While engineers and their patrons have always claimed that technology has advanced the common good, I intend to show that more often than not engineers have been mercenaries for those at the center of knowledge, power, and wealth. Engineers design technology that marginalizes certain types of knowledge, people, and culture in favor of those at the center. Far from being a common good, engineered systems have advanced social and environmental inequity by being designed using exploitative social, political, and economic methods. In response to the negative impacts of engineered systems, the mainstream engineering profession has committed in recent years to being much more socially and environmentally responsible. However, the discourse of responsibility adopted by the profession is narrow in scope as it does not recognize the context and process in which technology is designed. Seeking a different way, some engineering reformers are attempting to create different cultures in engineering, in which the technology designed by engineers not only minimizes damage but seeks to create more equity in our communities. These new cultures have been articulated as Humanitarian Engineering or Peace Engineering or Social Justice and Engineering. A key component of these cultures is the concern for the needs of the marginalized whether in communities far away or close to us. While much has already been written about changing the education curriculum, little has been written about how engineers may design technology that values and advances knowledge, people, and culture at the margins. This thesis will theorize as to how engineers may design technology in a socially just manner by articulating an engineering design theory based on power and resistance. This design theory is then validated through discourse analysis of a contentious engineering project, the Site 41 landfill in northern Ontario. I show through the analysis of engineering design discourse at Site 41 that dominant power relations created structures of oppression that marginalized non-experts, Aboriginal communities, and the environment. Alternative design methods that resist these oppressive structures such as participatory, ecofeminist, deep ecological, and decolonized design are proposed as a way for engineers to have worked more justly at Site 41. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-21 12:37:46.28

While it is well understood that many resource-based communities are transitioning to tourism to provide a new economic foundation, few studies have probed in-depth the rationale and mechanisms influencing decision-making processes. This case study does that, providing the rationale behind Nanaimo’s City Council’s decision to build a conference centre and in so doing exposes the processes, actors and events that helped framed its decision. A coastal community in British Columbia, Canada, Nanaimo’s downtown suffered continual decline for nearly two decades. In an attempt to reverse the decline, City Council voted 8 to 1 in favour of a conference centre proposal based on its conviction that a centre would serve as a calling card for the community and function to attract both lifestyle residents and tourists. Moreover, Council’s vote signalled its commitment as an active partner in re-establishing the downtown and repositioning Nanaimo as a post-industrial city with high-level infrastructure and amenities. Although there was initial widespread community support, as the conference centre evolved through a series of iterations, one community group surfaced to challenge its merit and the lack of public engagement in the process. In response, another group surfaced to defend the decision. Through a community referendum, the decision was upheld and the community moved forward with the plan. Nonetheless, the viability of the project was threatened a second time with the civic election as several community residents who resisted the project ran for City Council on a platform that would have halted the project. The community, once again, affirmed the decision to proceed. This case has two steps. First, I present a descriptive analysis to illuminate how the community’s social networks played a role in moving a specific agenda forward. There were two phases of data collection from which data were compiled and analysed. The first phase of data collection examined a variety of written documents in the community and principally included minutes of the various City Committees, independent studies commissioned by the City, newspaper accounts, and sources of information provided by the participants. The information collected in this first phase of study helped to inform the 37 in-depth interviews collected in the second phase of the study. Critical discourse analysis was used to demonstrate how and why different groups in the community justified and rationalized an ideological stance supporting a political and economic framework underwritten by tourism. Overall, the strength of the case is in its details. In demonstrating how the social networks and the local coalitions’ capacity-building efforts shaped civic decision-making and public policy, one gains, in a Foucauldian sense, how governmentality played out as different groups engaged in resistant and counter-resistance mechanisms. Tracing these movements reveals how this community was conditioned towards an economic framework underwritten by a political economy of tourism. Moreover, this case demonstrates that although consideration should be given to the broader economic and political climate, it supports claims in the literature that a high degree of autonomy exists within community decision-making processes. Complementing this consideration is the need to theorize more carefully the role of democracy and governance in determining the satisfaction of outcomes. Finally, more consideration should be given by tourism scholars to be more reflexive about their research, its contested and emotive moments.

While it is well understood that many resource-based communities are transitioning to tourism to provide a new economic foundation, few studies have probed in-depth the rationale and mechanisms influencing decision-making processes. This case study does that, providing the rationale behind Nanaimo’s City Council’s decision to build a conference centre and in so doing exposes the processes, actors and events that helped framed its decision. A coastal community in British Columbia, Canada, Nanaimo’s downtown suffered continual decline for nearly two decades. In an attempt to reverse the decline, City Council voted 8 to 1 in favour of a conference centre proposal based on its conviction that a centre would serve as a calling card for the community and function to attract both lifestyle residents and tourists. Moreover, Council’s vote signalled its commitment as an active partner in re-establishing the downtown and repositioning Nanaimo as a post-industrial city with high-level infrastructure and amenities. Although there was initial widespread community support, as the conference centre evolved through a series of iterations, one community group surfaced to challenge its merit and the lack of public engagement in the process. In response, another group surfaced to defend the decision. Through a community referendum, the decision was upheld and the community moved forward with the plan. Nonetheless, the viability of the project was threatened a second time with the civic election as several community residents who resisted the project ran for City Council on a platform that would have halted the project. The community, once again, affirmed the decision to proceed. This case has two steps. First, I present a descriptive analysis to illuminate how the community’s social networks played a role in moving a specific agenda forward. There were two phases of data collection from which data were compiled and analysed. The first phase of data collection examined a variety of written documents in the community and principally included minutes of the various City Committees, independent studies commissioned by the City, newspaper accounts, and sources of information provided by the participants. The information collected in this first phase of study helped to inform the 37 in-depth interviews collected in the second phase of the study. Critical discourse analysis was used to demonstrate how and why different groups in the community justified and rationalized an ideological stance supporting a political and economic framework underwritten by tourism. Overall, the strength of the case is in its details. In demonstrating how the social networks and the local coalitions’ capacity-building efforts shaped civic decision-making and public policy, one gains, in a Foucauldian sense, how governmentality played out as different groups engaged in resistant and counter-resistance mechanisms. Tracing these movements reveals how this community was conditioned towards an economic framework underwritten by a political economy of tourism. Moreover, this case demonstrates that although consideration should be given to the broader economic and political climate, it supports claims in the literature that a high degree of autonomy exists within community decision-making processes. Complementing this consideration is the need to theorize more carefully the role of democracy and governance in determining the satisfaction of outcomes. Finally, more consideration should be given by tourism scholars to be more reflexive about their research, its contested and emotive moments.