STS 6834
Summer 2015, Thursdays 7-9:45 PM
Room TBA (Falls Church)
Instructor: David Tomblin
Contact: dtomblin@vt.edu
Office Hours: by appointment
Course Background : Large-scale, high-profile disasters such as the Gulf BP oil spill or Fukushima, regularly occurring disasters such as Mississippi River flooding, slow evolving regional disasters brought on by the rise of the fracking industry, and even imagined disasters such as asteroid impacts bring to the fore the vulnerability of large-scale socio-technical systems to natural forces and flawed social policy. Unfortunately, these are not isolated events. Not only are they not unique in history, but the social, economic, cultural, environmental, and political implications of such atrocities extend well beyond their immediate geographic circumstances. Adding to the complex, unpredictable nature of these events, very frequently they generate, reveal, or amplify social justice issues. Despite the broad sweeping negative consequences that emanate from these disasters and legions of studies that attempt to offer mitigations against future occurrences, these catastrophes continue to happen, arguably at ever increasing frequencies. Are such disasters just the cost of progress, as some might contend, or are there alternative technoscientific pathways that remain unexplored or marginalized that would help build such systems in more just and sustainable ways? In other words, how can we tap into the potential for renewal after catastrophe? What is it about the nature of large-scale socio-technical systems and the policies that undergird them that inevitably invite disaster? Why are people of color, the poor, and women often disproportionate recipients of the negative impacts of disasters? How should the recent disasters in Japan and the Gulf of Mexico influence the ways we think about the sustainability of largescale socio-technical systems? In other words, what lessons can we learn and what lessons do we seem never to learn?
We will attack these questions through three complimentary approaches: 1) outline the complex political, economic, environmental, and cultural nature of socio-technical systems and their increasing interconnectivity within a global society; 2) examine the relationship between power and knowledge that undergird the institutions and policy decisions that create these systems. Along these same lines, we will identify the ways that certain forms of knowledge production flourish in the development of large-scale systems, while others are marginalized (and the consequences of this process); 3) explore alternative socio-technical narratives that have emerged as a consequence of disasters and evaluate the efficacy of their visions for a more just and sustainable society.
This discussion based course will cover a broad spectrum of socio-technical disaster case studies and theoretical positions from environmental history, STS, political science, and anthropology in order to elucidate the complex relationships and problems that emerge at the interface of nature and society prior to, during, and after these events. Some potential topics will be, the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, BP Oil Spill,
Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Mississippi River floods, the Dust Bowl, Hurricane
Katrina, Asian Tsunami of 2005, and 9/11, among others.
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Course Readings (Required Texts) : You need to procure the following books. Additional readings will be posted on Scholar.
Jonathan M. Katz (2013). The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left
Behind a Disaster.
Scott Gabriel Knowles (2011). The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America.
Andrew Lakoff, ed. (2011). Disaster and the Politics of Intervention.
Ted Steinberg (2006, 2 nd edition). Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
ISBN: 0195309685 (paperback)
Note: I reserve the right to change readings on the syllabus. I promise that we will use all the books I ask you to purchase. If changes occur, it will be with the assigned articles. At the latest, I will announce these changes the week before they are due.
Student Responsibilities and Class Format:
The bulk of the course will involve instructor facilitated discussion or student-driven discussion.
However, occasionally I will deliver brief lectures that cover necessary background information left out of the readings. I encourage you to ask questions and bring your own experiences, concerns, and biases into the course dialogue. Your final grade is based on your performance in the responsibilities outlined below:
Participation (30%): I expect you to regularly attend classes and carefully read each week’s assigned readings. You should at least be familiar enough with the material to participate in discussions. All interactions with your peers should be conducted in a professional manner. Please engage the ideas of your peers and instructor critically, but respectfully. T his grade is based on a variety of activities, which include class discussion, student-led instruction sessions, careful reading, and attendance.
