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Oropallo, Gabriele (2018) People have the power: appropriate technology and the implications of labour-intensive making. In: Craft economies. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 83-93. ISBN 9781474259538
Reliance on fossil fuels has a multiple impact on the ecosystem, from the blight often inflicted on natural landscapes when oil and gas are extracted and shipped around the planet up to the quantity of carbon released in the atmosphere when they are burnt. When fossil fuels are turned into other forms of energy, they power machines that easily outdo humans in productivity, just as the Luddite conservatives lamented in the age of the Industrial Revolution. Appropriate technology (AT) is an approach proposed to escape both energy-intensive lifestyles and unemployment-yielding mechanization. First formally articulated by the economist E. F. Schumacher, AT favoured labour-intensive approaches to production as opposed to capital-intensive ones, and labour-intensive modes of use as opposed to energy-intensive ones. Less mechanization, and more muscle power. Less state-level planning, and more decentralized management of production. This chapter looks at the genealogy of AT and the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), the organization Schumacher founded in 1966 as an instrument to implement the theory in actual projects. It will then examine some examples of AT artefacts and pieces of machinery designed for the so-called developing world. This review will also allow us to come to a set of conclusions about the implications of this centre-periphery – or more precisely North-South – approach to design for labour-intensive use. Schumacher’s own reading of historical processes such as modernization and industrialization raises the question as to what extent his labour-intensive model can be said to empower the individual, as opposed to confirming the preexisting social, political and economic structures. If social forces shape artefacts and technology, and communities are built around shared technical knowledges, then the material environment a society builds around itself is ultimately a projection of its aspirations.
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