The Engineering Person
Arendt and an Anthropology of Engineering Ethics
Bachelor Thesis in Cultural Anthropology, 15 hp Cultural Anthropology C
Uppsala University
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology Author: Philip Bärring
Mentor: Nadia Lovell
Autumn Semester 2020
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Abstract
In this thesis Hannah Arendt’s theories of science and technology are applied in an ethnographic study of engineering ethics. Seeking to gain further understand- ing of Arendt’s thoughts, her concepts of The Archimedean Point and Earth Al- ienation is applied in interviews with engineering students in Sweden’s Uppsala University. The purpose directing this study is thus twofold, it is an attempt to anthropologize Arendt’s thoughts of science and technology, and to further un- derstand engineering’s ethical engagement.
The study identifies a dynamic where engineering students create dichotomous mentalities. One mentality is engineering’s demand of a desubjectified instru- mental rationality in inherent contradiction to an ethical consciousness, this mentality can be identified as Arendt’s Archimedean Point. In conflict to this mentality lies the intersubjectivity of a socio-politically engaged student con- cerned with engineering’s ability to create evil. This study makes the claim that Uppsala University’s student traditions and culture encourage the second men- tality and forms an important resource for ethical engagement among students.
Subjects: Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Anthropology, Ethnography,
Philosophy of Engineering, Engineering Ethics, Intersubjectivity, Process Phi-
losophy, Earth Alienation, Archimedean Point
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“ The difference is therefore less absolute than it might appear. It re- mains a real one, however, in that the engineer is always trying to make his way out of and go beyond the constraints imposed by a par- ticular state of civilization while the ‘bricoleur’ by inclination or neces- sity always remains within them.”
-Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962:19)
“[I]t's in our nature to want to rise above our limits. Think about it.
We were cold so we harnessed fire. We were weak, so we invented tools. Every time we've met an obstacle, we've used creativity and in- genuity to overcome it. The cycle is inevitable […] To turn away from it now - to stop pursing a future in which technology and biol- ogy combine, leading to the promise of a singularity - would mean to deny the very essence of who we are.
No doubt the road to get there will be bumpy, hurting some people along the way. But won't achieving the dream be worth it? We can be- come the gods we've always been striving to be.”
-Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Mont-
réal, 2011)
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Introduction ... 4
Arendt and anthropology; Purpose and Research Question ... 5
Engineers? ... 5
Why students in Uppsala? ... 6
Delimitation ... 6
Theory & History ... 7
Archimedean Point & Earth Alienation ... 7
Background: World Alienation & Scientific Process ... 7
The Archimedean Point: Process, Distance Perspective, Aloofness ... 8
Earth Alienation: Culture-Nature, Human Perspective, Common Sense ... 9
Swedish Engineering ... 10
Material and Research methods ... 11
Interlocutors ... 12
Disposition ... 13
The Engineering Person ... 14
Right Start: Social Civil Engineering ... 19
Seen and Not Seen: The Importance of Student Forums ... 25
Concluding remarks ... 28
References ... 30
Tables and images ... 31
4 Introduction
“In 1957, an earth-born object made by man was launched into the universe, where for some weeks it circled the earth according to the same laws of gravitation that swing and keep in motion the celestial bodies- the sun, the moon, and the stars.” So begins Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958:1). For her the launch of Sputnik was an event “second in importance to no other”, for Man had finally taken the step into a new era. Instead of being creatures bound to earth, where humanity is born, conduct their activities, and die, humanity was becoming a beyond-earth being.
This concerned her. She believed that earth “is the very quintessence of the human condition”
for it could be unique in “providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice” (ibid:2; see Berkowitz, 2010). What she saw in Sputnik was science distancing humanity from its historical and natural condition. She thought that the further this distance grows, the easier it is to gain a scientific, surveying, perspective, but distance also clouds the intersubjective reality, and the very process of thinking:
If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the help- less slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is. (ibid.:3)
Thus, the goal of her writings on science and technology became deceitfully simple, “it is noth- ing more than to think what we are doing” (ibid.:5).
In more recent times a corporation run by the mildly eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has suc- cessfully launched and returned space rockets, making a leap forward for the private exploration of space (Morrison, 2020; Kokorich, 2020). Beyond the common theme of making humanity a multi-planetary being, there are many other technological marvels whose challenge towards all previously known human existence would equally chock the late philosopher. Design babies;
global race towards AI; genetic mapping; plastic pollution and the general concept of the An- thropocene. It seems that engineering is expanding in all areas of research without much regards, or thinking, of what’s being done.
Arendt’s philosophy of science and technology is generally overlooked despite its importance for her political theories (Yaqoob, 2014; Tijmes, 1995:238). Only recently has this part of her
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analysis – mainly the concepts of the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation1 – become the subject of increasing interest, see Belcher & Schmidt, 2020; Berkowitz, 2018 & 2010; Yaqoob, 2014; O’Connor, 2013. This study will continue the exploration by applying Arendt’s thoughts within an ethnographic study, to see whether they correspond in lived society.
Arendt and anthropology; Purpose and Research Question
From the outset it may seem strange to base an anthropological investigation on Hannah Ar- endt’s concepts. She’s known as a political thinker, however, as this study ultimately argues, Arendt’s theories can be converted into anthropological relevance. Her philosophical investi- gations in “The Human Condition” (1958) critiques the concept of politics and the public space, and argues that it is connected to a phenomenological intersubjectivity (Moran, 2000:306-316).
The originality of her thoughts makes for a rich source of theory and perspective, and not draw- ing upon her thoughts on science and technology seems like a missed opportunity within the anthropological and ethnographic disciplines. Thus, the thesis is structured on two poles. On one side is the anthropologicalization of Arendt, making her theory a central focus within this essay, on the other is the study of Uppsala’s engineering students.
Accordingly, the thesis must have two corresponding purposes. The first is the trial in applying the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation in an anthropological and ethnographic context, the second is the ethnographic study itself.
This ethnography will apply Arendt’s theoretical framework to understand if Uppsala Univer- sity’s engineering students are “distanced” from the intersubjective and social world. Or, if the students are not distanced, why is it so? Is Arendt’s theory flawed? It will contextualize this distancing-or-not in the academic university education and try to identify counterforces to it.
Engineers?
The question that follows is why engineers should be studied and not natural scientists, Arendt considered them as equally vulnerable to the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation. My rea- son lies in Arendt’s arguments on human activity. To her, appearance in the common world and collective action is a superior activity to isolated contemplation (1958). While scientists may sit in the lab and experiment, it is the engineer that goes into the human world and design the human artifice and solve problems, as the participants in the study summarised it. It is this public engagement that makes the engineer a more potent subject to study. A scientist without
1 The concepts of the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation pertain to the self-desubjectification of the scien- tific mindset and will be introduced in more detail below, see Theory & History.
