Design, Ability, and Hierarchy : Visible Order of Humans and Objects in Thai Mechanical Engineering(<Special Theme>Accountabilities: An Inquiry into Orders of Things and Humans)

Abstract

In my encounters with Japanese engineers in Bangkok who are working for technology-transfer projects with Thai engineers and mechanics, I often hear complaints about the unpredictable behavior of their Thai counterparts. As the projects progress, most Japanese engineers begin to feel uncertain about them for the same reason. Some of them refer to "Thai culture" to explain the uncertainty of the situation. Technical practices are murky to laymen. It is quite difficult for laymen to understand what mechanics do, or even to know what they see when they solve technical problems. However, the complaints of Japanese engineers suggest that what renders engineering practice intelligible is not universal rationality. In this paper, I will discuss how the world of Thai engineering practice becomes accountable to mechanics, focusing particularly on the role of the visible orders of people and objects shaped in the practice. Thai indigenous engineering was founded in the late 19th century by Cantonese immigrants trained in rice mills owned by Westerners. The economic development since the 1960s brought about drastic changes in the industry. During those decades, the development of the machine industry was stimulated by the expanding demand for auto repairs and farm equipment in rural areas. Although most factories were small and medium-sized enterprises, and most of the workers received no formal engineering education, the industry survived after the entry of multinational factories in the 1980s. The indigenous machine industry still continues to supply machines and implements to agriculture and local industries up to the present. In the world of indigenous engineering practice, technical, collective and personal things are related in rather strange ways. Machine parts, poultry manure, the rotation speed of the blade in the machine, etc., are all related in the design process of the farm equipment. They gradually form ordered relations in the mechanics' vision as the work of designing progresses. The competent mechanics can see the rather messy situations they face as ordered and solvable questions similar to past cases. Thai mechanics see the problem of designing new machines for unfamiliar tasks, such as laying poultry manure on the field, as something similar to the problems that they solved before. By seeing this way, the mechanics relate the heterogeneous elements surrounding machines, such as poultry manure and the rotation speed of the blade in the machine, in an ordered way, as well as relating the present problem with past cases. On the other hand, seeing in technical practice also visualizes the human elements of the practice, that is, the ability of the mechanics. The appearance of work they have done represents their ability to work as mechanics. The visible appearance of the artifacts or movement of the machines indicates that their work has been successfully done, and that the mechanics have sufficient skills. Moreover, they can compare their skills with others according to those visible traces. On the shop floor, senior mechanics see the appearances of work done by apprentices to check their quality. At the same time, they also evaluate the abilities of the apprentices to perform those tasks. Visible traces that act as the basis of evaluation are produced repeatedly in work practice. Moreover, the accumulation of those visible traces gives rise to the skill hierarchy by which mechanics relate with each other. The formation of a skill hierarchy also mediates mechanics' personal or familial affairs with their collective occupational lives. The common future plan among Thai mechanics is to own one's own factory. It is widely perceived that the most realistic way to start a factory is to move back to the village where one's family (or one's wife's family) lives. Factories can be established at a relatively modest cost in the

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