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At Home in the Seamless Web

Agency, Obduracy, and the Ethics of Metropolitan Growth

Georgia Institute of Technology, robert.kirkman{at}gatech.edu

Political responses to metropolitan growth in the United States and elsewhere should include careful ethical deliberation, but ethical judgment and action are limited by the involvement of individual moral agents in the complex processes that give shape to the built environment. I propose that casting the built environment as a heterogeneous sociotechnical ensemble can provide useful insight into the limits of ethics, particularly through the concept of obduracy. To the extent components of an ensemble are obdurate, they can stop or deflect even well-considered actions even as they impose constraints on moral agency itself. From this possibility spring a number of worthwhile lines of inquiry at the confluence of ethics and technology studies.

Key Words: ethics • metropolitan growth • sociotechnical ensemble • obduracy • moral agency

This version was published on March 1, 2009

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 34, No. 2, 234-258 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243907309631


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