The Exxon Valdez Disaster: Readings on a Modern Social Problem [Paperback]

J. Steven Picou (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 339 pages
• Publisher: Kendall Hunt Pub Co (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787230367
• ISBN-13: 978-0787230364
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,531,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars About the Book, September 4, 2008

By 

Promilla C. Gupta - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Exxon Valdez Disaster : Readings on a Modern Social Problem (Hardcover)

The development of this volume reflects the collective research interests of the editors over the last seven years on the Exxon disaster in Alaska. Picou and Gill first conducted fieldwork in 1989, five months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In 1991, Picou, Gill and Cohen spent two and one-half months in southcentral Alaska collecting sociological and economic data on the oil spill. Since that time, Picou and Gill have continued to collect data and conduct fieldwork in Alaska. Over the years, we have shared our varied experiences and research findings, as well as our understanding of this disaster, in the classroom and with our colleagues and friends. Their response has been one of extreme interest, fascination, and concern. The inspiration for this book emerged from the fact that relatively little information had been systematically assembled and made available on this event as a technological disaster. Our primary objective in compiling this volume was to provide a general introduction to the social problem of technological disasters in terms of a case study of the largest oil spill in North American history-the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Over the years, we have identified a number of publications from a wide variety of sources on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. These publications covered a range of scientific disciplines but many were inaccessible to social scientists and students. We have used a number of these articles as required readings in courses such as social problems, environmental sociology, sociology of disasters, human ecology, the community, and environmental economics. Those reprinted in this text proved to be both informative and interesting to a broad cross-section of students from undergraduate to graduate. However, there were a number of obvious gaps in the research literature on the social dimensions of the spill, and, accordingly, we have attempted to fill these voids with five original chapters. Chapter contents range from official accounts and interpretive narratives to modestly technical studies of psychological and economic impacts, allowing the instructor the flexibility to emphasize a variety of basic sociological issues.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We don't care; we don't have to care - we're Exxon., August 30, 2002

By 

James A. Dees "Darkling Thrush" (Cascadia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Exxon Valdez Disaster: Readings on a Modern Social Problem (Paperback)

A look at what really happens when corporations rule the world. Dr. Picou explains the difference between natural and man-made disasters in terms of the social impacts they have. He presents the Exxon Valdez disaster from several angles, and takes the reader from the series of poor decisions and budget cutbacks that preceded the event through the ecological catastrophe to the legal and social morass that followed. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the challenges we face in an era of corporate globalization.