Juan C. Lucena, Colorado School of Mines;
Jessica M. Smith, Colorado School of Mines

Denver 2015: STS Infrastructures

Animated artwork explores the emotional dimensions of our development and implementation of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) area of teaching, research and practice at an engineering university. These emotions illustrate the opportunities and barriers we faced bringing critical STS perspectives into analyses of CSR and then try to incorporate these into both engineering education and corporate practice. Seeking to integrate social justice into CSR and learn how to cultivate engineers to become agents of what we term community-based CSR, we facilitated a participatory engagement of corporate, academic, and NGO actors that investigated the multiple and contested constructions and practices of CSR in the extractive industries, which present some of the most salient impacts on people and the environment. We conclude by showing how STS knowledge and expertise have much to contribute to the remaking of CSR and the refashioning of engineers as agents of social justice.