Redfield Peter
Soc Stud Sci. 2016 Apr;46(2):159-83. doi: 10.1177/0306312715620061.
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.
在过去十年里，为应对灾难和极端贫困问题，出现了许多精巧的小型装置。以生命吸管（LifeStraw）为例，这是维斯特格德·弗兰森公司（Vestergaard Frandsen）发明的一种水过滤装置。我将这波人道主义设计与玛丽安娜·德·莱特（Marianne de Laet）和安妮玛丽·莫尔（Annemarie Mol）关于津巴布韦丛林泵的经典文章联系起来进行探讨。生命吸管与丛林泵一样，都秉持技术极简主义原则，也都怀有改善社区生活的道德愿望。然而，与丛林泵不同的是，生命吸管是通过市场逻辑而非与之对抗来定义自身的，它接受“既能做好事又能做得好”这一前提。此外，它并不共享德·莱特和莫尔所设想的津巴布韦社会技术景观框架：一个正朝着民族自我定义稳步迈进的后殖民国家。尽管如此，它显然体现了道德情感，只不过是以人道主义关怀而非发展的表述方式。我的目的是开启三条相互关联的探讨思路。首先，我思考后殖民状况在直接需求微观层面的各个方面，包括对民族国家政治和市场的假设。其次，我强调以基础设施形式存在的科学技术，即规范的物质前沿。第三，我反思性地回归到爱，以及参与学术工作所具有的复杂吸引力。
