Dominant Ideas about Technology and Science - Assignment Example

Q1: Explain why are the dominant ideas about technology and science inherently opposed to environmental sustainability and justice. The argument that technology and science has always been opposed to environment, sustainability and justice is a controversial but a valid position anchored on several legitimate evidences. One need only look around us and read the news to determine that most pressing environmental and social issues that confront us today could be could be attributed to the pursuit of technology and science. The rapid industrialization and economic development as spurred by technology as well as the scientific discoveries were all being undertaken regardless of their impact to nature and human life. Vandana Shiva (2005) outlined provided a comprehensive outline of insights as to how technology and science fundamentally opposes the environment and the concepts of sustainability and justice. First, there is the position that technology and science will always be resource-hungry, which underpins several critical consequences. Shiva cited the rapid industrialization of the West to illustrate this point. The technological advances that drove this phenomenon, which began in Britain, led to the exhaustion of resources in colonized nations. The case of India was cited. The requirements for resources and the export of technology from Britain into the country have led to severe ecological erosion and destruction. More contemporary examples include the severe pollution of waterways especially in China where many industries are in full steam, fueling its rapid economic growth. According to Shiva, the acceptability of the environmental damage is supported by the argument for progress, “economic value”, and improvement, which technology and science are inextricably linked. There is the position that technology and science will ensure economic growth that would uplift the lives of poor countries and their people. The rationale ensures a vicious cycle. The environment is exhausted and damaged in order to produce goods and create wealth for purposes of improving human lives. But the damage leads to destruction of sources of sustenance, man-made calamities and accidents that keep people from their livelihood, leading to more inequality and poverty that spur further requirements for development. Shiva covered this in his discourse of the “shift from the ecological processes of reproduction to the technological processes of production.” Unfortunately, the former, which has naturally regenerative capability, is being supplanted by something that cannot sustain its own. This underpins technology and science’s need to use, burn, and destroy in order to perpetuate. Another perspective to this issue was put forward by Hansen who argued that technology and science view the environment as something hostile and needs to be controlled and harnessed (6). Regardless of whether this concept is true or forced on the public to rationalize scientific and technological activities, it is now a guiding principle that egg technologists and scientists forward in the name of progress, innovation and human comfort. Shiva noted that science and technology originated and was developed in the West. It was, therefore, built within the context of their culture, society and values as well as built around strategies with the interest of Western people in mind. Once these technological and scientific artifacts and tools are exported to other countries such as in Asia and Africa, they wield incredible destruction to the social fabric, economy and culture to the point that they violate human rights. The main paradigm involves what Shiva called as the sacrifice of people’s rights to create new property rights. Unlike the norms that typify local and indigenous cultures and way of life, technology and science leads people from the sustainable use of the environment to blatant consumption of nature to fulfill not just human needs but capital and wealth accumulation. What is particularly notable is that inequalities and poverty emerge as a consequence because many countries are not able to meet and address the conditions created by the costs of resource-intensive and resource-destructive technological processes (Shiva). Unfortunately, industrialization requires people to be uprooted from their traditional source of livelihoods. Another important factor that supports this point is the mechanization required in technological processes. It took jobs away from people. For instance, Shiva cited how biotechnology is increasingly taking away the means of agricultural production from the farmers. The issue of social justice emerges within the discourse of technology and science as a tool to perpetuate Western societies, the affluent and the big companies – those who monopolize technological and scientific means either of production or some other economic processes. This can be demonstrated in the exodus of industrial facilities from the West and more affluent countries into the peripheral countries. Through globalization, this was made possible. The industries were sent to poorer countries while the wealth and control remained. These countries have cheaper labor, raw materials and need for capital because of poverty. They are then forced to address the problem of industrial operations such as waste, pollution and poor working conditions. In the end, the people from poor countries became just another form of resource that can be exploited and used in the name of Western progress. Bibliography Hansen, Anders. Environment, Media and Communication. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2010. Print. Shiva, Vandana. “Biotechnological development and the conservation of biodiversity.” Internationalizing cultural studies. Ed. A. Abbas and J. Nguyet Erni. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005. Print Q2:How is development imagined and proposed? Why do these ideas support an inherently unjust society? Development according to Escobar is imagined and proposed in Western terms. This definition apparently took root after the Second World War when Harry Truman took it upon himself and upon the United States to help “underdeveloped” countries replicate the American experience (3). What ensued was the development of the concept of development based on “high levels of industrialization and urbanization, technicalization of agriculture, rapid growth of material production and living standards, and the widespread adoption of modern education and cultural values” (Escobar, 4). Here science and technology is “imagined” as the all encompassing solution to the problems and difficulties the world over. While the United States was not only one responsible for the definition of development and its imposition on the world, those that contributed and embraced the concept and thrust included all the powerful countries that emerged victorious in the Second World War. To this end, the United Nations was promptly called in as an implementing agency to the vision. The adverse impact to the “imagined” and “proposed” development could be identified in its own policy pronouncement, which underscored: There is a sense in which economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of cast creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated (cited in Escobar, 4). The above variables point to the monopoly by which development has been created and proposed. If one examines the UN pronouncement above, there is an implication of a universal recognition and acceptance for sanctioning a sweeping and ambition plan to develop countries with lower economic performance. It is not difficult to realize that the seed of the idea was put forward by the US and was immediately supported by its cohorts, those with similar interests, values and objectives. There was no input from the concerned countries, particularly on issues, values and developments that would work in their specific contexts and experiences. It was a one-way global policy-making that assumed technology and industrialization as the answer to economic problems. Unfortunately, this caught on with development at the forefront of policymaking in many countries. These then are the reasons why this type of conceptualization about development is unjust for society. The concept was with its unilateral development was used as a framework for exploitation. In the words of Escobar, the supposed “universal” strategy for development resulted into the very opposite of its objectives: “massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression” (p. 4). After 1950, the United States and its allies led the world, directing the trajectory of the course it would take. The policymaking that resulted could not keep self-interest from tainting the goals. For example, there is the case of the International Monetary Fund. The reason for its foundation was noble, which was to help fund the development of poor countries. Unfortunately, the organization became a tool to force nations into adopting policies that benefit countries such as the US. Using financial loans as leverage, the IMF could coerce countries to adopt policies and positions such as those supporting globalizations, which severely disadvantaged their economic prospects. The extent and the degree by which the US-sponsored developmental concept was assimilated are supposedly in line with the dynamics of power. According to Escobar, this fits within the colonizer-colony interrelationship that existed before the war and persisted to this day. World powers shape economic and social realities and the Third World countries found themselves susceptible to the suggestion. Escobar explained that after the Second World War, many countries begin to see themselves as underdeveloped and deciding “to develop” with an increase in policy interventions and reforms (6). The offshoot is that countries no longer had the capability to construct or continue their own social and cultural model because the standard became the Western construct (7). This is best shown in Khan’s (2012) article detailing how a dam being constructed has launched a national debate in India regarding what constitutes development. The Narmada Dam project was being promoted by the government as a boon to the economy with its potential to power Indian cities, irrigate the lands of big farmers and contribute to governmental coffers (Khan, 195). The project, however, will entail the displacement and economic dislocation of indigenous tribal populations. In the US-sponsored development, the dam should outweigh all other issues. But the outcome will result to immediate incidence of poverty and degradation onto a group of people. Bibliography Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press, 2011. Print. Khan, Tabassum. “’Dam’ the irony for The Greater Common Good: A critical cultural analysis of the Narmada Dam debate.” International Journal of Communication, 6 (2012), 194-213. Print. Read More