Fluid technologies: The Bush Pump, the LifeStraw® and microworlds of humanitarian design
Fluid technologies: The Bush Pump, the LifeStraw® and microworlds of humanitarian design
复制标题
流体技术：布什泵、LifeStraw® 和人道主义设计的微观世界
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2016
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Peter Redfield
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Peter Redfield
在过去的十年里，为了应对灾害和极端贫困问题，出现了许多巧妙的小型设备。关注由Vestergaard Frandsen公司发明的水过滤设备LifeStraw ®，我将这一人道主义设计浪潮与Marianne de Laet和Annemarie Mol关于津巴布韦布什泵的经典文章联系起来。LifeStraw分享了Bush Pump的技术极简主义原则，以及改善社区生活的道德愿望。然而，与泵不同的是，吸管通过而不是违背市场逻辑来定义自己，接受一个人可以“在做好事的同时做得好”的前提。此外，它并不认同德莱特和莫尔所设想的津巴布韦社会技术图景的框架：一个幸福地走向民族自我定义的后殖民国家。尽管如此，它显然体现了道德影响，如果说是人道主义关切而不是发展的话。我的目的是提出三个相互关联的问题供讨论。首先，我认为在微观层面的迫切需要，包括民族国家的政治和市场的假设后殖民条件的方面。第二，我强调科技在形式上的基础，物质上的前线规范。第三，我本能地回到了爱情，以及从事学术工作的复杂诱惑。
Over the past decade, many ingenious, small-scale gadgets have appeared in response to problems of disaster and extreme poverty. Focusing on the LifeStraw ® , a water filtration device invented by the company Vestergaard Frandsen, I situate this wave of humanitarian design relative to Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol’s classic article on the Zimbabwe Bush Pump. The LifeStraw shares the Bush Pump’s principle of technical minimalism, as well as its ethical desire to improve the lives of communities. Unlike the pump, however, the straw defines itself through rather than against market logic, accepting the premise that one can ‘do well while doing good’. Moreover, it does not share the assumed framework of de Laet and Mol’s Zimbabwean socio-technical landscape: a postcolonial state happily en route to national self-definition. Nonetheless, it clearly embodies moral affect, if in the idiom of humanitarian concern rather than development. My aim is to open up three interrelated lines of inquiry for discussion. First, I consider aspects of a postcolonial condition at the micro-level of immediate needs, including assumptions about nation-state politics and markets. Second, I emphasize science and technology in the form of infrastructure, the material frontline of norms. Third, I return reflexively to love, and the complicated allure of engagement in academic work.