Sino-European engineering schools:  « What counts as engineer »

This research aims at understanding better how Sino-­‐European projects emerges on  the  ground, through practises and everyday work. Within a focus of five visited engineering schools in  popular  China,  ethnographic  observation  focuses  on  two  ones:  Beijing  Central  School  and Sino-­‐French Nuclear Energy Institute (in Zhuhai, Guangdong province).

Approaches

Very  few  have  been  produced  about  in  situ  engineering  practises  in  China  and  their transformations  through interactions with Western engineers. We would like to deal with this scope through  four approaches.  In terms of transfer,  first, as any transfer  from a tradition  to another is an adaptation. Put in the sociology of translation vocabulary,  this means transfer is also translation,  both  in its spatial  and linguistic  signification  (Zarama  and Ruffier).  Hence,  a transfer perspective leads us to our second approach, from the sociology of translation’s point of view, taking or engineering schools as sociotechnical networks, which leads to put an emphasize on  relations  between  human  and  non  human  entities  as  well  (Callon)  so  as  to  embrace  the diversity  of  the  observed  without  a  priori  restrictions.  Having  tracked  all  kinds  of  entities’ networks  and  networking,   analysis  can  be  deepened  through  emphasizing   the  processual dimension of networking, our third approach lies in a paying attention to in situ bargaining as equipment issues. Remaining pragmatic and relational, what is at stake here is the inscribing of actions  within  an  exchange  space  that  knowledge  production  itself  contributes  to  structure (Vinck). Finally, ambitioning sort of a synthesis, our fourth approach aims at giving a global comprehension of engineering practises emerging on my fieldwork as the (re?)production of an engineering  culture,  as  Downey  and  Lucena  mean  it:  there  is  an  engineering  culture  issue whenever some actors define problems differently as others. 

Problematic research issue

A first floor of the question  calls to collect  what are the different  definitions (conceptualised  as well as practiced) of engineering that actors build themselves as programs, so as to draw a precise panorama. Trailing these comprehensions of what counts as engineer, a second  and  deeper  floor  of  our  question  brings  us  to  follow  the  engineering   production process(es) on the ground. So, the problematic issue this research aims at pushing forward lies like  this:  how  do  different  actors  organize  among  each  others  to  stabilise  the  different  practical definitions of engineering at hand on the ground?

 
Hypotheses

Transfers in minor mode

Albert Piette invites us to pay a precise attention to the « minor mode of reality ». It is a question  of taking into account whatever  comes from action in all its dimensions,  not putting aside (what looks like) ‘details’, so as to build a global and multisensorial comprehension.

Symmetry and laterality of transfers

We intend at observing carefully lateral transfers, between peer (as between students without necessarily  passing through the teachers) as well as reciprocal transfers (for instance from  the   students   to   the   teachers). Here may lay keys of the weaving of  the schools sociotechnical  networks through which actors achieve a certain stability of practised definition(s) of engineering. We believe a huge part of such symmetry and laterality develops through a minor mode.

Double constraint: an engineering culture playing with opposites?

Thanks to Albert Piette again, we may think about contrasted and competing (elements of) definitions as not fitting together. This is what he calls ‘double constraint’ situations pushing for an impossible choice, meaning it does not destroy the possibility of the opposite choice. As an illustration, Beijing Central School claims to be a generalist as well as a specialist training school and students  are expected  to behave  as so called  ‘Chinese  style’ and ‘French  style’ engineers. Hence, such a plastic notion will be very helpful in painting the complexity of Sino-European engineering   identities issues through practises, whether more or less vertical, lateral, symmetrical, asymmetrical, minor and/or major modes of (cultural) transfer.