Professional Ethics: “Ungrievable Lives” as an Interactional Production in an Undergraduate Engineering Ethics Course

Professional Ethics: “Ungrievable Lives” as an Interactional Production in an Undergraduate Engineering Ethics Course

Thomas M. Phillip ( Education, UCLA)
April 15, 2016 / 1:30 PM
Education 1205

In this session, Thomas M. Phillip will share video data from an undergraduate engineering ethics course and offer a preliminary analysis of how the lives of “enemies” and certain civilians were interactionally constructed as “ungrievable” (Butler, 2009) by undergraduate engineering students during a classroom discussion on drones.  He examines how the construction of certain lives as ungrievable constrained these prospective engineers’ views of ethical responsibility. He makes an argument that ideologies of war and life limited possibilities for these students to learn about ethics. Making connections to his work in teacher education, he considers the importance of engaging issues of ideology in professional ethics courses.

Sponsored by the IHC’s  Language, Interaction, and Social Organization Research Focus Group and Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Emphasis.