Charles Perrow (1925–2019)
Autor von Normale Katastrophen: Die unvermeidbaren Risiken der Großtechnik (Reihe Campus)
Über den Autor
Charles Perrow is professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University. He has worked as a consultant for the U.S. military, the White House, and the nuclear-power industry.
Werke von Charles Perrow
Normale Katastrophen: Die unvermeidbaren Risiken der Großtechnik (Reihe Campus) (1984) 366 Exemplare
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters (2007) 54 Exemplare
The AIDS Disaster: The Failure of Organizations in New York and the Nation (Yale Fastback Series) (1990) 22 Exemplare
Organisationsteori 2 Exemplare
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1925-02-09
- Todestag
- 2019-11-12
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Ausbildung
- University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.|1960)
- Berufe
- sociologist
- Organisationen
- Eastern Sociological Society (Vice President)
Russell Sage Foundation (Resident Scholar ∙ 1990-91)
Shelly Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies (Fellow ∙ 1995-96) - Preise und Auszeichnungen
- American Academy for the Advancement of Science (Fellow)
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavorial Sciences (Fellow)
Institute for Advanced Studies (Visitor ∙ 1995-96)
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies von Charles Perrow
Could have used a stricter editor, some basic paragraph to paragraph organizational issues (not a big deal). Spends too little time talking about details in the pursuit of including as many examples as possible. Difficult balance to maintain and I think it fell on the side of 'scant details' a little too much. A couple of times (DNA risk in the main text, Y2K in the Afterward/Postscript) it turned from explaining to predicting and the predicting just isn't very compelling. Great bibliography.
Sociologist's analysis of modern industrial technologies. Insightful and well-informed. Equally valuable for engineers, sociologists, STS researchers and wider publics.
One of the themes of the book: “risk taking is the price of continued employment.” (Page 249) And then when an accident occurs: blame the operator.
“ A working definition of an expert is a person who can solve a problem faster or better than others, but who runs a higher risk than others of posing the wrong problem. By virtue of his or her expert methods, the problem is really fine to sooth the methods. ” (Page 322)
Chapter 9 and the Afterword give a nice summary of the issues.
“… there is no imperative inherent in the social body of society that forces technology upon us. People — elites — decide that certain technological possibilities are to be financed and put into place. Second, most of our technologies do not threaten our values, nature, or our lives. One can no more be anti technological than they can be anti culture or anti nature; the hoe and the wheel and cooking meat and baking bread are technologies.” (Chapter 9, Page 339)
This 1999 revision of the 1984 book is surprisingly popular. I placed it on hold at the university library, and before I picked it up someone else placed a hold on it. While waiting for it, I checked out a couple of similar books, and found that this one is a seminal work in the field because of the way they referred to it.… (mehr)
“ A working definition of an expert is a person who can solve a problem faster or better than others, but who runs a higher risk than others of posing the wrong problem. By virtue of his or her expert methods, the problem is really fine to sooth the methods. ” (Page 322)
Chapter 9 and the Afterword give a nice summary of the issues.
“… there is no imperative inherent in the social body of society that forces technology upon us. People — elites — decide that certain technological possibilities are to be financed and put into place. Second, most of our technologies do not threaten our values, nature, or our lives. One can no more be anti technological than they can be anti culture or anti nature; the hoe and the wheel and cooking meat and baking bread are technologies.” (Chapter 9, Page 339)
This 1999 revision of the 1984 book is surprisingly popular. I placed it on hold at the university library, and before I picked it up someone else placed a hold on it. While waiting for it, I checked out a couple of similar books, and found that this one is a seminal work in the field because of the way they referred to it.… (mehr)
Normal Accidents is a pretty fascinating look at the complex systems in our lives and how failures of these systems is inevitable given their complicated inner workings. The fact that it took me over a month to finish this book is not indicative of it being boring, on the contrary, it was a very good read.
While I was reading this book, I was easily able to come up with countless examples of system accidents that occurred since the book's manuscript was completed (1983): Chernobyl, Fukushima, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Boeing 737 Max-8, Challenger, Columbia, etc. The book argues that for complex systems that cannot be made more linear or less complex, and for which the possible disasters outweigh the benefits (nuclear power and nuclear weapons, for example), we should abandon the technologies. Unfortunately, this is not a stance that the global elite agrees with, and thus we are stuck with disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.
The afterward, written in 1999, contains more analysis of disasters that happened in the late 20th century, and anticipates those that may be in store in the future. (Which is now our past.) I found interesting a few sentences speaking of the possibility of issues coming from the complexity of our financial system. Unfortunately, the author spent an entire extra chapter talking about Y2K, something that caused approximately zero problems, rather than the financial sector, which caused a global recession unmatched by anything since the Great Depression. (Of course, as the author mentions, hindsight is 20-20, and causes us to find problems that may have remained hidden if not for the problem(s) that caused it to come to light.)
I believe that even though this book is rather outdated that it is still a very useful read, and I wish that the system of corporate capitalism and short-term profits didn't reign supreme even more so today than it did in 1983. I feel even less hopeful now that anybody will take these sorts of reasoned arguments against pointlessly risky technology seriously, and that we will only be exposing ourselves to more potential disasters.… (mehr)
While I was reading this book, I was easily able to come up with countless examples of system accidents that occurred since the book's manuscript was completed (1983): Chernobyl, Fukushima, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Boeing 737 Max-8, Challenger, Columbia, etc. The book argues that for complex systems that cannot be made more linear or less complex, and for which the possible disasters outweigh the benefits (nuclear power and nuclear weapons, for example), we should abandon the technologies. Unfortunately, this is not a stance that the global elite agrees with, and thus we are stuck with disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.
The afterward, written in 1999, contains more analysis of disasters that happened in the late 20th century, and anticipates those that may be in store in the future. (Which is now our past.) I found interesting a few sentences speaking of the possibility of issues coming from the complexity of our financial system. Unfortunately, the author spent an entire extra chapter talking about Y2K, something that caused approximately zero problems, rather than the financial sector, which caused a global recession unmatched by anything since the Great Depression. (Of course, as the author mentions, hindsight is 20-20, and causes us to find problems that may have remained hidden if not for the problem(s) that caused it to come to light.)
I believe that even though this book is rather outdated that it is still a very useful read, and I wish that the system of corporate capitalism and short-term profits didn't reign supreme even more so today than it did in 1983. I feel even less hopeful now that anybody will take these sorts of reasoned arguments against pointlessly risky technology seriously, and that we will only be exposing ourselves to more potential disasters.… (mehr)
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