Training engineers for sustainability, but which one?: A discussion of critical alternatives to the “good Anthropocene”

Résumé En

Our submission explores how sustainability is and could be introduced into engineering curricula. Based on a study case of a curricular reform at the Lyon National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA Lyon, France), we discuss the modern heritage of French engineering schools and how it can frame the understanding of sustainability toward a “good Anthropocene”. We then offer some reflections on this perspective and try to propose a critical approach for educating engineering students for sustainability.Given the strong links between French engineering schools and positive philosophy (1) and more generally with modernity (2), this educational field carries an important epistemological heritage based on a realist ontology and a nature-culture divide. The development of a holistic science of sustainability supported by the UNESCO (3) is one of many examples suggesting that the modern paradigm alone may not be adapted to solve the “wicked problems” (4) of the Anthropocene. However, there is no consensus on this position and some researchers have argued for a “good Anthropocene” perspective based on a new wave of modernization in which humans would extend their control over planetary regulation (5). In this communication, we stress that this perspective can lead to a renewal of what Foucault called pastoral power, as shown by Paul Crutzen (6) statements implying that engineers and scientists should “guide mankind towards global, sustainable, environmental management”. Other narratives are possible, e.g. as proposed by Bonneuil (7). From this point of view, we discuss how a pluralist approach to the role of engineers in the Anthropocene could be elaborated supporting new forms of democratic structures and organizations, as Latour’s proposal of a “democracy extended to things themselves” (2). Such democracy implies to reconsider the relations between humans, other living beings and things in order to build new political communities able to transform the world in a sustainable way.