Applying ethnographic insight to engineering ethics: epistemography and accountability in the space shuttle Challenger failure and the Macondo Well blowout
Applying ethnographic insight to engineering ethics: epistemography and accountability in the space shuttle Challenger failure and the Macondo Well blowout
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DOI：
10.1080/19378629.2012.686501
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发表时间：
2012-01-01
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Doing, Park A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Doing, Park A.
本文分析了工程失败的伦理学研究中最近的一个运动，主张技术知识生产的认识论，即技术事实被视为社会实践的偶然产物。本文认为，这种方法提出了重要的问题，在技术故障的问责方面的考虑。它指出，在挑战者号航天飞机故障和马孔多油井井喷事件中，从业人员自己也使用这种方法来推卸责任。然后，它认为，而不是提倡的技术事实的偶然性，工程失败的伦理分析师应该采取一种“知识论”的方法，问题是什么效果的认识论断言是由从业者自己的工作过程中，并占，工程失败。最后，本文指出了新的影响，从这样一种方法产生的技术故障的问责制的考虑，并呼吁新的认识论的承诺，最近的工程失败的分析师的反思。
This paper analyzes a recent movement in ethical studies of engineering failure that advocates for an epistemology of technical knowledge production whereby technical facts are seen as the contingent products of social practice. The paper argues that this approach raises important questions with regard to considerations of accountability in technological failures. It points out that practitioners themselves have used such an approach to deflect accountability away from themselves in the cases of the Space Shuttle Challenger failure and the Macondo Well blowout. It then argues that rather than advocate for the contingency of technical facts, ethical analysts of engineering failures should take an 'epistemographic' approach that questions to what effect epistemological assertions are put by practitioners themselves in the course of working on, and accounting for, engineering failures. In conclusion, the paper points to new implications for considerations of accountability in technological failures that arise from such an approach and calls for new reflection on the epistemological commitments of recent analysts of engineering failure.