Small-Scale Technology for the Developing World: Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, 1959–1971

Starting in 1959, a group of American engineers and scientists organized Volunteers for International Technical Assistance (VITA) to consult on practical technical issues in the developing world. Their work, disseminated through a mail-based inquiry service and several editions of the Village Technology Handbook, provided a counterpoint to the “modernization theory” favored among prominent social scientists and policy-makers of the period. VITA designs were for individual projects rather than large systems: they came in the form of instructions tailored for workers with traditional tools and skills, and they drew on research into historical and non-Western technologies to fit the constraints of various settings. In design strategy, VITA’s work anticipated the “appropriate-technology” advocacy of the late 1960s and ’70s; however, members’ professional ties to top firms and the group’s avoidance of ideological statements set them apart from this later movement.