The Engineering Project: Its Nature, Ethics, and Promise

SIX Contextualization

In Chapter 3, I looked at engineering as a colonizing project. The project of the modern engineering enterprise colonizes the human lifeworld by imposing upon it the values of efWciency and productivity. That discussion assumes engineering is a decontextualized project that comes up with products of various sorts that impact the lifeworld. The true contextualized nature of the engineering project was bracketed in order to focus on colonization. In this chapter, I will make my analysis more comprehensive by discussing the contextualized nature of the engineering project without the need to bracket the colonization effect of it. Context, which the modern engineering enterprise sidesteps whenever it can, is more fully engaged within the premodern engineering endeavor. My working premise is that everything at least initially occurs within a context in both modern and premodern engineering. In Chaper 3, I looked at engineering in its part aspect. Engineering was seen to be that particular project, looked at in terms of structure and function, which impacted the human lifeworld by colonizing it. In this chapter I will look at engineering in its whole aspect, engineering as a contextualized endeavor that has colonizing tendencies. The separated parts of engineering integrated into the systemic engineering project impact the holistic lifeworld while that lifeworld simultaneously contextualizes that engineering project. What is context? Simply the surrounding world within which what is at issue comes to be at issue. One place where context plays a major role is in languages. American anthropologist Edward T. Hall distinguished between high-context and low-context cultures. He maintained that many Asian nations (China and Japan, in particular) can be categorized six contextualization as nations with high-context cultures, and many Western nations (Germany , Britain, and the United States, for example) possess low-context cultures.1 The meaning of what is said in a language and the context in which it is expressed, according to Hall, are inextricably bound up with each other. The question is how much meaning is found in the code of the language itself versus the context in which the language is spoken. In many low-context cultures, such as ours, a minimal amount of the message meaning is embedded in the context, and more meaning is placed in the language code, or message. For this reason, messages in such lowcontext cultures tend to be more speciWc and detailed than messages in high-context cultures, where meaning resides primarily in the context. Most of the information in high-context cultures is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, and a minimal amount of information is transmitted in the message itself. Thus, to grasp the full meaning of a message, the listener must be able to decipher contextual cues. In elaborating on the work of Hall, R. S. Zaharna argues that more is expected of the listeners in high-context cultures than in low-context cultures. “When talking about something that they have on their minds, a high-context individual will expect his interlocutor to know what’s bothering him, so he doesn’t have to be speciWc. In other words, in high-context exchanges, much of the ‘burden of meaning’ appears to fall on the listener. In lowcontext cultures, the burden appears to fall on the speaker to accurately and thoroughly convey the meaning in her spoken or written message.”2 Concerning the project of engineering, we tend to view the modern engineering enterprise as a “low-context” phenomenon. Whenever a contextual problem arises within engineering, we usually thematize that problem and make it part of the engineering project itself. For instance, the environment becomes problematic, and we incorporate epa guidelines into our design processes. My aim, however, is to expand the typical purview of the engineering project and look at it as a “high-context” phenomenon. That means that context itself is given a voice and is not immediately incorporated into the engineering project. In other words, what would context look like if it were not colonized in a totalizing kind of way by 142 part ii: the premodern engineering endeavor 1. Edward T. Hall, “Context and Meaning,” in Intercultural Communication: A Reader, ed. L. Samovar and R. Porter (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1982), 18. 2. R. S. Zaharna, “Rhetorical Ethnocentricism: Understanding the Rhetorical Landscape of Arab-American Relations” (paper presented to the Speech Communication Association, 1995); available at http://academic2.american.edu/~zaharna/rhetoric.htm/. the engineering project? The meaning and...