Vikahistoriaan

Vikahistoriaan is a proposed interdisciplinary field within historiography and studies of technology and society. It analyzes how faults, failures, and malfunctions have been discovered, interpreted, and handled across different eras and cultures, and how such episodes shape technology, policy, and collective memory. The term combines vika (fault, defect) with historia (history) and is used to describe a historical approach that centers fault events as catalysts for change as well as objects of cultural narration.

Scope and methods include examining engineering failures, software bugs, medical errors, organizational lapses, and systemic injustices. Researchers employ archival research, incident reports, regulatory records, and media coverage, alongside case studies and theoretical frameworks from historiography, disaster studies, and science and technology studies, to understand how faults are detected, reported, and remedied and how they influence design and governance.

Relation to other fields is established with the history of technology, disaster studies, risk history, and STS. Vikahistoriaan complements traditional technological histories by foregrounding incidents of failure and examining how societies narrate, regulate, and remember risk.

Examples and themes frequently explored include chronicles of notable accidents, product recalls, cybersecurity incidents, and public health failures. Such studies illuminate how risk is communicated, how accountability is assigned, and how memory of faults affects future policy and engineering practice.

Critique and challenges center on definitional clarity, selection bias, and ethical considerations regarding victims and affected communities. Critics warn against sensationalism or determinism and call for rigorous methodology that situates fault histories within broader social and political contexts.