STS+Studies+of+Disaster

Extant studies of disasters and disaster experts within the general sphere of STS, including the foundational works by Perrow (1984), Vaughn (1996), Fortun (2001), and Knowles (2011), integrate these foundational concepts, to a somewhat varying extent, and demonstrate their efficacy in understanding how experts and expert authority function in the context of other disasters and institutionalized assessments of risk. This includes the role that standards, such as fire safety codes—or the radiological safety standards associated with Fukushima—play in mediating political disputes, and define in turn the policy options and public debates that follow from those standards. Other recent studies such as those by Lakoff, Shrum, Frickel and Vincent have also homed in on specific questions related to how disasters unfold, including, respectively, the institutional configurations and logics that shape government responses to “catastrophic risk” (Lakoff 2010; Lakoff (ed.), 2010); institutional politics, disciplinary differences, and the different epistemic cultures as evidenced within the different teams charged with evaluating the levee failure associated with Hurricane Katrina (Shrum 2010); and systematic knowledge gaps that can appear within the regulatory apparatus as a result of specific hazards assessment protocols (Frickel and Vincent 2011; also Frickel Campanella and Vincent 2009). In addition to the growing body of STS scholars who have or currently are studying other major disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill, investigations into different kinds, and in some cases less well known incidents have the potential to shed light on specific aspects of the Fukushima incident. This would include, for instance, Klinenberg’s (2002) assessment of the 1995 Chicago heat wave investigations, which documents how public and journalistic responses shaped the policy arena and outcome; Kirsch’s (2006) study of mining operations in indigenous lands, which documents the interactions between corporate science and local knowledge; and Matsumoto’s (2006: Chap. 6) sociological study of a serious accident involving a standard military system before the outbreak of World War II, which analyzes the phenomenon of “self-reliant failures.”


 * References**
 * Fortun, Kim. 2001. //Advocacy after Bhopal: environmentalism, disaster, new global orders// (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
 * Frickel, Scott, Richard Campanella and M. Bess Vincent. 2009. Mapping knowledge investments in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: a new approach for assessing regulatory agency responses to environmental disaster. //Environmental science and policy// 12/2:119-133.
 * Frickel, Scott and M.Bess Vincent. 2011. Katrina’s contamination: regulatory knowledge gaps in the making and unmaking of environmental contention. In //dynamics of disaster: lessons in risk, response, and recovery,// ed. Rachel A.Dowty and Barbara L. Allen (London: Earthscan).
 * Kirsch, Stewart. 2006. //Reverse anthropology: indigenous analysis of social and environmental relations in New Guinea// (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press).
 * Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. //Heat wave: a social autopsy of disaster in Chicago// (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
 * Knowles, Scott. 2011. //The disaster experts: mastering risk in modern America// (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
 * Lakoff, Andrew. 2010. Too big to fail: catastrophic risk after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. //Items and issues,// online newsletter of the Social Sciences Research Council. [] . (Accessed 1/23/2012)
 * ______ (ed.). 2010. //Disaster and the politics of intervention.// (New York: Columbia University Press).
 * Matsumoto, Miwao. 2006. //Technology gatekeepers for war and peace// (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
 * Perrow, Charles. 1984. //Normal accidents: living with high-risk technologies// (New York: Basic Books).
 * Shrum, Wesley. 2010. Negotiating neutrality: Hurricane Katrina and the failure of STS. Unpublished manuscript.
 * Vaughn, Diane. 1996. //The Challenger launch decision: risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA// (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).