What is “diversity”?

There are many different ways I’ve answered this in the past: diversity has been cognitively different standpoints, inclusion of those with less power among hierarchies, traditionally marginalized groups, those with significantly different experiences in life, those with significantly different ideas about how to live our lives… and the list goes on. I’ve never been satisfied with my own answer, and it’s changed frequently depending on what classes I’ve taken recently, who I’ve been talking to lately, the context of a particular conversation, etc. But, while re-reading some material that I’m using in my thesis, I have to say that Helen Longino’s notion of “diversity” might cover a lot of what I’ve been thinking. What follows is an excerpt from the third chapter of my thesis, taken from Helen Longino’s book Science as Social Knowledge (1990), where she advocates for a four-point process to ensure objectivity among scientific knowledge:

Longino’s fourth criteria, tempered equality and democratic inclusion, will be as applicable to engineering as within science, but must be understood in the broadest possible sense. Tempered equality for Longino is not simply about cognitive diversity or diversity of experiences among engineers or engineering fields; rather, tempered equality is a process of ensuring a form of diversity that will help uncover paradigmatic background assumptions that can then be analyzed for the presence of idiosyncrasy. Engaging in this process will not automatically guarantee that idiosyncratic background assumptions will not be included as prominent features of engineering decision-making, nor will it grant permanent legitimacy of background assumptions that emerge from this process, but it provides a framework model for including the types of critical dialogue that may detect for inappropriate background assumptions in engineering decision-making processes.

So diversity for Longino is useful because it helps produce accounts of knowledge that have (or could potentially have) the broadest inclusion of background assumptions, and that engage in processes that can continually check for idiosyncratic background assumptions masquerading as universal. Therefore diversity will not necessarily be only about quotas or numbers of different types of people, power and privilege, etc. (although it will include all of those) but about how to include the broadest possible relevant persons in order to provide transformative critique of the background assumptions that are operating among any particular idea, theory, group, project, etc.

It’s not succinct at all, but I think it works. At least until I talk to someone else.

This also helps with my hesitation with a reliance on standpoints based on group membership – that is, the idea that being a member of a particular marginalized group (for instance, queers) will somehow be able to significantly articulate alternative viewpoints to dominant (in this case non-queer or perhaps more apropos, anti-queer) viewpoints that address the systematic features of the social situation. I’ve met enough gay people who hold racist, sexist, homophobic, classist viewpoints to know that simply being gay is not a guarantee that you’ll understand power relations. Even when I attempt to account for the role of ideology – and my god, that could be another thesis in and of itself – it’s bothered me for a while.

Then I was dinking around the website Good Old Games, which features old-school PC games you can download. I registered for the site on a whim, and went through the usual form asking for a username, password, etc. The “Gender:” drop-down box came up, and here’s what they listed:

Guy
Dude
Gentleman
Chap
Bredda
Bad Bwai
Lady
Girl
Hottie
Chixor
Grrl
Missy
Dawta
Funky Monkey
Xippie
Pirate
Ninja
Jedi
Female
Male

Definitely unexpected that a gender box would be this playful. I chose “Ninja”.

1. Value neutrality;
2. Lack of bias, bias that includes:
1. Personal attachment;
2. Political aims;
3. Ideological commitments;
4. Preferences;
5. Desires;
6. Interests;
7. Emotion.
3. Scientific method;
4. Rationality;
5. An attitude of ‘psychological distance’;
6. ‘World-directedness’;
7. Impersonality;
8. Impartiality;
9. Having to do with facts;
10. Having to do with things as they are in themselves; as universality;
11. Disinterestedness;
12. Commensurability;
13. Intersubjective agreement.

From Janack, Marianne. “Dilemmas of Objectivity.” Social Epistemology 16.3 (2002): 267-281.

What particularly bothers me about the way “the cloud” is discussed, besides the enormously unacknowledged class/continental/educational barriers, is that it’s a term of obfuscation. A cloud (the sky kind) is vapid. It’s ethereal. It has no substance. But the underlying architecture of the cloud (the online kind) is very much grounded in material goods. And hell, a lot of it is underground. And because it’s grounded to actual, material goods, it implies a who mess of corporate and governmental entities enmeshed in the very foundations of the architecture.

