Suicide and Technology for War (Scholars Award)

自杀式战争--这是后9/11时代的一个及时话题--在世界各地占据了重要的位置，特别是自20世纪以来。这个项目在范围上具有国际可比性，探索国土安全工程的伦理。在任何处于战争状态的国家，在看似非理性的事情上采取行动可能是理性的，自杀任务就是这种现象的一个关键例子。为国土防御而发动的自杀式战争，尽管是针对敌军，但首先需要人的牺牲，因此引发的伦理问题远远多于技术问题。该项目聚焦于将自杀作为一种形式或战争的两个国家的工程社区，旨在回答一系列相互关联的问题：(1)工程师如何以及为什么支持为国土防御而有组织的自杀式袭击？(2)和平时期的道德敏感性如何降低，以支持绝望的行为是邪恶的，但却是必要的？(3)战争中的社会从一个给定的工程项目中受益的代价(以及对谁来说)是什么？以及，(4)作为一种国防可接受的技术，自杀的可接受成本是多少？项目成果将被用来制作教育材料、公开演讲和大众出版物。这个项目用历史的方法分析了1914年至1961年期间，在这段时期，第一次世界大战、第二次世界大战和冷战都提升了爱国自我牺牲对国家事业的重要性。通过对这些材料的批判性分析，可以对社会实践和技术维度进行一系列比较，不同国家通过积极塑造国土防御的自杀概念，在空中制造了不同版本的自杀战。通俗文学、海报、政府出版物等被用来揭示空中自杀式战争形成的社会技术背景，以及这种情况如何以及为什么在不同的社会背景下不同。总体而言，该项目有助于工程伦理、技术史和科学技术研究方面的学术研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Suicide warfare—a timely topic in post-9/11 world— has occupied important space around the world, especially since the twentieth century. Internationally comparative in scope, this project explores the ethics of engineering for homeland security. In any country at war, it may be rational to act in what appears to be an irrational matter, and suicide missions are a key instance of this phenomenon. Suicide warfare for homeland defense, albeit against enemy forces, first requires human sacrifice, thus raising far more ethical issues than technological ones. Focusing on engineering communities in two nations that used suicide as a form or warfare, the project aims to answer a set of inter-related questions: (1) How and why did engineers support organized suicide attacks for homeland defense? (2) How was the moral sensitivity of peacetime reduced to support the desperate act as evil but necessary? (3) At what cost (and to whom) does society in war benefit from a given engineering project? and, (4) What are the acceptable costs of suicide as a technology acceptable for national defense? Project results will be used to create educational materials, public presentations, and publications in popular outlets.This project uses historical methods to analyze the period from 1914 to 1961, during which World War I, World War II, and the Cold War each elevated the importance of patriotic self-sacrifice for national causes. Critical analyses of these materials enable a series of comparisons of social practices and technological dimensions by which different nations created their versions of suicide warfare in the air by actively shaping the notions of suicide for homeland defense. Popular literature, posters, government publications, and more are used to uncover the socio-technological context in which suicide warfare in the air took shape, and how and why this differed across social contexts. Overall, this project contributes to scholarship on engineering ethics, the history of technology, and Science and Technology Studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.