How the West was Won: A Deconstruction of Politicised Colonial Engineering

Abstract

History has taught us that the Global North's attempts to ‘civilise' the rest of the world's population, both now and in colonial times, have been fraught with difficulty. This paper argues that this difficulty is mainly owing to the political standpoint and positioning of our perceived engineering and technical superiority. A failure to recognise this viewpoint and to change the way in which we work together—in a global sense—to solve issues such as climate change, threatens our ability to survive as a species. Political standpoints on such issues still assume a superiority of governments in the Global North. This paper retraces colonial engineering projects, mainly directed from the UK, that failed to consider the development of other populations in the world, and their needs. It is also posited that our exploitation in the Global North, which assumes historical superiority as a basic premise, will fail in tackling major issues. Change is needed through a decolonisation of engineering projects, and western engineering curricula that are used to train future professionals. Evidence of the impact of decolonisation on the engineering discipline itself is scarce, but nevertheless, a response is needed to ensure that a more inclusive curriculum and narrative is developed.

On the need for an anticolonial perspective in engineering education and practice

“…Bringing so-called progress to the Global South has involved ushering a new era of industrialisation and urbanisation, and with it social, cultural and structural adjustments. Engineering, through technology and infrastructure, has been a crucial tool in the imposition of such models, in a “post-colonial reaffirmation of (the West’s) perceived superiority” 7 . We recognise that the terms Global North and Global South are themselves problematic, suggesting a false homogeneity.…”

Towards a liberatory pedagogy of disaster risk reduction among built environment educators

“…Science and engineering (underpinning DRR education in the BE) are often perceived as objective; however, as noted earlier, it is important to conceptualise how and why they influence and are influenced by a much broader socio-political and economic contexts. BE disciplines can be agnostic to such contexts, seeing their ideas as hardly connected; instead, these disciplines are perceived to be more about how things are made and developed (Eichhorn, 2020). Engineering is defined as the application of scientific knowledge to solve problems in the real world (Case, 2010) -but whose problems is this application of science solving?…”

“…DRR curricular enhances the image and reality of the BE as a discipline that focuses on the Global North and high-tech solutions, rather than on creating appropriate solutions for problems experienced by the majority of people . Much of the DRR curricular is framed around technological developments that are to be imposed on the Global South, often without recourse to consider how this might impact local traditions, people's right to their environment and culture, as well as neglecting countries' abilities to develop and to have developed their own technology (Eichhorn, 2020). Drawing on De Sousa Santos (2014) and Gaillard (2021), we might ask whether, despite the hegemony of Global North DRR curricula, the North/West really has anything to teach the world about disasters?…”

Shifts to Global Development: Is this a reframing of power, agency, and progress?

“…Clive Barnett likewise raised concerns of the politics of GCRF funding particularly in regard to the “refocusing of aid policy around concerns with security, crisis, and emergency” (2016, n.p.). While for Eichorn, the problem was with the GCRF position statement, which framed the UK as the place that “has the answers to an impoverished developing world” (2020, p. 207), in direct contradiction to arguments for a shift to global development. In early 2021, the huge cuts to this funding stream (that halted projects midway, undermined long‐established partnerships with colleagues in the Global South, and left Southern partners without projects or employment) revealed the continuing and unequal power dynamics that underpin research‐funding‐as‐aid.…”