This book benefited from the financial support of a French Government
scholarship between 1976 and 1978. It sponsored a doctoral thesis in
which initial theoretical, empirical, and historical reflections on
acci- dents were developed and written while I was a student at the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The New Zealand
Depart- ment of Labour funded a study on industrial accidents and night
work during 1979-80. In 1982-83, the award of a postdoctoral fellowship
by the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) permitted a first version
of this book to be finished. In the summer of 1986-87 the Funda ao de
Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP) and the Labora- toire
d'Ergonomie et de Neurophysiologie du Travail of the Centre Na- tional
des Arts et Metiers joined forces to fund a stay in Paris where the
second draft of this book was presented in a special doctoral seminar
series. The third draft was completed during a 1988 research leave
granted by the Conjunto de Ciencia Politica of the Universidade Es-
tadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). On a further research leave from the same
unit, and thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship from the Brazilian
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnol6gico (CNPq),
final redrafting was carried out between August and October 1990 when I
was a visiting fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at
Cornell University. I am deeply grateful to these institutions for their
generosity.