The Politics of Recognition

As I was reading Guru Madhavan’s “Living in Viele’s World” (Issues, Summer 2024), my thoughts turned to studies of occupational prestige—in other words, the perception that some types of work are more deserving of admiration and respect. Historians and social scientists who examine occupational prestige pursue lines of inquiry that spread in many directions, including the implications for individual self-worth, differences in salaries, longitudinal trends for the American labor force, and more.

In his eloquent essay, Madhavan demonstrates the importance of seeing the actions of two elites in nineteenth-century New York, Egbert Ludovicus Viele and Frederick Law Olmsted, within a social scientific setting. Although these men brought different technical points of view to the design of crucial elements of New York’s infrastructure, Madhavan’s point is that we will understand their legacies more deeply if we see their work as part of a broader contest for authority and prestige.

Madhavan’s invocation of the politics of recognition—a concept with its own rich scholarly tradition—is a compelling way to think about engineering and society. In particular, it expands our conceptual language for considering the normative consequences of infrastructural decisions, including the ways that these decisions can either facilitate or inhibit equity and human flourishing.

In our 2020 book, The Innovation Delusion, Lee Vinsel and I argued that the trendy preoccupation with innovation, and the resulting elevated prestige of innovators, carries steep societal costs. These costs include the neglect of maintenance (made familiar with the dismal grades regularly registered in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Infrastructure Report Card) as well as diminished prestige for the people we called maintainers—the essential workers who care for the sick, repair broken machines, and keep the material and social foundations of modern society in good working order. Vinsel and I challenged society to reckon with the caste-like structures that keep janitors, mechanics, plumbers, and nurses subordinate to other professionals. This line of thinking also sharpens our understanding of the stakes for the present and future, namely, that many young people self-select into occupations that are seen as prestigious and forego career paths that lack glamor or respect.

As a result, there is an oversupply of young people who want to get into “tech,” even as the giants of Silicon Valley continue to lay off workers so that they can keep wages low and stock prices high. At the same time, there is an undersupply of young people who want to work in the skilled trades, where there are national shortages and good careers for people who want to work hard, uplift their communities, and care for the needs of their fellow residents. Closer attention to the politics of recognition in engineering—indeed in all occupations—can help Americans understand how we arrived at our present state, overcome some of our elitist prejudices, and recalibrate the relationship between occupational prestige and the workforce that the nation actually needs.

Andrew L. Russell

Guru Madhavan brings to life the efforts by Egbert Ludovicus Viele to improve the urban environs of New York City by working with nature. The article beautifully explains Viele’s thinking and influence on development in the city, which was both groundbreaking and effective, and continues to this day.

However, Madhavan’s main argument is that Viele should be as venerated and celebrated as an innovator of urbanization as Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted was a contemporaneous landscape architect who had clashes with Viele at both Central and Prospect Parks in New York. The author continues Viele’s own efforts to aggrandize his life’s achievements, evidenced by a 31-foot-tall pyramid tomb, which at the time of Viele’s death was the largest in the West Point cemetery. Sadly for Viele, historical figures cannot and do not choose themselves. Many people deserving of recognition are long forgotten. Historic figures are raised again only if their contributions and stories are relevant to contemporary times.

But is it right or even necessary to have historic heroes? Neither Viele nor Olmsted worked in isolation. They were connected to a plethora of colleagues, clerks, workers, supporters, and ecologies who helped them achieve their projects. Should we not instead celebrate eras that allow innovations to be made? That recognize the beliefs, values, economic systems, other people, social systems, and infrastructures that create the circumstances for these changes to how we live our lives?

If we celebrated the circumstances, not just a hero, we would see how people are supported to achieve their goals. We could then understand that it is not just an individual who achieves, but generations of effort and resources that enable these goals to be achieved.

Most people know that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prodigious musician and composer, and many might know he had a father and older sister who were also elite musicians. People might think that the father must have started training his children at a young age, but do they also think that his father developed the network that allowed him to perform in royal courts? That there were many royal courts to support live music performances? That he was male in an era when women were curtailed from having musical careers? That he was born at a time when musical notation was common, and his music could easily be reproduced by other musicians? Most people do not think of these things, but think only of the hero—Mozart. If they did, they would realize that, rather than hero, he was the mushroom fruit of a huge mycelium network pulling in resources from countless places.

Perhaps if Viele spent more of his life acknowledging all the other efforts that went into enabling the achievement of his projects, he would also be better remembered for his contributions. As it stands, the most memorable part of his story is his peculiar solution—a buzzer inside his coffin—in case he was buried alive.

Tse-Hui Teh