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regards to what he’s doing may discover something that change our cosmology, the engineer may construct something that may change the world; the scientist discovered the atom and how to split it, the engineer constructed the bomb. Indeed, favouring the potency of the event over the idea was held by Arendt herself (1958:248-251).
But what is an engineer? Essentialization of any group is poor anthropological practice, espe- cially such a diverse community as engineers (Ek-Nilsson, 1999:99). The definition adopted by this study is informed by the interlocutor’s own definition: an engineer is a person in the pro- fession of problem-solving by the application of scientific and mathematical principles.
Why students in Uppsala?
Anthropology is no stranger to institutional studies. Indeed, Foucault’s shadow still stretches over the discipline. Ek-Nilsson’s study of Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) takes inspiration from the late French theoretician in analysing hazing as an initiation rite. The new students were to be disciplined into embodying the culture, perspectives and attitude of Swedish engineering (ibid.:66-99). Following archival material, she positions KTH as the cen- tral institution to the Swedish engineering community.
This study has chosen Uppsala University to expand on her argument. Since Uppsala University provides programs in many academic fields it has a plurality among the students where, for example, a student of anthropology may encounter engineering students. KTH, by contrast, is dedicated to the engineering sciences, where such cross-disciplinary encounters are unexpected.
So, while Ek-Nilsson focus on the Engineers’ distinction from social and academic plurality, this study contextualises engineering students in sociocultural diversity.
Delimitation
Here it become crucial to demarcate social in the previous section. The scope of this essay necessitates the exclusion of many sites and institutions from a closer study. This is particularly so due to the pandemic at the present time of writing.
Uppsala University is known for its student culture with, associations, clubs, student nations bars, cafés and regular city life. Including all of these would be an attempt in studying the holism of a culture. Instead social will be understood as what is commonly understood as social life. It’s a hopelessly vague term, but it will be used as a contrast to the engineering education.
The education is the formal scientific tutoring received and practiced by the students. The social life is the catch-all term for the innumerable activities of the private life; religious and political activities, media consumption, social exchange.
7 Theory & History
Archimedean Point & Earth Alienation
Background: World Alienation & Scientific Process
Starting her book with the aforementioned concern of technology, it is only in the final chapter, The Vita Activa And The Modern Age, that Arendt returns to the topic. Having traced the de- cline of the active political man into modernity’s anonymous consumer she outlines man’s “loss of the world”. This loss, what Arendt refers to as World Alienation2, is man’s destruction of the spaces of appearance. The loss of these spaces has no lesser consequence than humanity’s loss of the intersubjective world (Arendt, 1958;254; Moran, 2000).
Inspired by Weber’s critique of rationalisation she thought that humanity was becoming a ho- mogenous mass so that “Socialized mankind is that state of society where only one interest rules, and the subject of this interest is either classes or man-kind, but neither man nor men”
(for quote ibid.:321; ibid.:251). Humanity’s reduction into socialized masses, and loss of inter- subjectivity, makes her claim that “the modern age- which began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activity- may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity his- tory has ever known” (ibid.:322).
Arendt also noticed how pre-modernity’s cosmological havoc (unintentionally caused by Co- lumbus, Galileo, and Martin Luther) necessitated a new basis for understanding the world (1958:248-257). This became science, and the assumption that a reliable epistemology can only be found in scientific activity, instead of thought (ibid.; Tijmes, 1995). Modernity’s necessity to construct cosmology on science eventually began, during Arendt’s lifetime, to give humanity itself a scientific rationality, reducing it into a scientific being. All human activities and pecu- liarities had to, by cosmological necessity, be a biological or psychological process. “Modern motorization”, Arendt’s example in 1958, “would appear like a process of biological mutation in which human bodies gradually begin to be covered by shells of steel [sic]” (ibid.:322f).
This makes the scientific project unending; it must always doubt itself. All scientific insights into existence must be validated by science, causing modernity’s epistemological foundation to require an eternal process of self-investigation; modernity’s epistemology is encasing humanity in the straitjacket of rationalism; Weber’s “shell as hard as steel” (Tijmes, 1995; Arendt, 2007).
2Arendt contrast World Alienation to Marx’s Self-Alienation. Modernity has caused humanity to lose its shared world, not the inner world that has become to refuge to an incomprehensible reality: “World Alienation, and not self-alienation as Marx thought, has been the hallmark of the modern age” (1958:254; see also 1963:129-135)
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The Archimedean Point: Process, Distance Perspective, Aloofness
In her article on the imperialist character Arendt notes the central role of distance and the iden- tification with a process of eternal expansion:
No matter what individual qualities or defects a man may have, once he has entered the maelstrom of an unending process of expansion, he will, as it were, cease to be what he was and obey the laws of the process, identify himself with anonymous forces that he is supposed to serve in order to keep the whole process in motion; he will think of himself as mere function, and eventually consider such functionality, such an incarnation of the dynamic trend, his highest possible achievement. Then, as [Cecil] Rhodes was insane enough to say, he could indeed “do nothing wrong, what he did became right. It was his duty to do what he wanted. He felt himself a god – Nothing less.” (Arendt, 1950:313)
Arendt seems to identify parallels between the imperialist agents of the 19th century and the scientists of her age. If the unending process of science is to survey the secrets of the universe the scientist “disentangles himself from all involvement and concern with the close at hand and withdraws himself to a distance from everything near him” (Arendt, 1958:251). The greater the distance, the greater the surveying power. This ultimately entice scientists to find perspectives of viewing earthly existence from a cosmic perspective outside of earth and its intersubjective reality. When one’s subjectivity is too distanced a form of aloofness appears since the surveyor loses sight at the setting at their command. The local, near and immediate becomes reduced to instrumentalization, and the surveyor is detached from it; the British colonial regents had to be distanced from the ‘natives’, creating the political aloofness that characterized them. Imperial- ists pursued imperialism for empire’s own self-justification, and Arendt feared that modernity’s scientists pursue scientific research and experimentation for the cosmology’s own self-neces- sity, without thinking about its consequences (Arendt, 1950:309; 1963:50f:107f; 2007).
This is the Archimedean Point: when we identify ourselves as the tools of a process greater than ourselves, we instrumentalize the means to achieve the process’s goals. It is the perspective where we view the world not from our own subjectivity but an imagined detachment from our- selves as subjects with an inherent human condition. When viewing earthly, subjective, exist- ence from a distance we lose the ability to be thinking and feeling subjects, and aloofness be- comes the predominant condition. Inspired by Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology and Heisenberg’s principle, Arendt thought that the ultimate object a scientist encounters is the loneliness of an instrumentalized human (Arendt, 2007; Yaqoob, 2014).
