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
The Nuclear Borderlands alters the meaning of 'ethnography' in a way that will challenge all of us in anthropology. It will certainly take its place among the classic texts assessing the cultural politics of the bomb, and it will join the must-read ranks in the literature on American nationalism and nation-making in the late twentieth century. -- Susan Harding, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of "The Book of Jerry Falwell" and "Remaking Ibieca" No account of the post Cold War environment can afford to ignore this study and the tangle of economic, political, and cultural rights, interests, and imperatives it maps. Joe Masco pushes the ethnographic agenda firmly forward into an ambivalent twenty-first century, where Los Alamos is both dangerous polluter and lifeline employer, where rival eco-cultures, ethnicities, and social hierarchies fight over control of nature, and where the technological future can exacerbate or redeem the nuclear past. Neither antinuclear environmentalists, nor Native Americans, nor Nuevomexicanos, nor the Los Alamos scientists, nor the Washington politicians have a monopoly on the answers, and Masco shows us why. -- Michael M. J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of "Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice" Joseph Masco's argument that nuclear weapons are no longer a technology subject to scientific challenge but rather exist primarily as powerful cultural constructs takes us a long way toward understanding post-Cold War continuities in U.S. security strategies, as well as some of the astounding aspects of American exceptionalism in international politics. -- John Borneman, Princeton University
Joseph Masco is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
Winner of the 2008 Rachel Carson Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Honorable Mention for the 2007 John G. Cawelti Award, American Culture Association Co-Winner of the 2006 Robert K. Merton Prize, Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association "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
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