thrust of this insightful and strangely constructive
critique of the venerable Tenets of AT was that the last 30 years has
necessarily exposed the technical and political short comings of the
counter-culture critique of the urban industrial Western society – fixated
in the era of 60’s and 70’s – when a motley band of young counter-culture
scientists, engineers, and community organizers in Europe and the USA set
out to radically transform or even reverse the dominant Euro-American urban
industrial ('bigger is better') paradigm of progress.
The AT’ers of that time were attempting to envision and materialize the
‘return’ to smaller, simpler, and more human scale technologies of
production, DIY houses, self help energy and water systems, community
centred economies, and affordable/sustainable infrastructure that
equitably empowered the low income majorities and villagers of the Planet.
The counter-culture ‘techies’ of that generation sought to radically change
the struggle for progress at home and in developing countries by moving
away from the centralized technologies of mass production and urban centred
mass distribution that today dominate Western industrial societies.
The proponents of a more ‘appropriate’ technology within the reach of low
income families and communities – who constitute the global majority “at
the bottom of the pyramid” - emphasized the need for a *drastic paradigm
shift* from cities, super highways, shopping malls, and the technologies
and energy systems required to mass produce and distribute the products to
which a westernized global middle class was increasingly accustomed. The
AT’ers proposed to replace the urban industrial paradigm of efficient (cost
minimizing) mass production and consumption “for all” with what Schumacher
once called the values and visions of the ‘home comers’. These
back-to-the-land ‘home comers’ were the off spring of Helen and Scott
Nearing and Mahatma Gandhi who imagined and also demonstrated the
possibility of creating a human scale society in which millions of villages
and billions of rural and township dwellers would be technologically
empowered by AT devices which - when combined with accountable and
transparent local self-government – were believed to have the potential to
generate full employment and prosperity for all. Gandhi persuasively argued
long ago that what the emerging world system most needed was *production by
the masses in the villages*, not mass production by a small urban work
force (proletariat) with the unemployed becoming functionless ‘drones’ who
become the playthings of urban elites, planners, politicians, engineers,
scientists, and corporations.
The gospel of AT according to Schumacher and Gandhi attempted to correct
the failures of big science and technology operating at national and global
scales of consciousness, operation, standards, costs, and social and
environmental impacts. It radically reconfigured all technology for
development solutions and initiatives to prioritize the interests of the
mass of humanity at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). Instead of the urban
elites and their institutional agents, the AT paradigm called for
privileging the following objectives, variables, and interests in the
search for optimum development solutions:
- the world views and moral imperatives (values) of villagers, tribes,
farmers, and small town dwellers ,
- the craft skills and culturally encoded ethno-science needed to
conserve and manage the nearby environment, and
- the creation of full employment equitable distribution of wealth and
opportunity within local and regional economies
In retrospect, the tenets of AT emerged from the effort *to democratize the
benefits of science and technology* so that all interest groups and
constituencies within that society will have equal opportunity to apply the
world S&T knowledge base to help them create a customized technological
vehicle or substructure that – within the S&T limits – faithfully expresses
and – within the funding and capacity limits of the implementing team –
actually advances the social interest and cultural patterns of particular
civilizations and ethnic communities. *What happens when the indigenous
spiritual, cosmological and ethno-science ‘capital’ – values and
meta-models of reality – have access to the same S&T power and resources at
the disposal of DuPont, Apple, or Microsoft?*
Although the conflation of development with the Americanization and
Europeanization - really the Westernization of the majority at the BoP -
is still after nearly 50 years confusing theorists, policy makers and
implementers, the brave tenets of AT attempted to lay out a number of
dimensions of technology assessment that over the last 30 years has helped
to differentiate between follow-the-self appointed-leader style
"westernization" and more appropriate development which is deeply rooted in
the indigenous culture, ethno-science and environmental conditions.
If anybody is interested I will send them a historically interesting
Appropriate Technology Checklist compiled long ago (1976) by Jerry Yudelson
and Lyn Nelson when they worked for the first and possibly the last State
(California) Office of Appropriate Technology under Gov Jerry Brown. I have
taken the liberty to revise this eclectic technology assessment methodology
over the past 35 years while here in South Africa ... but nobody in high or
low places seems to be interested in its potential here or any where else I
have recently worked as a stove anthropologist.
Yudelson and Nelson captured 20 big Technology Assessment dimensions and
reduced them to easy 'indicators of appropriateness'. These 20 critical
dimensions and about 100 indicators were created to assist
- distracted politicians,
- busy government officials,
- specialized scientists,
- tunnel visioned technology designers,
- profit sensitive manufactures,
- sales oriented distributors and retailers,
- community minded NGO gooders,
- big funding agents trying to serve the abstract common good, and
- the ultimate end users of any technos/device who gradually figure out
how to optimize their multiple cultural, communitarian, economic,
environmental,etc. interests and preferences
to perform quick, comprehensive *'back of the envelope' assessments *of the
relative appropriateness of competing technologies on offer to perform
necessary tasks and infrastructure services. I see no reason why such an AT
Checklist cannot be adapted and adopted for use to differentiate between
and rate candidate stoves in terms of their relative appropriateness for
particular end users in particular cultures, communities and environments.
In service,
Cecil Cook
TechnoShare
South Africa
On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Crispin,
>
> I have tried several times on different days and I am not able to access
> this site. Can you assist? I assume others have had the same difficulty.
>
> Paul
>
> Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email: psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
> Website: www.drtlud.com
>
> On 4/24/2014 11:55 AM, Crispin Pembert-Pigott wrote:
>
> THE BIG DESIGN QUESTIONS: IS TECH APPRO-PRIATE IF IT VIOLATES CULTURAL
> NORMS?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2014/04/13/the_big_design_questions_is_a_technology_appropriate_if_it_violates_cultural_norms.html
>
> “Culture is dynamic and should not be museumified.”
>
>
>
> This is of course relevant to stove design and performance.
>
>
>
> Always ask Big Questions!
>
>
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
>
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