Just because cloud computing allows users to access services without understanding the underlying architecture supporting that service doesn’t mean that it’s not there. It just means that we’re trying to purposefully simplify a complex, hugely connected system by turning it (more so) into a black box: a simple input/output device.

The danger in simplifying a new type of computing is exemplified by what’s lost in the process. Users, disconnected from the underlying hardware (and hardware limitations) become insulated to their own privilege. I’m betting it will also have an effect of limiting most people’s abilities to see other potentials for the architecture, unless you’re already familiar with the technology. This, like Herbert Marcuse says, limits our capacity to think critically and negatively about the current state of our material world.

Further, the amount of power that is handed over to the folks who run the hardware (and background architecture) is aggregated (aggravated?) by cloud computing. Think of China. How much easier would it be to control a population by having all of their files, all their computing, done among a mysterious cloud?

Further, this begs the question of what the cloud is supposed to accomplish. From most of the articles I’ve read, it appears that the cloud represents a great opportunity for businesses to make a buck. Liberation? Doubtful. Freedom from oppression? Doubtful. Happiness? Hardly.

Or have I missed something here?

But we don’t really view all bias as bad. Different schools of thought within the same scientific discipline may very well be capable of producing good ideas and evidence, even if they stand in opposition (or partially in opposition) to one another. Think sociology: conflict theory, symbolic interaction, social construction, network theory. Think engineering, and those who solve problems in a lens of classical physics, nuclear physics, or thermodynamics (or a combination). Each represents a fairly significant bias in interpreting data and generation of hypotheses, but all produce empirically accurate results at least some of the time or else we would not use them.

So when the claim “you see __ism everywhere” is used, is it a declaration that a particular worldview is not adequate in explaining the phenomena under question? If this were true, we should be able to dismiss those particular worldviews as inaccurate (or at least less successfully explanatory) than a competing theory (or none at all). This is tantamount to proclaiming that the ideas and evidence gathered by understanding sexism, racism, etc. are not valid in the face of one that is androcentric, racist, etc. Is this true? I think partially: when I dismiss someone as a racist, it’s because I think that they misinterpret or ignore a large body of incontrovertible evidence saying that racial superiority is not true, and doesn’t conform to my experience in the world.

But does the dismissal matter? I argue it shouldn’t. To not discuss the arguments someone is making, or the evidence they have gathered, is to commit a logical fallacy and succumb to an ad hominem attack on someone’s ethos. I suspect it’s deployed in order to convince someone (or yourself) that what someone is saying can’t possibly be right. It’s a cheap tactic, but effective in closing debate.

Frankly, we should be able to move beyond this stage into the stage where we evaluate the claims people make — all people, feminist, anti-racist or not — by the evidence used to support them, rather than seeking to destroy credibility of the people that proclaim them.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social control over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls.

He wrote this in 1964.

But those aren’t that useful. I was thinking, oh hey, it would be cool if I had a way to track all the major revisions of this thesis from start to finish, when a thought suddenly came to me: I could probably use Google Docs to track the history of my thesis. Plus, I could let others view it, which might save me the trouble of sending out (and keeping track of!) different versions as I send out parts for review. So, there it is, available for viewing if I invite you (if you want to see it). At some point I may even publish it as a webpage, a nifty feature that Google Docs allows you to do, but I will check with the OSU folks to see if I’d be breaking copyright by doing so.

I think it’ll be a blast to be able to track the changes in my thesis this way. It might make for an interesting post some day.

Has anyone else done something like this? Created a way for folks to passively see some piece of writing that is “in process”? Writing seems so mystified, I wonder if this is helpful or hurtful.

Here are my answers to the major questions in that short form:

1. What is the problem/question?

   Engineers in the United States carry out their work using a variety of background assumptions about ethics that may or may not be stated or made apparent to engineers. These assumptions, which are informed by observable values and beliefs, are part of the intellectual framework that comprises the individual and collective standpoints of engineers. What are the background assumptions, taught explicitly or tacitly, that create and inform the ethical standpoint of engineers? Are there local, contextual forms of engineering ethical decision-making that may lead to more ethical, more effective outcomes?