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Earth Alienation: Culture-Nature, Human Perspective, Common Sense
What she identified was that modern science, alongside its cosmological role, had undergone an ontological shift. Instead of trying to understand what the world is, science tries to under- stand how the world works. “Nature as a being became nature as a process” and shifted the cosmological premise of human existence (Tijmes, 1995:243f). The natural process could be understood by studying the phenomenon through instruments, reducing the standing of the man- ufactured world to expressions of universal processes and nature. This, in turn, changed the inventor’s and thinker’s perspective. In the pre-modern age they had acted into a web of rela- tionships – culture – now they started to act into nature. They began to view the human world not as a realm apart, but as nature (Belcher & Schmidt, 2020).
This brought nature into the human being so that humanity itself became a process, so much so that racial and class destinies became as assured as any other physical phenomenon. Arendt had previously claimed that totalitarianism relied upon these historical/natural destinies to explain the past, present and future (ibid.; Arendt, 1951). Instead of allowing Man to drift unaware on the process, the National Socialists and Bolsheviks were to awaken him to this reality:
[T]otalitarian regimes saw themselves as harmonizing positive and natural law in or- der to allow the laws of race or class to transform humanity into an “active unfailing carrier of a law to which human beings otherwise would only passively and reluc- tantly be subjected.” (Yaqoob, 2014:201)
But the birth of totalitarian ideologies was only one of the consequences of the reduction of humanity to nature. It also made it necessary to increase the scientific understanding of the world, bringing the Archimedean Point into inevitability. If Earth “is the very quintessence of the humanity condition” then we lose the vantage point of our human condition whenever we view our existence from the Archimedean Point: we will no longer view our acts from a human and intersubjective perspective. This made Arendt claim that the Archimedean Point had
“moved into man himself” (Arendt, 1959:248:284). Instead of living in a common world with shared common senses, man now lived outside himself. Instead of finding truth in common sense, truth had to be found in mathematics and science, projects that destroy the transcendent world when brought into the hypothetical laboratory of the scientist’s mind (ibid.:284-288):
With the disappearance of the sensually given world, the transcendent world disap- pears as well, and with it the possibility of transcending the material world in concept and thought. It is therefore not surprising that the new universe is not only
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“practically inaccessible but not even thinkable”, for “however we think it, it is wrong”. (ibid.:288)
This separation of truth from thought made action more important than contemplation and is the reason Arendt urged us to think what we are doing. Berkowitz summarises her argument:
The danger Arendt glimpses in Sputnik's launch is that it makes manifest how in matters of the human condition everything is possible. That “everything is possible,”
links Arendt's analysis of the human condition to her earlier exploration of total domination. Arendt's motto for the rise of totalitarian governments is David Rous- set's observation that “normal people' refuse to believe . . . that everything is possible.”
(2018:342)
The idea that everything is possible is the essence of Arendt’s concept of Earth Alienation.
Earth Alienation is the condition developed from the Archimedean point, where acting and thinking are split so that our human condition and earth become objects permissible to be ma- nipulated and experimented on. Earth Alienation require the death of “common sense” and makes the unthinkable doable, risking man into a “rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.” (Arendt, 1958:2f).
Swedish Engineering
Sweden’s engineering is the context for this study, and Sweden’s social engineering is one of those themes on which the entirety of the nation’s 20th century can be understood (Berggren &
Trägårdh, 2015). From the 1930’s idealism, to the 1990’s shock over the revelation of mass- sterilization, institutionalization and human experiments; the Swedish engineer was the under- lying principle supporting the welfare state (ibid.:243; Hirdman, 2016). It’s the engineer that typify Sweden’s last century, he brought Sweden international repute through internationally recognized brands in Volvo, SAAB, SKF, Ericsson, Bofors, Tetrapak (Ek-Nilsson, 1999:131f).
As the symbol of a masculine modernity the engineer was a symbol of national pride and vitality (ibid.:131-139:161). Two discourses of engineering developed, one where the engineer was a rational, professional, and disconnected scientist, and the other where he was an economic agent: a worldly leader, a master of languages. Ek-Nilsson position these as an expression of the conflict between science and industry (1999:13). Regardless of who the engineer was, there was no question about the engineer’s central role as the high priest of modernity. The knowledge and expertise possessed by him was political-yet-neutral, it stood above the
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squabbles of the population (see Agamben, 1995:176-180). Master of rationality, the engineer possessed truths who could only be questioned if one was willing to discard the whole moder- nity project (Ek-Nilsson, 1999:33). Therefore it is perhaps no coincidence that the challenges to modernity in the environmental crisis, the rediscovery of the welfare state’s excesses, the postmodern critique of truth and enlightenment narratives, disasters like Chernobyl, Bhopal, Valdez, and women’s entrance into the discipline was simultaneous with the Swedish engi- neer’s loss of status towards the end of the last century (ibid.:64).
From heroic accelerationists of the future to unhygienic math-dorks, and a return to heroism in the image of Silicon Valley, Gates, Jobs, and Musk? Today’s engineers inhibit a discursive ambiguity. Are they heroes or losers? Regular office-workers? Eccentric creator of tomorrow- world? Evil overlords of the digital age (Greenblatt, 2020; Stephens & Webber, 2018)? A pos- sible return to the old nationalistic role with Sweden’s “tech wonder”, where digital products like Spotify and Minecraft becomes international symbols of Swedish industry and expertise?
Material and Research methods
The Covid-19 pandemic is the condition in which this study is conducted. The autumnal ‘second wave’ struck at the same time as the fieldwork was conducted. All aspects of the ethnography reflect the current crisis.
While the pandemic-society is a field requiring anthropological research, I find it necessary to not bloat the academy with more research of the present situation. More than enough studies are being conducted, and anthropological exploration of other present issues must not be for- saken.
Digital interviews were the ethical method. The idea of ‘leaving the veranda’ and meeting peo- ple face-to-face is not only naïve but possibly immoral. This caused concern during the study, several participants expressed a preference to meet face-to-face for the interview. While they were encouraged to host the meeting online through Zoom, 3 of the 9 interviews that make up this study were conducted in person.
It must also be said that this method meets the bare minimum for the purposes of the study. To fully understand the social nuances of the engineering education one must be in field and gain multidimensional sources of material. Corona has reduced this study to the student’s positioned and historicized perspective. The distance between saying and doing, past and present, emic and etic, may be considerable. Further, later, studies are encouraged to shed light on this issue.
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With these limitations the main data collected by the interviews have been the discussion in themselves. Focus has been placed upon understanding the logic of the replies and reconstruct- ing cosmologies.
