Engineering studies
Engineering studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social sciences and humanities devoted to the study of engineers and their activities. Studying engineers refers among other to the history and the sociology of their profession, its institutionalization and organization, the social composition and structure of the population of engineers, their training, their trajectory, etc. A subfield is for instance Women in engineering. Studying engineering refers to the study of their activities and practices, their knowledge and ontologies, their role into the society, their engagement.
Engineering studies investigate how social, political, economical, cultural and historical dynamics affect technological research, design, engineering and innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, economics, politics and culture.
Sometimes Engineering studies refers to Engineering education.
Subfields and related fields
- History of engineering
- Sociology of engineers
- Women in engineering
- Engineering ethnography
- Engineering culture and representation
- Design studies
- Social study of engineering sciences
- Engineering in society and political study of engineering
- Organizational studies of engineers and engineering
- Critical approach and philosophy of engineering
- Engineering education
- Engineering ethics
- Social construction of technology (SCOT)
- Social shaping of technology
- Technological change
- Sociology of innovation
- History of technology
- (Constructive) Technology Assessment
Journals
Associations
- The International Network for Engineering Studies (INES)
- Society for the History of the Technology
- Society for Philosophy and Technology
- Society for the Social Study of Science (4S)
- European Society for the Study of Science and Technology
- Société d'Anthropologie des Connaissances
References
- Bijker, Wiebe, Thomas Hughes & Trevor Pinch (eds) (1987). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press.
- Bijker, Wiebe & John Law (eds) (1994). Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Inside Technology Series).
- Downey, Gary Lee(1998) The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits Among Computer Engineers. Routledge.
- Downey, Gary Lee & Kacey Beddoes (eds) (2011) What is Global Engineering Education For? The Making of International Educators. Morgan and Claypool Publishers.
- Hughes, Thomas (1983) Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Jasanoff, Sheila, Gerald Markle, James Petersen & Trevor Pinch (eds) (1994). Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Latour, Bruno (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- MacKenzie, Donald & Judy Wajcman (eds.) (1999). The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
- MacKenzie, Donald (1996). Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Inside Technology Series).
- Restivo, Sal (ed.) (2005), Science, Technology, and Society: An Encyclopedia. New York: Oxford.
- Rip, Arie, Thomas J. Misa & Johan Schot (eds) (1995). Managing Technology in Society: The approach of Constructive Technology Assessment London/NY: Pinter.
- Rosenberg, Nathan (1994) Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics and History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Vinck, Dominique (2003). Everyday engineering. Ethnography of design and innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.