ABSTRACT
The Fukushima disaster invites us to look back and probe how nuclear technology has shaped the world we live in, and how we have come to live with it. Since the first nuclear detonation (Trinity test) and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all in 1945, nuclear technology has profoundly affected world history and geopolitics, as well as our daily life and natural world. It has always been an instrument for national security, a marker of national sovereignty, a site of technological innovation and a promise of energy abundance. It has also introduced permanent pollution and the age of the Anthropocene. This volume presents a new perspective on nuclear history and politics by focusing on four interconnected themes–violence and survival; control and containment; normalizing through denial and presumptions; memories and futures–and exploring their relationships and consequences. It proposes an original reflection on nuclear technology from a long-term, comparative and transnational perspective. It brings together contributions from researchers from different disciplines (anthropology, history, STS) and countries (US, France, Japan) on a variety of local, national and transnational subjects. Finally, this book offers an important and valuable insight into other global and Anthropocene challenges such as climate change.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Section I|88 pages
Violence and order
chapter 3|19 pages
Constructing world order: mobilising tropes of gender, pathology and race to frame US non-proliferation policy
chapter 4|24 pages
The Nuclear Charter: international law, military technology, and the making of strategic trusteeship, 1942–1947 1
part Section II|74 pages
Pacifying through control and containment
chapter 5|21 pages
Sharing the “safe” atom?: the International Atomic Energy Agency and nuclear regulation through standardisation 1
chapter 6|16 pages
From military surveillance to citizen counter-expertise: radioactivity monitoring in a nuclear world
chapter 7|18 pages
Making the accident hypothetical: how can one deal with the potential nuclear disaster?
part Section III|76 pages
Normalising through denial and trivialisation
chapter 9|18 pages
Trivialising life in long-term contaminated areas: the nuclear political laboratory
chapter 10|19 pages
Continuing nuclear tests and ending fish inspections: politics, science and the Lucky Dragon Incident in 1954
part Section IV|60 pages
Timescaping through memory and future visions