Twenty-one British scholars contribute 14 essays which consider the crash (of physical objects, living beings, and nonvisible systems in the contemporary world) as a symbolic and material event which can give insights about the experiences of living in a modern, technologically-oriented world. Their analyses suggest the force of conventionalized ways of seeing and being, as a means of managing the unruly materiality of modern life, and address the interrelations between inanimate machines and living organisms. No subject index.