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.