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Anatomy of a disaster: why some accidents are unavoidable

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  • Downer, John

Abstract

This paper looks at the fateful 1988 fuselage failure of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 to suggest and illustrate a new perspective on the sociology of technological failure and the question of whether such failures are potentially avoidable. Drawing on core insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, it highlights, and then challenges, a fundamental principle underlying our understanding of technological risk: idea that 'failures' always connote 'errors' and are, in principle, foreseeable. From here, it suggests a new conceptual tool for Disaster Theory, by proposing a novel category of man-made calamity: what it calls the 'Epistemic Accident'. It concludes by exploring the implications of Epistemic Accidents and sketching their relationship to broader issues concerning technology and society, and social theory's approach to failure.

Suggested Citation

  • Downer, John, 2010. "Anatomy of a disaster: why some accidents are unavoidable," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36542, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:36542
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36542/
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    1. Wendy Faulkner & James Fleck & Robin Williams, 1998. "Exploring Expertise: Issues and Perspectives," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Robin Williams & Wendy Faulkner & James Fleck (ed.), Exploring Expertise, chapter 1, pages 1-27, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. David, Paul A, 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 332-337, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kirsten Davis & Navid Ghaffarzadegan & Jacob Grohs & Dustin Grote & Niyousha Hosseinichimeh & David Knight & Hesam Mahmoudi & Konstantinos Triantis, 2020. "The Lake Urmia vignette: a tool to assess understanding of complexity in socio‐environmental systems," System Dynamics Review, System Dynamics Society, vol. 36(2), pages 191-222, April.
    2. Juliana Aurora de Oliveira Lopes & Léo Heller, 2020. "Explanatory Matrices on the Causes of a Tailing Dam Collapse in Brazil: The (Dis)Articulation of Epistemes," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(12), pages 2524-2538, December.

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    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

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