The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in two parts with a break in the middle, as the topics discussed changed. The first part of the interview concerned Uppsala’s engineering education, and the general traits of students and programs. The second part focused on a general discussion of the ethical and political aspects of engineering, and how it is connected to the academic and sociocultural education provided by Uppsala University. The interview held with the Vice-President of Uppsala Union of Engineering and Science Students (UTN; “Uppsala teknolog- och naturvetarkår”) had adjusted topics.
Breaks excluded the shortest interview spanned slightly more than 110 minutes, with the long- est having a 3-hour duration. In total, 14 hours of interviews were conducted and summarized in reports that the interlocutor was encouraged to read, correct, and approve. These reports were then analysed for themes and patters. The analysis was verified by relistening to the recorded interviews.
Quotes cited in this study have been translated to English by the author and approved by the interlocutors. Italics is used by the author to represent spoken emphasis.
Interlocutors
An early issue in this study was whether to focus on a specific engineering institution or try to widen it and include as many different engineering sub-disciplines as possible. The critique of the culture-term makes the attempt to essentialize a vague group like “engineers” a dubious proposition. On the other hand, Arendt’s claims are universal for the modern society. It is with full recognition of the participant’s diversity that this study interviewed students in many dif- ferent engineering disciplines. This study seeks a dynamic, not an essence.
The 7 engineers that make up the study belong to four different programs: Biotechnology, En- gineering Physics, Energy Systems, and IT-Engineering. The partner of one engineer, a medi- cine student, also participated in an interview out of interest in the topic. The participants range from students in their first semester, to fourth year students pursuing their master’s degree.
These participants were enrolled in specializations, adding further traits to their educational context. Two interlocutors were interviewed twice, of which one was the interview conducted with the Vice-President (VP) of UTN. An overviewing of the participants follows:
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Johan is a 4th year master’s student in Biotechnology. Adam, second year IT-Engineering. In- terviewed twice. Moa, 3rd year Energy Systems. Andreas, 4th year master’s in Engineering Phys- ics. Ossian, 4th year master’s Biotechnology. Felicia, first semester studying Biotechnology, her partner participated in the interview. Ruben, 4th year Engineering Physics, current Vice-Presi- dent (VP) for UTN. Interviewed twice. These are aliases.
No doctorate or professor could be interviewed due to the complications of the second wave of Covid-19.
Disposition
The thesis begins with ethnographic material concerning the connection between Arendt’s Ar- chimedean Point & Earth Alienation, and the interlocutors engineering mentality. A theory of the relationship between engineering-as-a-practice, ethics, and personhood will be presented.
This model will then be further analysed by accounting for Uppsala student’s sociocultural dy- namics, providing, so to speak, an antithesis. Finally, these will be synthesized in an Arendtian perspective that will contextualize the ethnographic material with Earth Alienation and Ar- endt’s wider political thoughts.
14 The Engineering Person
Asked if arrogance can be a good trait among engineering students, Ossian explained:
An important thing I’ve learned through my studies is that there’s often a thousand different ways to do something better, but the most important thing is to get some- thing done. As long as you bring something forth, it can be crap, but as long as it gets the job done: Perfect. From there on you can adjust and optimize it until it’s something good.
Indeed, engineering appears as a process of development. Adam, referring to engineering in general, put it in another way:
You have X and shall arrive at Y. Your task is only to arrive at Y as soon and as steadily as possible, why you do it is not really something you reflect over: you do your job.
Indeed, if engineers aim to account for the entirety of the physical world, with all its chaotic systems, the calculations become overwhelming and the engineer won’t get anything done, so they must create models and representations. These representations do not create an accurate simulation of reality, but only an ‘idea’ of reality, to which only the educated engineer gain access to (Harvey & Knox, 2015:86f:197). In their fieldwork on Peruvian road construction Harvey and Knox discovered that the social world of bribes and corruption, far less absolute and rational, was positioned as an insolvable and endlessly frustrating problem by the engineers (ibid.: 200f). The social world resisted the engineer’s processualization of reality: the unpre- dictability of human action defied calculations and planning. The processualization of road con- struction sought by the engineers reveals the dynamic of the Archimedean Point. Once social reality, and humans, becomes part of a process we start to view everything as pertaining to universal laws. If nature and culture once were dichotomous realms, the engineering and scien- tific process implodes this dichotomy (Belcher & Schmidt, 2020).
But this is not to overdramatize the engineer. “Engineers are just people, they’re people just like anyone else and have their opinions like any other group”, Johan explained in our discus- sion. Uppsala’s engineering students have no essence more than a general interest in maths and physics. There seems however, as Adam and Ossian indicated, to exist an engineering mental- ity: they are problem solvers.
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I was repeatedly told that engineers provide tools used to solve issues, how these tools are used, or what issues they solve, are not really their concern. Andreas compared it to installing cameras.
If an engineer is tasked with reducing crime in an area they may read reports that cameras have achieved good results, so they install them. But if they are given that task a thousand times then there will be cameras everywhere, and the engineer have unwittingly created a surveillance monster by thoughtless process. The process creates its own dynamic that risks the engineer into an absentminded habit. Ossian didn’t mince the words: “engineers at google write their code, turn it in to their boss and goes home … useful idiots.” Indeed, habitualization seems to be the danger of the process, falling into a rhythm of problem solving (see Arendt, 1963:86).
The engineer, in a joke repeated in several discussions, doesn’t kill people, other people kill with engineers. The joke implies how the engineer is a mere tool that doesn’t direct itself but follows the command of the people with plans and directions. It was a morbid joke, and the participants expressed it with concern and ambiguity. They were all aware of the awesome powers that engineers possessed and could use, and they were all keen on their ethical respon- sibilities, but expressed concerns over the rest of the engineering profession.
This concern didn’t necessarily originate from the ethical education given by the university, it varied significantly between the interlocutors, even if they shared equal amount of time in the same program. Johan and Ossian, both bioengineering masters, seemed almost tired of their ethics seminars, but expressed different opinions on it. Ossian thought that the perspectives they were taught were flawed. They were debating animal rights over consequences for humans.
Instead of debating the salmon farms’ concentration of heavy metals, later consumed by humans, they had to debate the animal’s conditions in the farm. It was frustrating how humans were no longer the ends for the ethical debates. Johan was conflicted with the idea of giving an even more rigorous ethical education to bioengineers, their program was already long enough, and trying to force more ethics into it would be unreasonable on just a scheduling perspective.
The physical engineers barely received any ethical education, while the IT-engineers had sem- inars and essays that lacked rigour. Adam explained how they, in groups of four, had to turn in a 2-page paper on the ethical and juridical ambiguity of self-driving cars. He pointed out that only a few students took the exercise seriously: they were there for programming, not philo- sophical debates. Moa’s program in energy systems held discussions about the politics of nu- clear energy, a topic relevant to their profession. She explained that since she knew the science in detail, she didn’t consider it to be very dangerous. It mirrors Ek-Nilsson’s Swedish 20th
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century engineers whose frustration over Sweden’s 1980 Nuclear Power Referendum posi- tioned it as a symbolic turning point of the engineer’s central role in society (1999:14f).
