Abstract
The field of engaged engineering encompasses a wide diversity of intervention approaches and ideals that span from Enactus’ social entrepreneurship to grassroots engineering’s liberating co-construction of other possible sociotechnical orders. In common, these initiatives intend to be empowering, even though this concept is hardly thematized in their publications and has never undergone a more systematic analysis. In this paper, departing from an illustration of that lack of reflection (or rigor) concerning empowerment, a general definition for it is first provided to, subsequently, be specified in seven different dimensions related to the assisted community’s empowerment that can be addressed via sociotechnical interventions, from social inclusion to political emancipation. Thus, it analyzes the relationship between empowerment and emancipation, including the risk of disempowering. Next, an analysis of the interventions practiced by Brazilian Enactus’ leading teams and some grassroots engineering initiatives illustrates the provided conceptual framework. The paper concludes by highlighting key issues of empowerment and its relation to emancipation, and addressing some further research themes related to this investigation: refining the presented dimensions of community empowerment, and analyzing empowerment to the broader context of a sociotechnical intervention (e.g., academia, the the state, civil society and economic actors).
Highlights
We call engaged sociotechnical intervention (EI) every project aimed to transform society through the practice of a technical intervention or assistance, distancing itself from mainstream ideologies that naturalize vulnerabilities and structures of injustices
A broader framework to help evaluate and enhance the reach of sociotechnical community interventions is lacking. This paper proposes such a framework providing a list of critical dimensions of empowering community interventions and reflecting on how empowerment relates to emancipation
Many articles depict issues closely related to the concept of empowerment, showing that there is at least an intuitive stance of what it might mean in practice
Summary
We call engaged sociotechnical intervention (EI) every project aimed to transform society through the practice of a technical intervention or assistance, distancing itself from mainstream ideologies that naturalize vulnerabilities and structures of injustices How this transformation looks like is open, and there is a wide variation in the approaches hereto (Smith, Tran, Compston, 2019; Kleba, 2017). The authors refrain from judging whether those approaches deserve to be called engaged or transformative, encouraging the richness of having multiple perspectives on this field This is a critical remark to prevent the misunderstanding that this paper stands for a one-size-fits-all or one best form of EI or that every EI practice, when honestly reflecting on itself, must agree on how community empowerment should be achieved.
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