The story of an oil leakage in the Guadalupe Dunes, 170 miles north of LA, which persisted unattended for 38 years. There are lessons to be drawn about social inertia in the face of environmental degradation, especially when the effects are not dramatically visible.
Thomas D. Beamish is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis.
Breaks new ground in exploring the ways in which meaning and power mask the accumulation of environmental hazards. --Loren Lutzenhiser, Professor, Department of Sociology, Washington State University "Thomas Beamish has done social science and the environmental movement a great service by showing how organizational interests shape what is considered good and bad, possible and impossible, even what the term 'environment' means. Superb work. I wish more sociology was like this." --Lee Clarke, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University "In this fascinating work we see giant oil's corporate configuration and the regulatory bureaucratic blinders merge in a ponderous, slow and silent disaster, an organizational dance that is a harbinger of a 'new species of trouble.'" --Charles Perrow, Professor of Sociology, Yale University