It’s impossible to generalize a specific attitude toward to the ethical education they had received.
Yet regardless of the diversity of ethical education that was included in their programs they all expressed an ethical consciousness and concern. Johan though that the engineer merely creates information, and information can only be neutral. What is done with information can not be attributed back to the people who merely created it, but he also recognized how ambiguous and complicated the question of responsibility is. Andreas had an opposite perspective. As with his surveillance-example, he worried that engineers tend to distance themselves from their crea- tions, that technology is independent, that the ethics of creation and usage are separated. He strongly opposed the weapons industry recognizing that designing a weapon is designing a tool made for taking other people’s lives. Distancing yourself from that is to deny responsibility of one’s actions.
Moa drew a connection between personal maturity and scientific education:
Take doctors for example. One has heard that they are so old when graduating that they’re [mental] teenagers since they haven’t developed that much with such hard studies. It’s certainly a stereotype, but I think that most social activities are to com- pensate for the academic [education], somehow.
In the discussion with Felicia, she commented on the theory:
I can see the point, but you grow as a person by finding your ‘drive’ and achieving your goals, and that develops one’s personality, of course. But there is something to it. I’ve grown by doing stuff on the side [of the education] by, for example, working in a student nation3.
Ossian argued that ethics originated from social interaction. If an engineer doesn’t engage with society and see the consequences of their actions, then everything becomes possible. Introduced to Arendt’s concept of the Banality of Evil, that monstrous evil can be as banal as thoughtless- ness, he wholeheartedly agreed that engineers may commit such banal horror. Our discussion reached the American opioid epidemic and OxyCodone’s role in causing it. He pointed out how the engineers that developed the drug would never have done so if they were confronted with
3 A university student nation is a cooperative of students that provide social exchange, housing, activities, cheap meals, cafés, and events ranging from nightclubs to formalized dinners (gasques). In Uppsala there are thirteen such nations, by historical tradition named for the geographical region their students originated from.
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ruined neighbourhoods and their friends’ addiction. Adam agreed when discussing the engi- neer’s responsibilities:
You must be able to pause and think about what one is doing. As you mentioned with your reference to the second world war and [The Banality of Evil]. I think it is kind of the same thing, you don’t think very much about what one is responsible for.
Johan recognized the political nature of the engineering activity but was hesitant about engi- neers making political decisions. Engineers have, on the one hand, a more nuanced perspective on topics such as genetic engineering since they understand the science, but at the same time engineers make for poor politicians. He pondered if the gap between science and politics should be bridged with politicians increasing their scientific literacy, instead of engineers learning the humanities. One may suppose his interest in media and literature – with Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cra- dle, Huxley’s Brave New World and the dystopic movie Gattaca being mentioned during the interview – serves as an important influence for his thoughts on the matter.
The ethnography reveals a contradiction. All the students participating in the study recognized the engineer’s potential to absentminded evil, but at the same time they were all able to conduct critical thinking by themselves with considerable diversity in the ethical frameworks employed.
Contextualising the individual interviews with the ethnographic material reveal how they all worried over something nobody expressed. In some discussions the participant hadn’t thought very much about a topic we discussed but were generally quick to provide thoughts and personal opinions on the issue. What does one make of the contradiction? Moa provided an intriguing explanation:
In school, in your studies, when you have lectures and debates, you must be serious, it becomes more factual. You need to have sources and must be able to support it with facts, but when we’re at home and discuss something, then we’re not as strict with sources and all that, and we discuss ethics far more often.
Indeed, what Moa expressed was a division of the engineering student into two rationalities.
There’s the engineering rationality that require objectivity and scientific rigour (see Arendt, 1963:73f), then there’s the ‘social world’ that allows for more subjective arguments. The engi- neering mentality is remarkably similar instrumental rationality. Ruben, speaking as an engi- neering student, exemplified:
[Engineers] have to make simplifications, how much should one simplify? That’s where many engineers have discussions. If you want to make it as easy as possible to
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calculate the volume of a sphere you may say it’s a cube, and your calculation be- comes easier. But does that mean it’s correct? You have to discuss it. In some cases it’s correct since you don’t care if it’s a certain percentage wrong, it can be 50%
wrong, but in some cases we want it to be extremely precise, and then that’s com- pletely wrong approach.
If engineering intelligence and expertise is defined by the ability to achieve results, and how one does it is of secondary importance, then one’s disposition to ethics becomes affected. In- strumentalization triumphs: cubes morphs into spheres, and humans, as with Andreas’s camera example, become statistics to be applied in goal-oriented calculations.
All interlocutors gave the same three examples of engineers creating evil: the nuclear bomb, mass surveillance, and human genetic engineering. The examples did not have to be explained why they were evil; it was obvious common sense to all the participants in the discussion. In- deed, the normative opinion is that the potential of a nuclear holocaust has not made existence easier, yet one may argue that Mutually Assured Destruction cooled down inevitable hot wars, saving countless lives. Same goes for the transhumanist perspective of genetic engineering, see Berkowitz 2018, or the argument that mass-surveillance is a necessity in the age of terrorism.
It seems to me that the examples’ self-evidence depends on them being cultural truisms, com- mon sense, that needs no pedantic ethical argumentations to agree upon.
Should this be correct then the source of the ethical perspective is not engineering itself but culture and social life. It is indeed outside the scientific education that the students developed their moral consciousness, which also accounts for the diversity of ethical frameworks. Once one leave engineering’s instrumental rationality for social interaction, moments of peace and reflection – or in the case of Adam, religion and faith – one gain the consciousness to question what one is doing when writing codes for a mass surveillance or calculating optimal altitude to maximized air-burst annihilation. Indeed, Eichmann himself tried to justify his moral collapse on a lack of an “outside voice” (Arendt, 1963:128f).
I will refer to it as the Engineering Person, it is the contradiction the ethnography reveals. Both Felicia and Moa reflected that engineers, as scientists, should not be subjective or have an agenda, but they’re still required to have a personal ability to think about what they are doing or else they run the risk of the thoughtless evil that concerned the interlocutors. The engineering process invokes instrumental rationality and a fabricating world where productivity and prob- lem solving becomes paramount. It is only when the Engineering Person suspends engineering
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that they can generate the “outside voice” and ask what if what they are doing is right and conscientious. They must be engineers and persons.
For if engineering’s instrumental mentality is to separate oneself from subjectivity and the in- tersubjective net, and that the engineer become less of a person and more of an instrument to solve a problem (like a gun), then we may identify many connections with Arendt’s Archime- dean Point: engineering is a process, it creates a distance between the engineer and the field, and it may cause thoughtlessness.
