14. The Local Engineer: Normative Holism in Engineering Formation

Engineering leaders have long tended to equate the technical contents of engineering practices with material advancements across the planet for human benefit. I call this normative holism. Taking normative holism for granted grounds images of engineering practice as knowledge in service. It also frees engineers from assigning themselves responsibility for the actual consequences of their work. Drawing on short vignettes from the territories of France, Germany, and Japan during the late nineteenth century, the approach taken here – the ethnography of dominant images – shows normative holism to be a localized phenomenon. While claiming to produce engineers to work for humanity as a whole, for example, through development, the makers of engineers have actually been following localized pathways that respond to distinct dominant images of material progress. Normative holism is a foundational normativity in engineering formation for two reasons. One is that engineering formation emerges whenever countries first form. The other is that engineers’ ready embrace of normative holism makes it a key site for effectively translating critical analysis into critical participation. If students and working engineers can begin to see and analyze dominant normativities as such, might they be more able and willing to explore additional and alternative normativities?