Lee Clarke
Biographic Data
| ID | 3620233 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lee Clarke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lee |
| FAMILY NAME | Clarke |
| SIGNATURE | CLARKE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5108-8645 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 92 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Stoicism of Śāntideva: Comparisons between Stoic and Buddhist philosophy
Recently, due to various geopolitical events, a movement for 'decolonisation' has taken shape. In essence, this movements seeks to right the wrongs of Western colonialism. This desire has been expressed in many diverse ways depending on the context. Within academia, it has found expression in the idea of 'decolonising the curriculum' ‐ redesigning university courses to include more authors, texts, perspectives and more ‐ from those outside of the…
A collective hunch? Risk as the real and the elusive
High Reliability Management: Operating on the Edge. Emery Roe and Paul R. Schulman
Introduction: Thinking Possibilistically in a Probabilistic World
Lee Clarke Introduction: Thinking Possibilistically in a Probabilistic World DISASTERS SERVE AS FOCUSING EVENTS— FOR PUBLICS, THE MEDIA, politicians, and academics. As the papers in this special issue show, there has been an increase in the num ber of disasters over the past 30 years or so. There has also been an increase in the severity of disas ters—m ore deaths and greater loss of property. That frequency and consequence are both on upward tr…
Possibilistic Thinking: A New Conceptual Tool for Thinking about Extreme Events
Lee Clarke Possibilistic Thinking: A New Conceptual Tool for Thinking about Extreme Events IN SCHOLARLY WORK, THE SUBFIELD OF DISASTERS IS OFTEN SEEN AS narrow. One reason for this is that a lot of scholarship on disasters is practically oriented, for obvious reasons, and the social sciences have a deep-seated suspicion of practical work. This is especially true in soci ology. Tierney (2007b) has treated this topic at length, so there is no reas…
Elites and Panic: More to Fear than Fear Itself
Attributions of panic are almost exclusively directed at members of the general public. Here, we inquire into the relationships between elites and panic. We review current research and theorizing about panic, including problems of identifying when it has occurred. We propose three relationships: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic and elites panicking. We use numerous examples, including our own research on the 2001 anthrax attacks in the …
Thinking about Worst-Case Thinking
Post-Katrina Guiding Principles of Disaster Social Science Research
A Katrina Summit was held November 18–19 at Mississippi State University's Social Science Research Center (SSRC). Major funding was provided by the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MIS–605270). Duane Gill, SSRC Associate Director for Research on Society and Environment and Coordinator of the Societal Risk Unit, organized and presided over the Summit. The Summit included eighteen invited scholars (anthropologists, geograph…
Facilitation of Risk Communication During the Anthrax Attacks of 2001: The Organizational Backstory
The anthrax attacks of 2001 created risk communication problems that cannot be fully understood without appreciating the dynamics among organizations. Case studies of communication in New Jersey, consisting of interviews with a range of participants, found that existing organizational and professional networks facilitated trust among decisionmakers. This interpersonal trust improved communication among agencies and thereby risk communication with…
Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives on the Study of Children
Insight Lost
Using Disaster to See Society
Disaster research was once perceived as key to the central concerns of sociology. In 1920, Samuel Henry Prince published Catastrophe and Social Change, which was less significant as an empirical study of the Halifax disaster than for gleaning general sociological insight from extreme events. Twenty years later, Sorokin's Man and Society in Calamity made that approach broader and deeper by trying to use the great range of catastrophes that befall …
The Ex-World Trade Center
Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas
The terror attacks of 9.11 signalled that people are increasingly put at risk of not only terrorism but natural and technological disasters as well. Since 9.11 scholars have been asking new questions about catastrophe and made important and interesting innovations in methods, concepts, and theories regarding disaster and terror. This volume brings together a creative set of papers, most of which are about the 9.11 attacks. They draw from several …
Le mythe de la panique
Les scenes d'affolement collectif sont omnipresentes dans les films et les medias. Pourtant, la panique de groupe est relativement rare. Lors d'une catastrophe, comme celle du 11 septembre, les gens agissent souvent en toute civilite et cooperation
Friendly Fire: The Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Black Hawks over Northern Iraq
A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal. Allan Mazur
Dealing with Risk: Why the Public and the Experts Disagree on Environmental Issues
For decades, policymakers and analysts have been frustrated by the stubborn and often dramatic disagreement between experts and the public on acceptable levels of environmental risk. Most experts, for instance, see no severe problem in dealing with nuclear waste, given the precautions and safety levels now in place. Yet public opinion vehemently rejects this view, repudiating both the experts' analysis and the evidence. In this study, Howard Marg…