However, this returns us to the question that was left unanswered: what stops an engineer from treating humans as objects, or entities bound to laws of behaviour? When, and how, can engi- neering students leave, suspend, the engineering mentality?
Right Start: Social Civil Engineering
Among the essential events in the students’ annual calendar, it is the Union of Engineering and Science Students (UTN) that organize many. From the reception of new engineering and sci- ence students – with wild costumes, games, and parties – to the carnival of rafts floating down Uppsala’s central river at Walpurgisnacht (Valborg). UTN is an association that preserve, pos- sibly obsess, with these traditions, together with the five other student unions.
As the oldest university in Sweden, Uppsala does not lack in history or traditions, ranging from festivities on Walpurgisnacht, student nations, to the stress relieving student-scream in Flogsta.
The city also hosts highly formalized rituals of doctoral promotion, and the Caprice concert by Orphei Drängar, a famous choir society founded by University students in the 19th century.
The city’s rich cultural capital is a strong attraction for many students, with several of the in- terlocutors deciding to study in Uppsala instead of Stockholm’s KTH because of the city’s re- nowned student culture. Johan, for example, initially studied Physics Stockholm but grew weary of the city’s lacklustre student culture and decided to switch Uppsala. Ruben, having close contact with KTH’s student association in his role as the Vice-President of UTN, pointed out what excellent work they did, but had to operate in a large city, making it difficult to create the same student culture that characterize Uppsala.
The reception that UTN hosts, one of the major annual events, is essentially a crash-course with the goal to introduce new students to the city’s student culture, and to the student identity. The reception hosted in KTH during Ek-Nilsson’s 1999 study was crude, hierarchical and humiliat- ing. KTH’s hazing (“nollning”: zeroing) served as a militaristic initiation rite to the engineering
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profession, it would teach the students to disregard the consequences of their actions, a perspec- tive that would be important in their future occupation (1999:66-99).
In Uppsala, UTN decided in 2007 to abolish hazing (“nollning”) in favour of a more positive reception (“mottagning”). Ruben was keen in disassociating the current reception from the pre- vious iteration of hazing during our discussion, a rite that’s become a reoccurring source of national outrage after a boarding school student was branded with a clothing iron (Treijs, 2016).
The previous initiation rite may however have left a legacy among the students, noticeable in a militaristic vocabulary. Andreas referred to specific reception functionaries with the title Gen- erals and Ruben explained how UTN is organised through strategies formulated by a council of representatives for the member-sections. These strategies are then operationalized into tac- tics by the board.
This militaristic theme is reoccurring and barely hidden within the student culture. One example is an old tradition for students to wear single-coloured boilersuits (studentoverall) that they receive in their first days in the reception. These dresses serve as uniforms for the students to use and are often colour-coded for what sub-discipline one has enrolled into, separating students from different programs from each other. These dresses are however not expected to be uniform, throughout one’s engagement in student events you collect patches to memorialize them. The patches are then sewn onto the boilersuit, making them colourful and personalized patchworks towards the end of one’s studies, given that the student have been engaged in these activities;
the suits become expressions of individuality instead of conformity. The dress may also contain specific symbolic value as they are rarely worn casually but brought forth for parties or specific UTN activities.
Another tradition that can be connected to military hierarchy are the medals that are awarded to students participating as volunteers or functionaries for larger events. These medals became a topic for a debate that Ruben used to exemplify UTN’s democratic process. Volunteers for the reception are usually given a medal for their contribution in the event, a discussion was held whether volunteers would receive a second medal for repeated assistance in a second year, or if it would suffice with one medal and re-participation in the medal-ceremony. The debate ended with one medal, as had been tradition. Nevertheless, wearing medals and patches serve as public symbols of student engagement.
In the interview, the vice-president of UTN explained that the shift from hazing to reception had probably started long before it was officially changed in 2007. He admitted that UTN’s
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organization may be somewhat bureaucratic and slow but added how it is beneficial. Not only is the annual overturn of members and officeholders harmful to the efficiency of the organiza- tion, but the students themselves may often be hasty and make premature decisions. Having an intricate organization with formal processes slows down the democratic process and ensures that decisions are properly managed before being implemented. In the case of changing the hazing to a reception, a vote had to be organized with all the constituent member-sections, representing Uppsala University’s variety of science and engineering programs.
Figure 1:Organizational map of UTN (Uppsala teknolog- och naturvetarkår, 2020).
One of the arguments for changing hazing to reception was that hazing simply didn’t represent the actual student culture in Uppsala, putting it in contradiction to the goals of the reception.
These goals were twofold. The most well-known goal is to introduce the new students to the city, student-life, and one-another. This was achieved by creating a tolerant space by having functionaries tasked with challenging the rigid norms of nervous and uncomfortable freshmen.
Ruben pointed out how it also was important for the student union, where a relaxed atmosphere among students encourages democratic participation and discussion. Crude hazing does not en- courage this toleration and indulgent attitude, although it is not structurally opposed to it (see Ek-Nilsson, 1999:66-97). The second goal was to teach the students their rights, and the way that they can change and influence UTN and the university. Indeed, even after the reception the student union was dedicated to reaching out to students to poll their opinions on UTN’s events and other relevant topics. They are fully aware that some students may decide to skip the
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reception, and that it’s important to have a steady flow of information throughout the year so that everyone understand UTN’s democratic procedures and have the knowledge on how get engaged.
There were also secondary benefits to the reception; social cohesion and friendships are an important resource for students. The university is dedicated to teaching the students the social skills required by engineers, as the discipline is increasingly becoming a team activity con- ducted in project groups. All interlocutors have had projects where the students had to solve an issue together in a team. This is basically a strategy of learning-by-practice to familiarize the students with the dynamics in which they will conduct their professional career after graduating.
Being on good terms with one’s classmates is, of course, a big benefit to group functionality and ability, good relations between the students is therefore important for their studies and later career success. Ossian gave a personal anecdote about the perils of poor communication in an engineering project:
When I did my bachelor [thesis] we had a project with programming. The commu- nication was fucked, people are arrogant – as I mentioned – they don’t give a shit about what you say, and after a while it’s really noticeable. In the beginning we were new [to one another] so you don’t want to have so much attitude, but after a while it really shows how fucked everyone is, in the end we screamed at one an- other in a Zoom meeting. There was this person – I love the guy – he had opinions about everything, and he would explain his opinion, always state his opinion. I don’t think the social ability is amazing among engineers, or, at least among those I know.
Felicia, having just started her studies, had experiences from a recent seminar:
I don’t think [freshmen engineers] have the conditions for a productive seminar yet… It’s easy to just agree and move on to the next question, but the point is, for me at least, that people should have some disagreements so you get something new to think about.
