Actor networks and high risk technologies: the case of the Gulf War

Abstract

The Gulf War provided dramatic evidence of the extent to which large-scale scientific experiments and global political contests of will are interwoven with each other. The actor network approach helps to explain that social actors need social networks as a basis for conducting particularly risky actions, such as testing the hypothesis of the feasibility of a disarming first strike true to scale, or trying to establish a new world order in which both military aggression and the unrestricted proliferation of modern dual-use technology would be proscribed. The Gulf War, however, demonstrates the double ambivalence of networking: the participation in social networks promises large benefits but entails an additional risk for each actor; and the people concerned outside the network may suffer very deeply from the effects of risky networking practices.