Sociology and the Space Shuttle

As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.


Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.

Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.

We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.

As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.

Enjoy!

(note, depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a few minutes to load)

Who is in Control of Your Life?

On May 9, 2002, Carl and I launched a unique radio show called First Person Plural.

We began by posing the question, "Who is in Control of Your Life?"

We hope you enjoy this look back.

June 9 Slides are up

Also,

Thought you might find this interesting. It is from the first episode of our radio show which outlines why I think the movie, The Matrix is a great allegory for a sociological imagination. When you click on the link the .mp3 file may take a few minutes to load up.

Reading from my Book in Class

In Soc 102 last week, I read an essay from my book Taking Up Space, which I co-wrote with my husband, Carl Wilkerson in 2005. The excerpt was written on Summer Solstace, 2002. The essay, "Closet Optimist" is in the box on each of pages.

Welcome

I started formally teaching Sociology again this year at College of Southern Nevada. In one sense, I do sociology in everything I do. I see the world through a sociological eye, as they say. But there is a joy in being back in a classroom and talking about these things again.

This blog is meant to give me an extra forum to do sociology.

I plan to archive our sociological radio show here, First Person, Plural, which ran on FM Radio in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from 2002 to 2004.

I plan to give my students at CSN some extra information here.

Mostly I plan to do sociology here.

Stay tuned.