She reasoned that it may not have been communicative tools that were missing, just the confi- dence to oppose and disagree with the group. While the reception wants to create a safe envi- ronment and make students comfortable with one another, there are limits to how much can be achieved. Ruben made a personal reflection in our discussion:
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As an engineer you have a lot of group projects. A lot of experiments, experiment- reports, programming… Regardless of what specialisation you read it’s a lot of these things, and of course you have a lot to gain by finding people that you have good cooperation with. You don’t have to be friends to find a group you can work with, but, personally, it helps to find friends that you know you can do an experiment with [that way] there’s no anxiety over ending up with someone you can’t work with. In that way [sociality] is beneficial.
Adam commented how widespread cooperation is among engineers. With the current pandemic most courses held take-home examinations, and some professors admitted to increasing the difficulty since they expected most students to cheat by helping each-other anyway. It made Adam somewhat tentative, engineers must learn their stuff sooner or later, and can’t just free- wheel on their friends.
It is worthwhile to notice how this dynamic stand in contrast to the previous centuries image of the engineer as an individual-par-none (Ek-Nilsson, 1999:55-64).
Andreas used another perspective to explain the importance of the student culture:
A majority of engineers hang around with other engineers [sic], it creates a shared mentality about what you should do as an engineer: ‘Oh, I’m an engineer, I slept 3 hours last night.’ And ‘Oh shit we have a lot of homework’. There’s almost a desper- ate mentality since the education is so challenging… It becomes a mentality of “eh, I have to re-do that exam for a third time, I’ll get it the next time!’. It’s a shared desperation, or anxiety-psychosis almost […] I think it’s important to not ‘hit the wall’. Say that you fail a lot of exams, but still want to fight on in the program, it’s so important that you don’t break down because you fail something. The mentality cre- ates this idea that it’s perfectly fine to, for example, fail or having anxiety over some- thing that’s challenging… This mentality is sent down through the years. It’s in the air when you start studying.
The education is tough, and most students will eventually have to learn to face disappointments and failed exams. Andreas pointed out how students must be able to create an identity discon- nected from study results, so that failed classes doesn’t reflect personal failure, a method of doing this is to distance oneself from the studies and to have an intentionally self-degrading attitude, that “we engineers” are slackers with poor social skills and hygiene, who sometimes stay up late playing videogames and oversleep lectures, and are late to turn in assignments.
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As all participants in the study pointed out, this is a stereotype and narrative that simply does not reflect reality. But the discourse of the neglected engineer may originate from the engineers themselves as a strategy produced by the students to have the space to manage the failures and setbacks they will face. Adopting the subject position from this discourse may be a method of completing a rigorous education. Having the normative space to disassociate oneself from one’s studies, that slacking is considered normal, may prevent one from dropping out.
But this normative space varied widely between different programs. All the participants pointed out that there were clear and obvious differences between the institutions and engineering sub- disciplines. Ossian reasoned a lot about the social characteristics of engineering students. The more scientific and mathematical a program the stricter and more formal it was. He contrasted chemistry and mathematics to biology. While maths concerned topics that are self-contained within mathematical and scientific frameworks, biology must eventually strive into philosophy or theology. These “soft”-disciplines contain topics like the essence of life, issues that can’t be expected to be given a final and conclusive answer or definitions. These philosophical com- plexities encourage the students to explore their own subjectivities and develop personal thoughts and opinions. In his biotechnological master Ossian felt however that there was a pre- vailing scientific mentality, that things could either be correct or false with little nuance and ambiguity. The mentality made students appear arrogant, he even entertained a comparison with the autism spectrum.
Nevertheless, the characteristics that’s present among students were more likely to originate from them personally rather than a personality encouraged by the education. People tend to gather around programs that corresponded to their interest; as Adam pointed out, programming students are in it for the programming. Some stereotypical characteristics appears in each pro- gram, but not necessarily due to the educational process, but due to the specifics of the program that the students to apply. Shared interests predate a shared education.
This returns us to Arendt’s Archimedean Point. If Arendt’s fear is that scientists and engineer’s instrumental rationality is a form of auto-desubjectification then I would argue that the engi- neering education in Uppsala counteracts that tendency.
Here I do not refer to the academic education which, as argued in the previous section, do indeed correspond to Arendt’s theory, but the sociocultural enculturation the students receive as mem- bers of a student body, both to prepare them for their professional life but also for collective engagement in studies and student democracy. They are pursued by UTN to express their
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opinions and feelings about their current studio-social conditions, and active in considering the discursive positions of their own program in contrast to other engineering disciplines. This is to say there are many social dimensions deeply intertwined in Uppsala’s engineering educations.
These social and personal dimensions encourage students to connect with fellow students, and the development of intersubjectivity.
If Andreas’s observation is correct, then that would indeed show how thoroughly adjusted and strategic the available subjective positions are among engineers. Equally, engineers must learn to work in a group and exchange thoughts and opinions. If their engineering brainstorming places them within the Archimedean Point, they at least do so in a social community.
However, Arendt feared that sociality offers no protection to instrumental rationality (1958:212-220; 2007:45). Intersubjectivity and group dynamics may in fact reinforce it. Indeed, some participants expressing a concern that engineering students mostly kept to themselves and failed to gain perspectives outside the engineering discipline. Arendt considered mass society – the state where an individual is reduced to his membership in a group (in this case being an engineer) – as a prelude to World Alienation. It is when a person distinguishes him or herself from others, and express individuality, that subjectivity and ethical consciousness may be real- ized (1951, 1958).
Hence, the sociality discussed in this chapter is not the ultimate counterforce to the Archime- dean Point and Earth Alienation, but, as shall be argued in the next part, the political action and engagement that student sociality enables.
Seen and Not Seen: The Importance of Student Forums
To Hannah Arendt, the basic premise of political life is action, the unpredictable activity where humans enter a space of appearance and display their unique personhood (Arendt, 1958).
[A]ction, seen from the viewpoint of the automatic processes [sic] which seem to determine the course of the world, looks like a miracle. In the language of natural science, it is the ‘infinite improbability which occurs regularly’. Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man. (ibid.:246)
As mentioned previously, the goal of science to reduce worldly phenomenon to observable natural processes is in opposition to the human ability of action and nativity, hence her argument that human action of developing cars takes the form of a biological process in the scientific perspective.
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Yet, the miracle of action is only possible with speech:
Without the accompaniment of speech, at any rate, action would not only lose its revelatory character, but, and by the same token, it would not only lose its subject, as it were; not acting men but performing robots would achieve what, humanly speaking, would remain incomprehensible. Speechless action would no longer be ac- tion because there would no longer be an actor. (Arendt, 1958:178)
It is when speech and action become methods of disclosing oneself that humans can truly de- velop subjectivity. As people unite to disclose themselves, to talk and act among his peers, a political community is created (ibid.:198). This is also one of the dynamics of the Archimedean Point, replacing language with a system of mathematical symbols is incompatible with speech and its subjectivity-forming ability, or, in the case of Eichmann, a bureaucratic language of clichés, limited perspectives and “language rules” of self-deception that turned murder into the prevention of unnecessary suffering (ibid.:3-4; Arendt 1963:53-60:111).
