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This paper presents work-in-progress analyzing the early stages of development of an internet-connected database for local energy research in Sri Lanka. The Energy Forum, a Colombo-based NGO, expects this database to link university and NGO researchers, government policy makers and functionaries, and government and private-sector energy providers, as well as provide an institutional voice for the nearly one-half of the island's population that is without electricity. The Energy Forum is committed to the most general goals of participatory design-better design and greater democracyhowever organizational constraints force them to consider carefully the possibilities and limitations of participatory design in this specific application. In this paper, I introduce the Energy Forum and describe the context in which they work. Next, I describe the Energy Forum's larger project which the database is part of. Finally, I consider how participatory design fits within the Energy Forum's database design effort, where design is understood to include the entire development cycle from database conceptualization to implementation. The paper presented draws on field research in Sri Lanka during June and July of2000.

The US National Academy of Engineering's 2008 report, Grand Challenges for Engineering, puts forward a provocative vision of future civilization and engineering's role in it. Notably, the report signals a trend in engineering toward more explicit and direct engagement with enduring, complex social problems, offering intriguing opportunities for exploring the relationship between engineering and questions of social justice. This paper makes one such exploration by analyzing the report's explicit framings of engineering-for-social-problem-solving and the implicit assumptions underlying such framings. It shows how the report frames the non-technical factors as external to—and often barriers for—engineering. In contrast, technical challenges, even immense ones, are framed as wholly within engineering's dominion and as opportunities for both engineering and human civilization as a whole. The paper argues that Grand Challenges signals contemporary tensions in the profession as it seeks an expansive domain of influence and relevance while at the same time narrowly circumscribing what engineers should be accountable for knowing and doing.

This paper shows how the connections between engineering and warfare/militarism are closer than is usually recognized. It investigates the nature of that relationship using theoretical perspectives from critical theory and social constructionism. We draw on historical research into the influence of military institutions and interests on the field of engineering, but also look broadly at cultures of warfare that extend beyond formalized military institutions. Focusing on engineering labor and engineering epistemologies, we suggest that engineering today can be understood as a "war-built" discipline—even when practiced apart from military institutions and projects. We put forward "social justice" as an idealized alternative foundation for engineering. In addition to serving as a corrective to the inordinate influence of militarism on engineering, a social-justice-based approach could also sensitize engineers and others to the pervasive role of social context in shaping both what engineers do and how that is understood to serve broad public interests.

This book investigates the close connections between engineering and war, broadly understood, and the conceptual and structural barriers that face those who would seek to loosen those connections. It shows how military institutions and interests have long influenced engineering education, research, and practice and how they continue to shape the field in the present. The book also provides a generalized framework for responding to these influences useful to students and scholars of engineering, as well as reflective practitioners. The analysis draws on philosophy, history, critical theory, and technology studies to understand the connections between engineering and war and how they shape our very understandings of what engineering is and what it might be. After providing a review of diverse dimensions of engineering itself, the analysis shifts to different dimensions of the connections between engineering and war. First, it considers the ethics of war generally and then explores questions of integrity for engineering practitioners facing career decisions relating to war. Next, it considers the historical rise of the military-industrial-academic complex, especially from World War II to the present. Finally, it considers a range of responses to the militarization of engineering from those who seek to unsettle the status quo. Only by confronting the ethical, historical, and political consequences of engineering for warfare, this book argues, can engineering be sensibly reimagined

This editorial introduces the new journal, IJESJP. It also provides background information on the journal's formation and the ESJP network.