The Nuclear Borderlands : The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico / Joseph Masco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Masco, Joseph, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Manhattan Project (U.S.)--Social aspects.

Manhattan Project (U.S.).

Manhattan Project (U.S.)--History.

Nuclear weapons industry--New Mexico--Los Alamos Region--Social aspects.

Nuclear weapons industry.

Nuclear weapons--New Mexico--Testing.

Nuclear weapons.

American 4 :--1900-present.

American 4 :.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (443 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

2013.

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. THE ENLIGHTENED EARTH

2. NUCLEAR TECHNOAESTHETICS: THE SENSORY POLITICS OF THE BOMB IN LOS ALAMOS

3. ECONATIONALISMS: FIRST NATIONS IN THE PLUTONIUM ECONOMY

4. RADIOACTIVE NATION-BUILDING IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO: A NUCLEAR MAQUILADORA?

5. BACKTALKING TO THE NATIONAL FETISH: THE RISE OF ANTINUCLEAR ACTIVISM IN SANTA FE

6. LIE DETECTORS: ON SECRECTS AND HYPERSECURITY IN LOS ALAMOS

7. MUTANT ECOLOGIES: RADIOACTIVE LIFE IN POST–COLD WAR NEW MEXICO

8. EPILOGUE: THE NUCLEAR BORDERLANDS

NOTES

REFERENCES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [375]-411) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jun 2020)

ISBN:

9780691120768

0691120765

9781400849680

1400849683

OCLC:

966821518