Applying Ethnographic Insight to Engineering Ethics: Epistemography, The Space Shuttle Challenger, and the BP Gulf Coast Underwater Oil Gusher

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

The talk analyzes a recent movement in ethical studies of engineering that advocates for an epistemology of technical knowledge production, rooted in ethnographic laboratory studies of the 1970s and 1980s and imported from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), whereby technical facts are the contingent products of social practice. The paper argues that this approach raises important questions about the relationship of analysts to the subjects of their study with regard to considerations of accountability in technological failures. The paper argues that rather than advocate for the contingency of technical facts, ethical analysts of engineering failures should take an 'epistemographic' approach that traces performances of epistemology pursued by practitioners themselves in the course of working on, and accounting for, engineering failures. The paper explores the new implications for considerations of accountability in technological failures that arise from this approach. The paper uses this approach to revisit the Space Shuttle Challenger case and concludes with a preliminary look into the Gulf Coast oil gusher.