Joy, Love, and Well-being: Envisioning a Future Free of Oppression

Abstract

Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon reflection, each of the authors’ experiences as engineers working toward clean water indicate the presence of two existential problems for practitioners of engineering - and potentially design, architecture, and other project areas: hyper-specialization and the problem solver narrative. The authors reflect on well-intentioned efforts that seek to remove oppression from practices and foster mutual understanding, but may inadvertently be contributing to oppression, referred to as engineering parasites. Lastly, the authors envision systems free of oppression in both practice and training centered on joy, well-being, and love.

Cultivating solidarity for action on social justice in engineering

“…"Underpinning the engineering curriculum with social justice can support students to better navigate systems of oppression. With a social justice curriculum, students' imagination can be expanded to embody principles of social justice like joy, love, and well-being into their engineering practice (Townsend & Stenger, 2021). I want engineers (and students learning about engineering) to engineer for joy, love, and wellbeing.…”

“…By understanding our positionality, we were able to use reflexivity to identify, examine, and holistically consider the impact that our individual and embodied systemic biases had on our decision-making. This led us to act in ways to rectify these biases, when possible, and seek to ensure they were not perpetuated in our work by challenging narratives of neutrality (Banks & Lackney, 2017;Townsend & Stenger, 2021). One example of this can be seen below, where Bethany reflects on how the apolitical or objective approach to engineering that is so often taught within the curriculum obscures the elements of engineering practice that are socially constructed from those that are physically constrained.…”