Applying ethnographic insight to engineering ethics: epistemography and accountability in the space shuttle Challenger failure and the Macondo Well blowout

摘要

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 'epistemo-graphic' 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.