Product Description

At the world's some 440 nuclear power plants, experts continually monitor their wide safety margins, and at signs of trouble seek out the sources and recommend changes. Too often for their comfort, and for ours, a subsequent problem reveals that these changes were ineffective or never made. Why this self-defeating pattern? What in this technology's culture of control might undermine experts' best intentions? What kind of problem is it to reduce operating risks?

Following brief highlights of this industry's history over the last twenty years of accidents, near-accidents, and institutional changes, Shouldering Risks presents excerpts from interviews with some sixty experts about four relatively recent events at three U.S. plants. Drawing also on her earlier field studies at eleven plants in America and abroad, on industry documents, and others' research, Constance Perin identifies unacknowledged elements in this industry's culture of control; for example, control concepts for reactor design, construction, and regulation carry over to risk handling and event analysis, whose efficacy depends instead on recognizing and interpreting the significance of technical and contextual signals on daily display.

Far more than the sum of its parts, this highly knowledge-dependent technology operates along an axis of meanings, not only along an axis of functions. A culture of control is, like any culture, an intricate system of claims about how to understand the world and act in it. Here, claims pivot around the dynamics of control theory and productivity based on particular assumptions about the relationships of humans to machines, models to reality, certainty to ambiguity, rationality to experience. These four events and accident analyses show that such assumptions can confound control and produce misleading meanings.

Shouldering Risks reimagines a broader and deeper culture of control to reshape our understandings of the intellectual capital appropriate to designing, regulating, organizing, and managing this risky enterprise and, perhaps, other such technologies already here or to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1357135 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

Review
"The case studies explain why things went wrong and provide solid lessons for avoiding similar events in the future". -- David Lochbaum, The Plain Dealer

Review
Constance Perin's study is a penetrating and worrisome analysis. . . . [She] brings flashes of uncommonly graceful language and a sense of empathy for those with whom she spoke, which adds color to the usually bloodless dialects of probabilistic risk assessment. . . . [Perin's study] could result in a crisper recognition of the dilemmas we face . . . [while] her conclusions point to serious matters of institutional policy.
(Todd R. La Porte Administrative Science Quarterly )

[A]n impressive ethnographic study. . . . This book will prove valuable for readers in any discipline who wish to understand more about the functioning of complex systems.
(Charlotte Linde Technology and Culture )

Perin has written what could be called a manifesto for the second generation of studies involving [high-reliability organizations]. . . . This book is a major, solidly grounded, agenda-setting piece of work held together by an amazing blend of concepts and evidence!
(Karl E. Weick Academy of Management Review )

Shouldering Risks is an impressive ethnographic study of the nuclear power industry. . . . This book will prove valuable for readers in any discipline who wish to understand more about the functioning of complex systems.
(Charlotte Linde Technology and Culture )

Constance Perin's study is a penetrating and worrisome analysis of life in several nuclear-powered electricity production stations similar to those on which a number of industrial societies continue to depend. . . . I commend Shouldering Risks . . . because Perin's work tries to sort out the logics of control that arise in conducting operations judged by our society to be of such benefit that institutionalizing very hazardous systems seems justified.
(Todd R. La Porte Administrative Science Quarterly )

Review
This work, based on extraordinarily rich materials from sustained fieldwork, is a worthy successor to Charles Perrow's pathbreaking Normal Accidents and is without doubt a signal contribution to the burgeoning interest in 'risk society.' But for me, its special significance is in its innovations in the marshalling of what now counts as ethnographic analysis and evidence, for which models are badly needed. In short, this a work that I can teach with.
(George E. Marcus, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, and coauthor, "Anthropology as Cultural Critique" )

Customer Reviews

A unique presentation
I read this book in an effort to better understand the civilian nuclear industry (which I have worked in since 1986). Having held various technical and management positions in the US Navy nuclear program and civilian nuclear industry, my experience is broad enough to conclude that Constance Perin has done her homework. She brings a cultural anthropologist's view to the management of risk at nuclear power stations, which are often run by and for technocrats, so her perspective is refreshing. She takes a balanced approach and appears to have no personal agenda regarding nuclear power. Much of what she says rings true, although I found her writing style to be stilted and distracting. I do not recommend SHOULDERING RISKS for anyone looking for a casual read, but it is worth the effort for those seeking to learn more about humans perceive and manage risks in complex, high-stakes environments.

Alfred Marcus, professor of strategy and technological leadership Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesot
This is profoundly important work on the culture of safety, written from an anthropologists perspective which deconstructs the meaning of people in nuclear power plants who see extreme risk around them all the time and have created devices to identify threats and respond, sometimes more appropriately than others. I highly recommend this boo.