seminar: fabian scholtes on moral knowledge in technology-based development
DESCRIPTION
Fabian Scholtes, Centre for Development Research, Bonn gives a STEPS Centre seminar entitled Moral values and Solar Panels: moral knowledge in technology-based development For more information see: http://www.steps-centre.org/events/stepsseminars.htmlTRANSCRIPT
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Outline
Fabian Scholtes, Centre for Development Research, Bonn
Moral values and Solar Panels:
moral knowledge in technology-based development
1. Introduction: why look at the morality-technology nexus
2. Observations: development and the practice of moral norms and values
3. Moral knowledge: a concept for empirical research
4. The moral facet of solar panels
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Background
General objective: understand better how micro interaction works in development practice
• Focus 1: moral values as ubiquitous but ambivalent aspect in a moral-political field
• Focus 2: technology-based development – renewable energy technologies (RETs)
• Focus 3: hinterland of Northeast Brazil – the poorhouse in a regional superpower
• Focus 4: local practices around the socio-cultural installation and integration of tangible technological systems
Link to STEPS: the S/sustainability of RETs
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
The morality/technology nexus
Insights from STS
• The ‚morality‘ of a weighty hotelroom key and a fast-closing door-spring: pre-scription and ethics delegated to things
• Socio-cultural life-cycle of technological devices/systems:
– from design to use and re-configuration
– co-constructions of/according to purposes and meanings
• The morality of green technology: ‚morality made durable, and to be installed durably‘ – but subject to life-cycle
=> nexus for this research: ambivalence of ‚good technology‘ as a materialisation of the ambivalence of ‚development‘
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Development and morality
Assumptions
• Moral: oughts/obligations, as related to (interaction with) others => formal, analytical, external concept
• Practice of moral norms/values vs. moral practice
‘Evidence’ from the literature: strands of ambivalence– Undermining/instrumentalising e.g. ‘participation’
– Moral discrepancies and struggle at social/cultural interfaces
– Brokerage/translation: moral boundary concepts
– Emergence of moral order from contestation and improvisation
– Discursive moral structure
– Limits to ‘orderly’ and moral practice
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
The ‚technical code‘
• A classical double-bind of donor agencies‘ policy:
• Get them in the driver‘s seat (it‘s about their ownership/Sustainability)...
• ... to go the way we want them to (we have to account for success)
• Stage development as technical fix/support
• Hide donor‘s influence in technical rationality of means
• Maintain partner‘s autonomy
• Technical code as meta-code that enables negotiation (rather than depoliticisation)
=> Technical, but nevertheless moral (liberally ‚neutral‘) discourse as constructive repertory
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Facets of practice
• Moral values as social structure:
• restrictive (norms) and enabling (orientation) frame
• repertory: strategic and cooperative (boundary objects)
• Agency: affirmative, deviant, constructive
• Agents: morally ‚and‘ strategically motivated
Ex.: participation: restricting policies, orienting
practice, killer argument, unite diverse actors
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
‚Moral knowledge‘
• Why understand moral values as knowledge?• Differentiate from morality as condition or motivation
• Capture the structural (frame) and agency (resource) aspect
• Capture intangible character and levels of consciousness (practical vs. discursive consciousness)
• Differentiate/relate to other knowledges
– know-that vs. know-how; empirical (causal/process vs. facts/state);
– knowledge systems: local, expert, organisational, …
• ‘Moral knowledge’: ensemble of moral norms and values that are relevant in context by ‘being known’
• A sociological approach, unlike moral epistemology!
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Operationalising
Some insights from F. Barth’s Anthropology of Knowledge
• Stock of knowledge: what is known to be ‘good’, ‘just’ etc.
– elements are overlapping and distributed – who knows what?
• Ways of knowing (1): the creation of stock and structure
– how elements are represented, communicated etc.
– how elements are attributed a moral status
– how (new) elements are (re-) ordered and made coherence
• Ways of knowing (2): agency and the practice of structure
– Implementation, orientation, use, manipulation, justification of choices, …
– Structuration: affirmation, critique, re-production
=> ontologically, separating these is wrong! It is dialectical analysis.
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Application
Where to find and research moral knowledge?
• ask for judgements/arguments; check moral codes
• analyse performance of ethics in ‚moral breakdowns‘
• observe management of daily dilemmas, conflicts etc.
• explicitly ethical set-ups (participation) vs. others
• document developments of practice and of the moral
status of
– a policy, a practice, a project
– an artefact or a socio-technological system ???
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Decentralised RETs: installed morality?
“Worldwide more than 1,6 billion people do not have access to electricity. 80 % of those live in rural areas. […] The provision of a stable and reliable access to electricity in rural areas […] becomes the foundation for development and progress. Electricity […] enables poor communities to take their destiny in their own hands.
[…] How can access to electricity and the fight against climate change be reconciled? Renewable energies are the solution. […]”
(Ernesto Macias, President, Alliance Rural Electrification ARE)
• Empowerment: general infrastructure, purposes open
• Humanism: close to beneficiary, master of destiny
• Environmental soundness
• Productivism: create production, growth, employment
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Solar panels
• Public/collective uses
• Water pumping and storage
• Agricultural processing
• Street and public building lighting
• Community centre (solar ICT kiosk)
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Solar panels
• Public/collective uses
• Water pumping and storage
• Agricultural processing
• Street and public building lighting
• Community centre (solar ICT kiosk)
• Private uses
• TV, radio, lamps,
electric fan
• small processing units
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
The co-construction of the morality of PV
• „what is the device‘s moral legacy when being induced?“
– who provides the technology? How do their intentions relate to ‚local‘ ones?
• using and making markets? imperialist modernisation?
– which are (inbuilt) long-term development intentions and justifications?
• standard of living, growth, climate change mitigation, ...
– which are the intended uses and applications? What is their moral status?
• „how are practices and people re-organised?“
– autonomy of users vs. accountability, reponsibility, solidarity, ...
• SolarHomeSystem vs. community panel
• Who benefits? distributive justice – man‘s gain?
– cultural change and the introduction of new values
• „which moral meaning does the technology acquire?“
– a driver of individualisation? Of new dependence?
Which MK is practiced in this lifecycle, how, and how does it change?
ZEFZentrum für EntwicklungsforschungCenter for Development ResearchUniversity of Bonn
Fabian Scholtes: On Moral Values and Solar Panels: Moral knowledge in technology-based development – STEPS, Oct. 31, 2008
Discussion
- (How) does it make sense – and is it useful – to research the moral status and moral power of RET, or of technology in general?
- (How) does it make sense to conceptualise the practice of moral norms and values as a practice of knowledge?
- How could sociologies of knowledge add/relate to this?
- How could sociologies of technology add/relate to this?
Thank you!
Further comments are much appreciated:
Please email to [email protected]