Engineering the network society: A social worlds/arenas analysis of engineering in government and non governmental organizations in Colombia

Research in engineering studies and politics of design has shown how engineering and corporate capitalism have been co-constructing each other since the end of the 19th century in western societies. However, currently there are no corresponding studies about contemporary changes in engineering brought about by the late phase of capitalism that Manuel Castells has called "informational capitalism." This phase of capitalism has spread very quickly during the last two decades, reaching the poorest countries of the world via the global corporate networks of multinationals and the discourse of informational development. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature in engineering studies by exploring how local engineers in Colombia, a so-called "developing country," are responding to the now internationally hegemonic discourses of informational capitalism and developmentalism. In this context, system and computer engineers have become central actors constructing not only technologies, but also visions of society that help facilitate the construction of market and non-market oriented versions of the information society. In the process, engineering has also adapted to some of the changes being brought by the rise of informational capitalism and developmentalism in Colombia. The most important of these changes is the emergence of a type of engineering oriented to serve social needs that the market and the State leave unattended. This kind of engineering, which I call NG(o)neering, offers innovative ways to apply the knowledge and skills of engineering within society and to understand professionalism in a new light. NG(o)neering also produces socio-technical versions of the information society that balance the dominant tendency to construct informational capitalism, offering paths of professional development for engineers that were not available before. The methodology used in this dissertation has been informed by Anselm Strauss' social worlds/arena theory and Herbert Schiller's Marxist critique of the "information society." The collection of data was based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork, 43 interviews and archival analysis.;Keywords. informational capitalism, informational developmentalism, engineering, engineering cultures, politics of engineering design...