Social Justice: A Missing, Unelaborated Dimension in Humanitarian Engineering and Learning Through Service

Negotiations between engineering and non-engineering perspectives are central in humanitarian engineering and learning through service initiatives, and these negotiations inevitably include dimensions of social justice. But what frameworks guide engineers through such negotiations? To date, in published scholarship, social justice has played little to no role in providing structure for work in humanitarian engineering and learning through service. Yet structure is needed to think and act systematically on the social justice dimensions inherent in humanitarian engineering and learning through service initiatives and practices. Drawing from multiple data sources, including interviews with engineering education faculty on the barriers and opportunities to integrating social justice dimensions in such initiatives, we provide a social justice definition and criteria that serve as flexible guidelines for humanitarian engineering and learning through service initiatives. Grounded in a synthesized definition of social justice, the social justice criteria can guide engineers to recognize and map human and non-human, engineering and non-engineering components in problem definition and solution—with social justice at the core. Along with other benefits, these criteria can act as a foundation from which to launch, evaluate, and improve on humanitarian engineering and learning through service work, serving as a vehicle for project initiation, reflection, and self-critique.