Current Event (20%): I will ask each of you to do a presentation on a recent or historical disaster not covered extensively in the readings using some of the concepts we discuss in class.
Semester-long Research Project (50%) : You will produce an original scholarly work of 15-20 pages that addresses some aspect of the interface between disaster and STS. You are free to choose a topic that helps you complete your thesis work or helps you think about your own research in a different way. I will ask you to produce an oral presentation of a proposal during the middle weeks of the class and complete a final draft by exam week. I will explain in more detail the purpose of each of these assignments in class.
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Course Schedule
Week 1 (May 28) – Introduction: STS and Disaster
David Nye (2002), “Technology, Nature, and American Origin Stories” (Scholar)
Scott Frickel and M. Edwards (2014), “Untangling ignorance in environmental risk assessment,” in Jas and Boudia (eds.), Powerless Science?
Gregory Button (2002), “Popular Media Reframing of Man-Made Disasters: A Cautionary Tale,” in Catastrophe and Culture (Scholar)
Week 2 (June 4) – Political, Economic and Epistemological Origins of “Disaster”
Ted Steinberg (2006). Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
Week 3 (June 11) – Large-scale Socio-technical Systems in Action
John McPhee (1990), “Atchafalaya,” in
Control of Nature (Scholar)
Gary Bowden (2011), “Disasters as System Accidents: A Socio-ecological Framework,” in Dynamics of Disaster
(Scholar)
Sara Pritchard (2012), “Envirotechnical Disaster at Fukushima: Nature, Technology and Politics” Environmental
History (Scholar)
Optional: Thomas Hughes (2009), “Technological Momentum” (Scholar)
Optional: Allen Batteau (2010), “Technological Peripheralization,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 35:
554 (Scholar)
Week 4 (June 18) – Evolving Norms
Diane Vaughn (1997). The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
(Selected Chapters – Scholar)
Greg Beckett, “Rethinking the Haitian Crisis” in Polyne (ed.),
The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and
Development (Scholar)
Charles Perrow (2011), “Fukushima, Risk and Probability: Expect the Unexpected.” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists (Scholar)
Takuji Hara (2013), “Social Shaping of Nuclear Safety” in Hindmarsh (ed.), Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima
Daiichi
Optional: Ulrich Beck (1992). Risk Society (Preface, Ch. 1, Intro Part II) (Scholar)
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Week 5 (June 25) – Expertise and Disaster
Scott Knowles (2011). The Disaster Experts
Wiebe Bijker (2007). “American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in Risk Conception and
Technological Culture,”
Social Studies of Science 37: 143-151. (Scholar)
Week 6 (July 2) – Power, Knowledge and Emergency Response: Who is in Charge?
Patrick Roberts (2011).”Private Choices, Public Harms: The Evolution of National Disaster Organizations in the
United States,” in Lakoff (ed.)
Disaster and the Politics of Intervention
Sonja Schmid (2013), “Nuclear Emergency Response: Atomic Priests or an International SWAT Team?” in
Hindmarsh (ed.), Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi
Rebecca Solnit (2009). A Paradise Built in Hell (Part III – Mexico City of 1985) (Scholar)
Vivian Y. Choi (2011). “After Disasters: Emergences of National Insecurity in Sri Lanka,” in Dynamics of
Disaster ( Scholar)
Week 7 (July 9) – Power, Knowledge, and Emergency Response: Why do we intervene?
