Diane Vaughan is an American sociologist and professor at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. She is known for her work on organizational and management issues, in particular in the case of the space shuttle ''Challenger'' Disaster.

Early life and education

Career

Diane Vaughan studied sociology at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

, and received her PhD in 1979. From 1979 to 1982 she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Sociology of Social Control at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. From 1982 to 1984 she was a Research Associate, at Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, and then joined the Department of Sociology at Boston College. From 1986 to 1987 she was a Visiting Fellow, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies,

Wolfson College, Oxford Wolfson College () is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Wolfson is an all-graduate college, it prides itself on being one of the most international colleges at Oxford, with part ...

. She taught at Boston College from 1984 to 2005. Since 2005 she has been a professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at

Awards

Vaughan is a laureate of the ''Public Understanding of Sociology'' ''Award'', of the

American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fi ...

. ''The Challenger Launch Decision'' (1996) won the Rachel Carson Prize (inaugural winner) and the Robert K. Merton Award, as well as being nominated for the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

and

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

Work

In the understanding of

safety Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings The word 'safety' entered the English language in the 1 ...

and

risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environ ...

, Vaughan is perhaps best known for coining the phrase " normalization of deviance", which she has used to explain the sociological causes of the '' Challenger'' and ''Columbia'' disasters. Vaughan defines this as a process where a clearly unsafe practice comes to be considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe: "a long incubation period efore a final disasterwith early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored or missed completely." In the study of relationships, Vaughan is known for her research into the process of relationship breakups.

Bibliography

* ''Controlling Unlawful Organizational Behavior'' (1983). * ''Uncoupling. Turning Points in Intimate Relationships'' (1986), Oxford University Press. * ''The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA'' (1996), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * “Theorizing: Analogy, Cases, and Comparative Social Organization.”(2014) In: Richard Swedberg (ed.), Theorizing in the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 61-8 *

References

External links

Faculty bio
* :Wikibooks:Professionalism/Diane Vaughan and the normalization of deviance {{DEFAULTSORT:Vaughan, Diane American sociologists American women sociologists Columbia University faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni