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Freudenburg Beyond Borders: Recreancy, Atrophy of Vigilance, Bureaucratic Slippage, and the Tragedy of 9/11

Susan Maret

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research

ISBN: 978-1-78190-734-4, eISBN: 978-1-78190-735-1

Publication date: 20 December 2013

Abstract

In this chapter, I suggest three conceptual tools developed by William R. Freudenburg and colleagues that characterize the failure of institutions to carry out their duties – recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage – are of use beyond environmental sociology in the framing of the September 11, 2001 disaster. Using testimony and findings from primary materials such as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Joint Inquiry hearings and report (2002, 2004a, 2004b) and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004) alongside insider accounts, I discuss how Freudenburg’s tools have the potential to theorize institutional failures that occur in national security decision making. I also suggest these tools may be of particular interest to the U.S. intelligence community in its own investigation of various types of risk and failures.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Bob Gramling Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Jan Goldman, Ed.D., Georgetown University, Ivan Greenberg Ph.D., and Peter Phillips Ph.D., Sonoma State University, for their comments and suggestions on this chapter.

Citation

Maret, S. (2013), "Freudenburg Beyond Borders: Recreancy, Atrophy of Vigilance, Bureaucratic Slippage, and the Tragedy of 9/11", William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 201-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021013

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited