Smaller is Better? Learning an Ethos and Worldview in Nanoengineering Education

In this article, I draw on ethnographic research to show how a particular ethos and worldview get produced in the context of technical education in a department of nanoengineering. Building on feminist science studies and communication theory, I argue that the curriculum introducing undergraduate students to scale implicitly teaches them an abstract and universal notion that smaller is better. I suggest that rather than smaller is better, a perspective that embraces context and specificity-such as the question when, how, and for whom is smaller better?aEurowould ground nanoengineering in a more reflexive, pluralistic, and democratically oriented mode of world-building.