Greg Beckett, “The Politics of Emergency.” Reviews in Anthropology 42:85-101
P.W. Singer (2011), “Strange Brew: Private Military Contractors and Humanitarians” in Lakoff (ed.) Disaster and the Politics of Intervention
Contributions from Didier and Pandolfi, Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and
Humanitarian Intervention (Scholar)
Denisa Kera, Jan Rod, and Radka Peterova (2013), “Post-apocalyptic Citizenship and Humanitarian Hardware,” in Hindmarsh (ed.), Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima Daiichi (Scholar)
Optional: Cecchine et al. (2013). The U.S. Military Response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake (Rand Corporation)
(Scholar)
Week 8 (July 16) – Local Knowledge and Recovery
Readings from Rachel Dowty and Barbara Allen, eds. (2011). Dynamics of Disaster: Lessons on Risk,
Response and Recovery (Scholar)
Rachel A. Dowty, Peter May, William Wallace and Colin Beech, “Organizational Culture and the Katrina
Response in Louisiana”
Kathryn Henderson, “Mind Maps, Memory and Relocation after Hurricane Katrina”
Robert E. Barrios, “Post-Katrina Neighborhood Recovery Planning in New Orleans”
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Barbara L. Allen and Isabelle Thomas Maret, “Rebuilding the Historic Tremé Neighbourhood:
Lessons in the Repatriation of New Orleans”
Week 9 (July 23) – Gender and Disaster
Guest Discussant: Phil Egert
Enarson, Elaine. 2000. “Unnatural Disasters: The Social Construction of Vulnerability” and “Economic
Impacts of Disasters on Women.” In
Working Paper 1: Gender and Natural Disasters , 2-22. Geneva:
InFocus Programme on Crises Response and Reconstruction.
Marrow, Betty. 2008. CARRI Research Report 4. Community Resilience: A Social Justice Perspective.
Oak Ridge, TN: Community and Regional Resilience Institute.
Parkinson, Debra. 2011. “Vol. 2 Women and Disasters Literature Review.” In The Way He Tells It:
Relationships after Black Sunday , 47-66. Victoria, Australia: Women’s Health Goulburn North East.
Selected Case Studies:
Alway, Joan, Linda Belgrave, and Kenneth Smith. 1998. “Back to Normal: Gender and Disaster.”
Symbolic Interaction 21 (2): 175-195.
Felten-Biermann, Claudia. 2006. “Gender and Natural Disaster: Sexualized Violence and the Tsunami.”
Development 49 (3): 82-86.
Thornton, William and Lydia Voigt. 2007. “Disaster Rape: Vulnerability of Women to Sexual Assaults
During Hurricane Katrina.”
Journal of Public Management & Social Policy 13 (2): 23-49.
Week 10 (July 30) – Governance: BP
David Bond (2013), “Governing Disaster: The Political Life of the Environment during the BP Oil Spill,”
Cultural Anthropology 28: 694-715. (Scholar)
National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (2011), Deep
Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling, Report to the President (Selected
Chapters – Scholar)
Excerpts from other perspectives: BP, Fisheries Industry, MMS, etc.
Optional: “Environmental Historians Respond to Gulf Oil Spill” http://aseh.net/teaching-research/environmental-historians-respond-to-the-gulf-oilspill/copy_of_ehresponsetoGulfOilSpill.pdf
Optional: Joel Achenbach (2011), A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea
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Week 11 (August 6) – Development: Haitian Earthquake of 2010
Jonathan M. Katz (2013). The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a
Disaster
Mark Schuller (2013), “Cholera and The Camps: Reaping the Public of NGOs” in Polyne (ed.), Rethinking Haiti
(Scholar)
Optional: “Haiti, Now and Next” Web Forum from the Social Sciences Research Council (2010) http://www.ssrc.org/features/view/haiti-now-and-next/
Week 12 (August 13) – Anticipating Disaster: Asteroids
ECAST (2014) “Informing NASA’s Asteroid Initiative” (Background information for participants)
Felicity Mellor (2007), “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space,” Social
Studies of Science 37: 499-531.
William Tedeschi and Edward Teller (1994), “A plan for worldwide protection against asteroid impacts,” Space
Policy 10:183-184.
Victoria Garshnek, David Morrison, and Frederick Burkle (2000), “The mitigation, management, and survivability of asteroid/comet impact with Earth,” Space Policy 16: 213-222.
Final Paper due Exam Week
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