Without spaces for people to display themselves, their individuality, and subjectivity through language, humans are turned introspective and away from one-another. This dynamic of an alienated mass is the foundation of her World Alienation, and, as previously established, World Alienation is the underlying structure that makes scientists and engineers internalize the Archi- medean Point. Indeed, it’s political action and interconnected people that creates the common world that prevents alienation (ibid.:209). Appearing and speaking in community grounds peo- ple in the common sense (as sense held in common) that everything is not possible, that the earth cannot be moved (ibid.:219f; Yaqoob 2014).
These spaces of appearance could not be definitively identified due to the pandemic limiting the ethnographic methods available. Spaces of appearance are contexts in which a practice is conducted. Studying these through interviews and personal reflections is not substantial enough to make any definitive claims. On-ground studies must be conducted to fully understand their role in enabling political exchange among the engineering students, and prevention of World Alienation.
However, the interviews provide many hints of the existence and dynamic of these spaces. As shown in the previous section, UTN’s reception is tasked with creating the premise for an active democratic student body participating in public forums, partly by teaching them their demo- cratic rights but also by encouraging a tolerant and open environment among the students. By
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normalizing diversity and alternative lifestyles, public appearance was enabled in context of stressful studies.
Without this open culture one’s public appearance may have been denied. As Andreas pointed out, having the ability to live alternatively and, nominally, irresponsibly, is tolerated among the physical engineers, and UTN relies on a casual and tolerant culture to encourage student par- ticipation. Expecting strict codes of conduct may be detrimental for the student’s public disclo- sure. Further, the boilersuits traditionally worn and adorned by the students may serve as uni- forms to create a standardised appearance and homogeneity. These may very well serve an important enabler of political engagement as a symbol of shared community and as a right-to- participation.
A second important enabler of public appearance is the strategic relationship among classmates, where students cooperate to achieve their own goals in the education, sometimes by cheating, very much disclosing their subjectivities to each other.
These cultural structures enable student participation in forums where they may disclose them- selves and take the roles as individuals, and not instruments in the engineering process. Placing these as dichotomous to one another is only done due to the material that’s been made available due to the pandemic. One may assume that the relationship between the education and student forums are more complicated, possibly even complementary. It takes little imagination to see how Felicia’s seminar experience, that questions are treated like mathematical issues to be given an answer, may be carried over to the forum culture so that the decision-making process be- comes an exercise in expressing conformity and not individuality. This is also supported by the possibility that hazing-era student culture remains and influences people’s expectations and norms. If the students are given symbolic dress-uniformity under generals with medals, and UTN being organized through strategies and tactics, then one can’t help but be curious on what extent the surviving traditions have on forum culture. There is also another topic wholly ne- glected in this study: engineering’s masculine history. If hazing may have a symbolic legacy, does masculinity too?
Finally, there also exist forums that were outside the field of this study. Felicia’s student nation, and The Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers presence among the new students, were implied by participants. But these are examples that can only be studied through on-grounds ethnography.
28 Concluding remarks
The ethnography conducted in this study have found a dynamic similar to Hannah Arendt’s theoreticized Archimedean Point. However, it finds unreasonable to claim that Arendt’s Earth Alienation is a reality among the interlocutors in the study, all the interlocutors were able to think what they are doing as engineers: “Engineers are just people, they’re people just like anyone else and have their opinions like any other group”. Additionally, Hannah Arendt’s thoughts have been fruitfully applied in an anthropological context to ethnographically analyse the sociocultural dynamics among engineering students in Uppsala University.
In the centre of the ethnography was a contradiction. The interlocutors expressed a concern of engineering that was immediately joined with critical thinking and a critique of the current paradigm of engineering: they all worried over something none of the participants exhibited.
With the assistance of one of the interlocutors one may understand this inconsistency as engi- neers having two mentalities/rationalities. One where the engineer performs his profession (en- gineering) by mentally modelling the world into operationality, and one where the engineer is a normal citizen living in a shared world of common sense, for example that nuclear weapons are inherently evil. The Engineering Person’s two dichotomous mentalities must be success- fully managed for the engineer to have an ethical consciousness and resist the hegemony of the Archimedean Point.
However, leaving the management of the two mentalities solely to the individual is unreasona- ble. The engineer must be in a context where they can compartmentalize engineering. This is achieved in Uppsala where formal education and the social realms’ spaces of appearance inter- sect to encourage engineering students to develop their own subjectivity outside of the demands of studies requiring strict objective and instrumental reasoning.
All the interlocutors could pinpoint forums for their opposition to the Archimedean Point, rang- ing from social life, as with Ossian, Ruben and Elliot, the religion that motivated Adam, the literature and media that engaged Johan, or Andreas’s, and Felicia’s civic and political activity.
This brings the ethnographic study to its conclusions; the next, final, segment will be a short comment on bringing Arendt’s theory into practice.
Unless one wish to bring the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation into a psychological study one must accept that Arendt’s political thoughts must, justifiably, be the centre of atten- tion. Indeed, one cannot detach her thoughts on science and technology from her political anal- ysis. Nevertheless, the Archimedean Point and Earth Alienation are but reflections of an
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alienated society. It may be possible to attach these theories to other political theories of social alienation, suggestively Habermas’ critique of public space and instrumental rationality, a term adopted with the intent to allude to his theories. Another possibility is following Tijmes argu- ment that Earth Alienation can be analysed through Plessner’s eccentric theory (1995).
Arendt’s thesis seems to be corresponding to 21st century realities. The interlocutors in this study did reveal a dynamic similar to the de-subjectivized distanced perspective of the Archi- medean Point. However, as the ethnography revealed, the perils implied by the theories seems to be no concern as of now. What the future holds is unknown, should the spaces of appearance and common sense disappear, then Arendt’s thoughts will gain in explanatory power.
Alternatively, the study suggests that Uppsala’s students are nominally insulated from a hege- monic Archimedean Point by the influence of the city’s considerable body of forums, traditions and student culture. The situation may be considerably different in other seats of learning with a less considerable study-social heritage. It needs to be confirmed by on-ground ethnography – once the current pandemic has passed – that the interlocutors’ emic perspectives correspond to etic realities. Furthermore, the forums and tradition that suppress the engineer’s instrumental rationality may not be as prevalent among professional engineers in general society, where they
“write their code, turn it in to their boss and goes home”. This is the next step.