Promoting Risk: Constructing the Earthquake Threat. Robert A. Stallings
Prosaic Organizational Failure
We use the case of the now-dead Shoreham Nuclear Power Station to pose some questions, and a few answers, about organizational failure. The analysis centers on the symbolism of organizational plans, specifically how organizations use plans to justify increasingly complex systems to themselves and to others. That such plans are based on sparse or nonexistent experience, and that they are often wildly unrealistic, suggests some reasons why high-tec…
Asian business cultures, an education and training program for small business people
An unethical ethics code
Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk
Increasingly, people's lives are being defined by large-scale organizational decision processes involving governments, businesses and other institutions. This book examines the nature of decision making by organizations confronted with various risks, focusing on choices in which technology and scientific advances play major roles, and looks at the regulatory agencies that set and enforce standards of health and safety. Included are such organizat…
Oil in Troubled Waters: Perceptions, Politics, and the Battle Over Offshore Drilling
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
Explaining Choices among Technological Risks
I address the issue of the process through which some risks, rather than others, are defined as acceptable. The predominant view, based on psychological research, is summarized and then criticized for taking insufficient account of the structural context within which decisions are made concerning risks. I then use evidence from the history of nuclear power, the unsafe Ford Pintos, and an instance of toxic chemical contamination to develop a more …
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
The Origins of Nuclear Power: A Case of Institutional Conflict
This history of the first 16 years of civilian nuclear power in the United States reveals that government agencies (the Atomic Energy Commission and the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy) struggled to create the industry so that military nuclear capabilities would advance. I show why these agencies were intent on developing civilian nuclear power, why utilities were reluctant to invest in nuclear power, and why the utilities eventual…
Prosaic Organizational Failure
We use the case of the now-dead Shoreham Nuclear Power Station to pose some questions, and a few answers, about organizational failure. The analysis centers on the symbolism of organizational plans, specifically how organizations use plans to justify increasingly complex systems to themselves and to others. That such plans are based on sparse or nonexistent experience, and that they are often wildly unrealistic, suggests some reasons why high-tec…
Sociological and Economic Theories of Markets and Nonprofits: Evidence from Home Health Organizations
In this article, data on home health agencies reveal surprisingly few differences between organizations of different tax status (nonprofit vs. forprofit). These findings direclty contradict economic theories of nonprofit organization, as well as third-party government theory from political science. Since ecological theory in sociology proposes a useful explanation for organizational similartities, the authors search for differences between nonpro…
Possibilistic Thinking: A New Conceptual Tool for Thinking about Extreme Events
Lee Clarke Possibilistic Thinking: A New Conceptual Tool for Thinking about Extreme Events IN SCHOLARLY WORK, THE SUBFIELD OF DISASTERS IS OFTEN SEEN AS narrow. One reason for this is that a lot of scholarship on disasters is practically oriented, for obvious reasons, and the social sciences have a deep-seated suspicion of practical work. This is especially true in soci ology. Tierney (2007b) has treated this topic at length, so there is no reas…
Using Disaster to See Society
Disaster research was once perceived as key to the central concerns of sociology. In 1920, Samuel Henry Prince published Catastrophe and Social Change, which was less significant as an empirical study of the Halifax disaster than for gleaning general sociological insight from extreme events. Twenty years later, Sorokin's Man and Society in Calamity made that approach broader and deeper by trying to use the great range of catastrophes that befall …
Politics and bias in risk assessment
Whereas formal risk assessments can rationalize decision making in organizations, political and other biases remain. This article examines the origins of risk analysis in conflicts of political interest. The history of probabilistic risk analysis in the nuclear industry illustrates the problem. This involves the nexus between experts and political judgment (focusing on expert behavior in the wake of Chernobyl), and the connection between risk ana…
Elites and Panic: More to Fear than Fear Itself
Attributions of panic are almost exclusively directed at members of the general public. Here, we inquire into the relationships between elites and panic. We review current research and theorizing about panic, including problems of identifying when it has occurred. We propose three relationships: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic and elites panicking. We use numerous examples, including our own research on the 2001 anthrax attacks in the …
Facilitation of Risk Communication During the Anthrax Attacks of 2001: The Organizational Backstory
The anthrax attacks of 2001 created risk communication problems that cannot be fully understood without appreciating the dynamics among organizations. Case studies of communication in New Jersey, consisting of interviews with a range of participants, found that existing organizational and professional networks facilitated trust among decisionmakers. This interpersonal trust improved communication among agencies and thereby risk communication with…