2. Why is this a problem/question?

   Unstated and unacknowledged background assumptions influencing ethical decision-making are (completely or relatively) unavailable for critical scrutiny and may even mask their own influence, leading to problematic or less-effective ethical decision-making processes.

3. Why does this problem/question matter?

   Engineers, as practitioners of applied science, wield significant power to determine what problems related to the material world are analyzed and the manner they are actually or potentially resolved. Without critical depth in understanding how to act according to coherent ethical principles, engineers may unknowingly support, and even foster, systems of power and privilege under which all people involved are less effective in providing for reasoned, substantial ethical outcomes.

4. What is your proposed solution/answer?

   Using anthropological and sociological studies of engineering (Bruno Latour and others), I intend to demonstrate that engineers reproduce discourse on ethics as externally imposed upon engineering and based on the actions of individual engineers, leaving engineers with a reduced understanding of effective methods to resolve ethical problems. This discourse also portrays the practice of engineering as relatively value-neutral as it engages in solving practical material problems of the world. Helen Longino’s analysis of science includes many points readily applicable the practice of engineering, such as: constitutive and contextual values; her normative theory of scientific knowledge (including norms such as venues, uptake of criticism, public standards, tempered equity, provisionality); and her conclusion that because there are examples of good science that already contains contextual values, we may include other contextual values in our understanding of scientific processes.

   These analyses provide a useful starting point to shift the discussion of engineering ethics from the individually-focused question, “What are the attributes of an ethical engineer?,â€? toward the social position of “What are the attributes of ethical engineering decisions?,â€? allowing space to acknowledge the social values that affect engineering decision-making and providing a location to critically analyze those values. By shifting this discussion toward an engineering that is explicitly local, contextual and social, this solution may provide room for more critical problem seeking and problem resolution, along with an engineering that will actively seek diverse perspectives (as in Longino’s analysis of science), allowing for a broader decision-making base that may provide more effective, more ethical outcomes.

   ]]> http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/36/feed 0 http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/34 http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/34#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:15:25 +0000 ML Sugie http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/?p=34 A link from Zen Habits about being a Cyber Minimalist: How to Work (Almost) Completely Online. It’s an interesting approach, and one I might consider doing.

   Except for the fact that all my data would then reside on a Google server. Which means I have little actual control over where my data is being sent: it could be intercepted, they could keep backups of whatever I put on there, or (perhaps one of the biggest drawback) is that, given current political climates, the info about my life – what I write, where I’m at, pictures of places I go to – would all be accessible in one neat little place.

   So perhaps this should just be a caution for my more radical friends: don’t plan activities using Google, or really anything online. Stick to old-school tactics.

   >:-)

   ]]> http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/34/feed 0 http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/33 http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/archives/33#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:31:00 +0000 ML Sugie http://oregonstate.edu/~sugiem/blog/?p=33 I haven’t been scared of the dark, or of people walking around in the dark, since I was a little kid. Back then I slept with the lights on, stayed up as late as possible, and generally avoided situations where it was dark. Nowadays I rarely if ever second-guess walking in the dark. I find it kind of peaceful.

   The peace is a privilege, though. It took me years to understand that many womenfolk don’t feel comfortable walking alone at night, because it’s viewed as unsafe and a personal risk. It took me another good bout of time to realize how deeply ingrained this fear is – the fear of rape, assault, mugging seems to be much more present in the thoughts of my woman friends than it is in… well, any man I know.

   I’m also a fast walker. If I’m walking a block behind someone, I can usually catch up in three blocks or less. At night, I know this looks suspicious. I’ve walked, quickly, behind someone in Portland and watched as he pulled out a can of mace and kept glancing almost-behind him. MACE. FOR ME. I am about as dangerous as a bad hair day. But nonetheless, men walking at night = dangerous person.

   In recognition of this, if I am walking behind a person at night, especially a woman, I cross the street unless it’s in a fairly public, well-traveled street. I don’t want to be that person which causes a woman (or a man) terror. I hate that I feel like I have to do it, but I feel that until we’re at a place where people aren’t afraid of each other at night, and where women aren’t socialized to be terrorized if someone is walking up behind them at night, it’s what I should do.

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