Theorizing disaster Analogy , historical ethnography , and the Challenger accident

usually invisible process behind all published research. Here I reconstruct my theorizing for an historical ethnography of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration) decisions that produced that accident. I show how analogical theorizing, a method that compares similar events or activities across different social settings, leads to more refined and generalizable theoretical explanations. Revealing the utility of mistakes in theorizing, I show how my mistakes uncovered mistakes in the documentary record, converting my analysis to a revisionist account that contradicted the conventional explanation accepted at the time. Retracing how I developed the concepts and theory that explained the case demonstrates the connection between historic political and economic forces, organization structure and processes, and cultural understandings and actions at NASA. Finally, these analytic reflections show how analysis, writing, and theorizing are integrated throughout the research process. K E Y W O R D S ■ disaster, space shuttle, deviance, technology, culture, habitus, ethnography, analogy, institutional theory When NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated in a ball of fire 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986, the world learned that NASA was graphy Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 5(3): 315–347[DOI: 10.1177/1466138104045659] A R T I C L E 03 vaughn(mrw/d) 11/8/04 9:02 am Page 315