Awards

• Runner-up for American Culture Association: John G Cawelti Award 2007
• Runner-up for American Culture Association: John G Cawelti Award 2007.
• Winner of American Sociological Association Robert K. Merton Professional Award 2006.
• Winner of American Sociological Association Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Robert K. Merton Award 2006
• Winner of American Sociological Association Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Robert K. Merton Award 2006.
• Winner of Society for Social Studies of Science: Rachel Carson Prize 2008.

Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joseph Masco
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.20cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.765kg
ISBN:  

9780691120768

ISBN 10:   0691120765
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   16 April 2006
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Out of stock  

Language:   English

Table of Contents

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

Reviews

Masco's important and impressive study ably demonstrates that nuclear weapons need not be detonated to have profound effects--effects that extend far beyond the well-studied realms of politics and international relations. -- David Kaiser American Scientist Masco seems to have taken to heart the tension between anthropology and science studies: on the one hand science studies too often fails in its understanding of what long-term intensive fieldwork can do; on the other anthropology too often fails to get directly into the heart of science and technology the way it always has language, spirituality, and economy. Masco's book is fusion (that impossible goal of our nuclear culture) of the best kind. -- Christopher Kelty Savage Minds

Author Information

Joseph Masco is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

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