The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico
Buch, Englisch, 438 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 713 g
ISBN: 978-0-691-12077-5
Verlag: Princeton University Press
The Nuclear Borderlands explores the sociocultural fallout of twentieth-century America's premier technoscientific project--the atomic bomb. Joseph Masco offers the first anthropological study of the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project for the people that live in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb, and the majority of weapons in the current U.S. nuclear arsenal, were designed. Masco examines how diverse groups--weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, neighboring Pueblo Indian Nations and Nuevomexicano communities, and antinuclear activists--have engaged the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post-Cold War period, mobilizing to debate and redefine what constitutes "national security." In a pathbreaking ethnographic analysis, Masco argues that the U.S. focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on American society. The atomic bomb, he demonstrates, is not just the engine of American technoscientific modernity; it has produced a new cognitive orientation toward everyday life, provoking cross-cultural experiences of what Masco calls a "nuclear uncanny." Revealing how the bomb has reconfigured concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship, the book provides new theoretical perspectives on the origin and logic of U.S. national security culture. The Nuclear Borderlands ultimately assesses the efforts of the nuclear security state to reinvent itself in a post-Cold War world, and in so doing exposes the nuclear logic supporting the twenty-first-century U.S. war on terrorism.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1: THE ENLIGHTENED EARTH 1
The Nuclear State of Emergency 5
Radioactive Nation-building 18
The Nuclear Uncanny 27
"A Multidimensional, Nonlinear, Complex System" 35
PART I: EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE PLUTONIUM ECONOMY 41
Chapter 2: NUCLEAR TECHNOAESTHETICS: THE SENSORY POLITICS OF THE BOMB IN LOS ALAMOS 43
The Bomb's Future 46
Above-ground Testing (1945-1962): Tactility and the Nuclear Sublime 55
Underground Testing (1963-1992): Embracing Complexity, Fetishizing Production 68
Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship (1995-2010): Virtual Bombs and Prosthetic Senses 78
Of Bombs and Bodies in the Plutonium Economy 96
Chapter 3: ECONATIONALISMS: FIRST NATIONS IN THE PLUTONIUM ECONOMY 99
Ecologies of Place 101
The New World: 1942/1992 112
Mirrors and Appropriations: The Secret Societies of the Pajarito Plateau 119
Explosive Testing 132
Nuclear Nations: The Sovereignty of Nuclear Waste 144
Econationalisms in the Plutonium Economy 156
Chapter 4: RADIOACTIVE NATION-BUILDING IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO: A NUCLEAR MAQUILADORA? 160
Radioactive Death Trucks 162
On Invasion and Illegitimacy 179
LANL: A Nuclear Maquiladora? 197
Nuevomexicano Futures in the Plutonium Economy 213
Chapter 5: BACKTALKING TO THE NATIONAL FETISH: THE RISE OF ANTINUCLEAR ACTIVISM IN SANTA FE 215
The Post-Cold War Moment 219
The Psychic Toxicity of Plutonium 228
Anti-antinuclear Activists 237
What Is a "New" Nuclear Weapon? 244
Los Alamos: Ground Zero of the Peace Movement 256
PART II: NATIONAL INSECURITIES 261
Chapter 6: LIE DETECTORS: ON SECRECTS AND HYPERSECURITY IN LOS ALAMOS 263
What Is a Nuclear Secret? 265
On Racial Profiling 272
Hypersecurity Measures 278
The "New Normal" 283
Chapter 7: MUTANT ECOLOGIES: RADIOACTIVE LIFE IN POST-COLD WAR NEW MEXICO 289
Of Men and Ants 293
Nuclear Test Subjects 302
The Wildlife/Sacrifice Zone 311
Environmental Sentinels, or the Militarization of the Honey Bee 316
The Social Logics of Mutation 324
Chapter 8: EPILOGUE: THE NUCLEAR BORDERLANDS 328
Notes 339
References 375
Index 413