Drs. Pangloss and strangelove meet organizational theory: High reliability organizations and nuclear weapons accidents
Rhetoric, reform, and risk
Thinking about Worst-Case Thinking
An unethical ethics code
Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People
The Origins of Nuclear Power: A Case of Institutional Conflict
This history of the first 16 years of civilian nuclear power in the United States reveals that government agencies (the Atomic Energy Commission and the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy) struggled to create the industry so that military nuclear capabilities would advance. I show why these agencies were intent on developing civilian nuclear power, why utilities were reluctant to invest in nuclear power, and why the utilities eventual…
The Managerial Imperative: The Age of Macromanagement
The managerial imperative: the age of macromanagement , The managerial imperative: the age of macromanagement , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)
Reactive Risk and Rational Action: Managing Moral Hazard in Insurance Contracts. Carol A. Heimer
Max headroom and the efficiency worshippers: Problems of control in a technocratic democracy
Politics and bias in risk assessment
Whereas formal risk assessments can rationalize decision making in organizations, political and other biases remain. This article examines the origins of risk analysis in conflicts of political interest. The history of probabilistic risk analysis in the nuclear industry illustrates the problem. This involves the nexus between experts and political judgment (focusing on expert behavior in the wake of Chernobyl), and the connection between risk ana…
Explaining Choices among Technological Risks
I address the issue of the process through which some risks, rather than others, are defined as acceptable. The predominant view, based on psychological research, is summarized and then criticized for taking insufficient account of the structural context within which decisions are made concerning risks. I then use evidence from the history of nuclear power, the unsafe Ford Pintos, and an instance of toxic chemical contamination to develop a more …
Acceptable Risk: Making Decisions in a Toxic Environment
Organizations and modern technology give us much of what we value, but they have also given us Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Bhopal. The question at the heart of this paradox is "What is acceptable risk?" Based on his examination of the 1981 contamination of an office building in Binghamton, New York, Lee Clarke's compelling study argues that organizational processes are the key to understanding how some risks rather than others are defined a…
New ideas on the division of labor
Risk Management
Capitalism is richer, democracy is safer
Acceptable Risk? Making Decisions in a Toxic Environment
Creating Risks Organizational Chaos Beginning Decontamination and Medical Surveillance Constricting the Field of Organizations As Excursus on Resolving Organizational Dilemmas: The County Government's Risk Organizing Medical Surveillance Organizing Decontamination The Exposed Organizing Risk Appendix A: The Players Appendix B: A Methodological Accounting References List of Interviews
How Oil Pollutes
Toxic Work: Women Workers at GTE Lenkurt
Sociological and Economic Theories of Markets and Nonprofits: Evidence from Home Health Organizations
In this article, data on home health agencies reveal surprisingly few differences between organizations of different tax status (nonprofit vs. forprofit). These findings direclty contradict economic theories of nonprofit organization, as well as third-party government theory from political science. Since ecological theory in sociology proposes a useful explanation for organizational similartities, the authors search for differences between nonpro…
Drs. Pangloss and strangelove meet organizational theory: High reliability organizations and nuclear weapons accidents
Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk
Rhetoric, reform, and risk
Oil in Troubled Waters: Perceptions, Politics, and the Battle Over Offshore Drilling
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
Asian business cultures, an education and training program for small business people
An unethical ethics code
Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk
Increasingly, people's lives are being defined by large-scale organizational decision processes involving governments, businesses and other institutions. This book examines the nature of decision making by organizations confronted with various risks, focusing on choices in which technology and scientific advances play major roles, and looks at the regulatory agencies that set and enforce standards of health and safety. Included are such organizat…
Promoting Risk: Constructing the Earthquake Threat. Robert A. Stallings
Prosaic Organizational Failure
We use the case of the now-dead Shoreham Nuclear Power Station to pose some questions, and a few answers, about organizational failure. The analysis centers on the symbolism of organizational plans, specifically how organizations use plans to justify increasingly complex systems to themselves and to others. That such plans are based on sparse or nonexistent experience, and that they are often wildly unrealistic, suggests some reasons why high-tec…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (26 works) · Law (15 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Risk Perception and Management (12 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (8 works)