WilliamsMemo23

Williams Memo 23 Hegemonic Backdrops For this memo, you should write a few hundred words describing conventional or hegemonic ideas about your object of concern. See Bruce Pfaffenberger's description of hegemonic ideas about technology in "The Social Anthropology of Technology, "Annual Review of Anthropology. Volume 21, Page 491-516, Oct 1992 (available through Folsom Library). Pasted from  //**Technology designed for developing nations should be simple**// Designing for industrialized nations is always designing for high tech, and designing for the developing world is always designing for low tech. This is one binary that needs to be poofed away. 'Environmentally sustainable design' collapses this binary because what is good for the environment in a specific locality, is (potentially, but not necessarily) good for the world (this is if you believe in the Gaia theory, or the Earth as a large eco-system, which not all scientists do, but it is one justification for the cap and trade schemes to clean the environment)(REFERENCE UNKNOWN). Thus environmentally sustainable design is design for a specific locality that is good for both industrialized and developing nations. Willoughby defines appropriate technology as "[a] mode of technology-practice aimed at ensuring that technology is compatible with its psychosocial and biophysical context (44)." Unfortunately, 'appropriate design' seems to have gained this valence or political definition where it is mapped onto design for developing nations, which is then further mapped on to low tech or 'simple' technology. Professionals (e.g. engineers, doctors) are saying appropriate design and meaning design for rural locations with less technology infrastructure. For example, hospital labs in the USA are transitioning from being full of large unwieldy PCR machines and spectrometers to using effortless, small and efficient lab-on-a-chip devices. Developing nations may prefer the more complicated machines because the simpler lab-on-a-chip devices depend on reagents that are company-specific, expensive, and not very accessible in the developing world (Malkin 581) Malkin, R. A. 2007. Design of Health Care Technologies for the Developing World. Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 9:567–87 Willoughby, K. W. Technology Choice: A Critique of the Appropriate Technology Movement. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. //**Technology users are unsophisticated in developing nations**// I believe this is a hegemonic idea that is unfortunately influencing the design of 'appropriate technology' for the developing world, but I have not read any secondary literature that confirms this.
 * Memo23: Hegemonic Backdrops**