SOCA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Prince William Sound, Nuclear Weapon, Normal Accidents
Document Summary
Week 12: environment march 28 (brym ch. Technology: applicaion of scieniic principles to the improvement of human life (prior to ww2) Now, beginning to think of technology as a monster run amok, a frankenstein rather than a saviour. In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of disasters alerted many people (including sociologists) to the fact that technological advance is not always beneicial, not even always benign. 4 reactor at chernobyl, ukraine, exploded, releasing 30 to 40 imes the radioacivity of the blast at hiroshima. Normal accidents: accidents that occur inevitably though unpredictably because of the very complexity of modern technologies. (perrow called the previous events normal accidents) Risk society: postmodern society deined by the way in which risk is distributed as a side efect of technology (beck) The applicaion of biotechnology may be a greater threat to our well-being than is any other technology ever developed. Kondaraiev was the irst social scienist to noice that technologies are invented in clusters.
