Scholarlink

After the lifting of martial law (1987) in Taiwan, engineering ethics emerged as a movement to highlight the social responsibility of engineers amid widespread societal issues and technological changes that had hitherto been difficult to openly critique because of political persecution of dissenters. In the late 2000s, scholarship in science, technology, and society (STS) in Taiwan began to enrich engineering ethics by foregrounding the sociopolitical shaping of technological development. The 2014 Kaohsiung propene explosions, causing the destruction of major roads with 32 deaths and over 300 injuries, manifest how martial law and its legacy led to systematic neglect and ignorance of the risk and its governance. Court records show that technical practitioners had limited knowledge about the complexities of technological systems, therefore downplaying the relevance of standards and guidelines when making decisions. We argue that broader developments of public policy and civil discourse have mediated the microscopic ethical behavior of technical practitioners, creating an infrastructure of (un)safety cultures that support (or impair) the ethical decisions of professionals. As the explosions exposed the entangled petrochemical infrastructure and its sociopolitical history, macro-ethical questions about industrial hazards provided lessons for improved governance, policy, and public knowledge, thereby supporting ethical decision making in future practice.

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Industrial Development, Invisible Hazards, and Bringing to Light Their Entanglements: Lessons for Ethics from the 2014 Kaohsiung Propene Explosions in Taiwan

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2026年

查看全文
  • Bono Po-Jen Shih,
  • Wen-Ling Hong,
  • Jr-Ping Wang

摘要

After the lifting of martial law (1987) in Taiwan, engineering ethics emerged as a movement to highlight the social responsibility of engineers amid widespread societal issues and technological changes that had hitherto been difficult to openly critique because of political persecution of dissenters. In the late 2000s, scholarship in science, technology, and society (STS) in Taiwan began to enrich engineering ethics by foregrounding the sociopolitical shaping of technological development. The 2014 Kaohsiung propene explosions, causing the destruction of major roads with 32 deaths and over 300 injuries, manifest how martial law and its legacy led to systematic neglect and ignorance of the risk and its governance. Court records show that technical practitioners had limited knowledge about the complexities of technological systems, therefore downplaying the relevance of standards and guidelines when making decisions. We argue that broader developments of public policy and civil discourse have mediated the microscopic ethical behavior of technical practitioners, creating an infrastructure of (un)safety cultures that support (or impair) the ethical decisions of professionals. As the explosions exposed the entangled petrochemical infrastructure and its sociopolitical history, macro-ethical questions about industrial hazards provided lessons for improved governance, policy, and public knowledge, thereby supporting ethical decision making in future practice.