1、http:/Social Studies of ScienceDOI: 10.1177/0306312706069439 2007; 37; 153 Social Studies of ScienceStephen Hilgartner Overflow and Containment in the Aftermath of Disasterhttp:/The online version of this article can be found at:Published by:http:/can be found at:Social Studies of Science Additional
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3、n HilgartnerKeywords accidents, Hurricane Katrina, politics, public inquiries, risk, risk society,sociologyIn reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, so soon after it struck the Gulf Coast,I want to consider what one might expect from the public inquiries andofficial investigations of the disaster. Predict
4、ion, whether of meteorologicalor social phenomena, is a risky business, but by now the field of scienceand technology studies (STS) has produced a substantial literature on theinvestigations and official inquiries that follow in the wake of notable dis-asters, accidents, technological failures, and
5、other breakdowns of socio-technical order. This literature is diffuse and the interests and theoreticalperspectives of various authors differ, but the relevant work includes stud-ies of knowledge-making in the aftermath of such failures as the Windscalenuclear accident, the Bhopal disaster, the Chal
6、lenger explosion, the bovinespongiform encephalitis (BSE) episode, and the debacle of the Florida votein the 2000 US Presidential election.1To summarize (very briefly andadmittedly inadequately) some major themes of this rich literature, I willlist seven points. In the final section, I relate them t
7、o the Katrina case, andadvance several tentative predictions.1. There are no natural disasters, only sociotechnical ones, in advanced techno-logical societies, such as the USA. Disasters are typically perceived as abnor-mal, deviant events, but in many ways they are normal occurrences thatstem from
8、the particular vulnerabilities that social institutions andactions build into the heterogeneous networks of technological systemsand infrastructures (Perrow, 1984; Jasanoff, 1994). Thus, even disasterswidely classified as natural will inevitably implicate human artifacts,organizations, and choices.
9、Moreover, the sociotechnical networksintended to monitor, manipulate, and manage risk have reached a levelof density where today any disaster whether attributed to the agency ofnatural or unnatural forces will fall under the jurisdiction of some setof technical experts and organizations (e.g., Beck,
10、 1992). All major dis-asters therefore demand a social accounting.Social Studies of Science 37/1 (February 2007) 153158 SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/ 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized dist
11、ribution.at GEORGE MASON UNIV on March 6, 2007 http:/Downloaded from 2. The vision of orderly, manageable sociotechnical systems is critical to politicallegitimacy in the contemporary world. The organizations that operate com-plex technologies tend to present them publicly as orderly, rule-governeds
12、ystems that achieve acceptable levels of safety by virtue of the rational-ity of their design. Legitimacy depends in no small part on the mainte-nance of a cosmology in which people can expect the institutions thatoperate and govern technological systems, especially the state, to pre-dict, prevent,
13、or at least partially mitigate any number of hazards (Wynne,1982). The political stakes in accounting for disasters are thereforeextremely high.3. Disasters and accidents create profoundly disturbing collective experiences thatchallenge the managerial vision of orderly systems. Disasters evoke horro
14、rnot only because they make chaos and suffering visible but also becausethey reveal shocking disorder in sociotechnical systems. Tangled com-munications, failures to act on available knowledge, and socially struc-tured ignorance make the crisp linearity of the organizational chart seemlike a naive f
15、antasy.2The messy, unruly character of technology is dra-matically displayed, revealing ad hoc judgments, informal practices, andother deviations from the formal procedures that supposedly guideaction (Wynne, 1988). Similarly, disasters often suggest that social orderin general depends on more fragi
16、le machinery, such as the fallible sys-tems that distribute electrical or police power, than many might like tobelieve.3Amid such dramatic displays of vulnerability, people find iteasy to imagine disorder of an even greater magnitude, with problemsoverflowing their boundaries and spreading into new
17、domains.4. Officials and citizens alike typically perceive reestablishing order to be a cen-tral priority, but accomplishing this depends not merely on containing the dis-aster on the ground (regaining control, rescuing people, rebuilding systems),but also on containing it discursively. Public autho
18、rities must address themeaning of a disaster as well as the materiality of it. Reclaiming a senseof normalcy may depend on placing the episode securely within a narra-tive frame that restores confidence in the capacity of social institutions,especially the state, to protect the citizenry. Moreover,
19、when state insti-tutions fail to reassure, people may experience profound anxiety, leadingthem to experience a sense of civic dislocation as they look to otherinstitutions as sources of reassurance (Jasanoff, 1997).5. Public inquiries often play an important role in efforts to contain disasters with
20、ina reassuring storyline, although their capacity to reassure is potentially problem-atic. Disasters typically precipitate a public process of inquiry and investi-gation aimed at assessing cause and blame, defining specific entities (forexample, artifacts, individuals, organizations) as deviant, ide
21、ntifying pre-ventive strategies, punishing wrongdoers, and aiding or compensatingvictims. The process of public investigation typically begins with mediacoverage when disaster first strikes. Later, much of the action usuallymoves to official inquiries or public commissions set up by the state.Public
22、 inquiries serve as a device for managing the disorder and discordthat disasters produce, and at an abstract level the inquiry process follows154 Social Studies of Science 37/1 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.at GEORGE MASON UNIV on Ma
23、rch 6, 2007 http:/Downloaded from a general structure of social drama described in the processual anthro-pology of Victor Turner (1974). In Turners scheme, a social drama beginswith a normative breach that produces a schism in the community andproceeds through a period of crisis, a phase of redress,
24、 and finally toreintegration if the redress is successful, or to continued schism if it is not(Turner, 1974; Wynne, 1982; Hilgartner, 2000).Public inquiries thus offer a ritualized process for collectively movingon, but they do not have a guaranteed capacity to reassure. On the onehand, public inqui
25、ries have the potential to contain disasters within durablenarrative frames, recreating the collective experience of a manageableworld by fixing cause, focusing blame, meting out justice, taking strongaction. On the other hand, the process of investigation has the potential toproduce cascades of rev
26、elations that display additional layers of messiness,thus undermining further the managerial imaginary and leading the senseof breakdown to overflow its extant boundaries. These contradictorypotentials generate a dynamic tension between overflow and containmentthat in principle can produce varying m
27、ixtures of reassurance and anxiety.6. The inquiry process typically features a contest to control how causal and moralresponsibility for the disaster is framed. Public inquiries aim to establish whatcaused disaster, who is to blame, and what should be done about it. Butresponsibility can be allocate
28、d and distributed in many ways among thenodes of a sociotechnical network. Following an accident, investigationsmay transform the heterogeneous links that hold together a technologicalsystem into traps hooking people and things together in a network of causeand blame and guilt (Gieryn Jasanoff (1988
29、, 1994) and Fortun (2000) on Bhopal;Gieryn Jasanoff (1997) onBSE; Miller (2004), Lynch et al. (2005), and the special section in the June 2001 issueof this journal on the 2000 election. Studies of breakdowns of social technologies, suchas science advisory systems (Hilgartner, 2000), can also be unde
30、rstood in this light.Such work on risk as Beck (1988), Perrow (1984), and Douglas Sims (2007); see also Shrums (2007) comments on crime, rumor, andmedia coverage.4. On the fixation of cause, see Gieryn see also Gusfield (1981) andHilgartner (1992).ReferencesBeck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage Publications).Douglas, Mary email shh6cornell.edu158 Social Studies of Science 37/1 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.at GEORGE MASON UNIV on March 6, 2007 http:/Downloaded from
