Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness ed. by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness ed. by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest Victoria Harms (bio) Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness Edited by Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest*. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. 250. The contributions to this insightful and conceptually ambitious volume originated in a conference in Lund, Sweden, in 2018 and were completed before February 24, 2022, the date that Russia invaded Ukraine. The editors of Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe meticulously highlight the relevance "of civil defence history for current imaginaries of security for European civil societies in the face of a highly diverse range of real and perceived threats" (p. 16). They insist that the case studies would put us "in a better position to make sustainable, complex and mature decisions for our desirable futures" (p. 243), and one immediately sees how Russia's attack on Ukraine has made the case for them. The volume stands out with its unusual geographic focus (NATO generally, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) and approach to "sociotechnical imaginaries," a concept Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyuan Kim first developed in Dreamscapes of Modernity (2015). The case studies here discuss the ways in which civil defense during the Cold War served to guarantee a "desired future" (survival) and prevent the undesirable (nuclear annihilation and chaos). The contributors follow Jasanoff and Kim's lead to analyze the (de)stabilizing impact of science and technology on societies, the establishment of science-based imaginaries, their contestations, and evolution across time and space. The editors identify four phases of "sociotechnical imaginaries" (origins, embeddedness, resistance, and extension), but most of the contributors prioritize embeddedness and extension. Many expand Jasanoff's approach to better capture the history of civil defense. The case studies reveal several striking commonalities: the official scenarios under which authorities operated mostly resembled a conventional war and recalled experiences from World War II. Most programs suggested that a proper civil defense would make a nuclear—and any other—catastrophe manageable and survivable. Civil defense sought to strengthen loyalty and underscore the state's legitimacy as a competent caretaker. But the everyday [End Page 256] experience varied across cases, and interest in, let alone enthusiasm for, civil defense petered out in most cases by the 1980s. Officials, organizations, and participants mostly believed in their societies' "natural" patriarchal order, and programs, even the Dutch women's volunteer organizations (Dick van Lente), reinforced traditional gender roles. The development of the hydrogen bomb represented a caesura, reinforcing efforts toward emergency preparedness. But the H-bomb, more than détente, occasionally also heightened civilians' indifference. Overall, it was not the threat of nuclear annihilation but civilian apathy and combatting the anticipated panic following an attack that seemed to have posed the greatest challenges. The volume opens with Iben Bjørnsson's agenda-setting study of NATO in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly insightful and enjoyable are Peter Bennesved and Casper Sylvest's comparative study of civil defense films in Sweden and Denmark, as well as Rosanna Farbøl's evaluation of "ruin towns," built for practice and demonstration of civil defense exercises in Denmark. West Germans, Jochen Molitor argues, proved curiously disinterested in the government's civil defense efforts, which he explains with their complicity in World War II. By contrast, that same war motivated especially British citizens and Dutch women to get involved: they considered preparedness their patriotic duty (Jonathan Hogg, Dick van Lente). Sibylle Marti studies physicians' resistance to the Swiss government's holistic defense strategy in the 1980s and their moralizing arguments against the so-called Coordinated Medical Services. Marie Cronqvist and Matthew Grant conclude the volume with an oral history project comparing individual memories of civil defense in the United Kingdom and Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s. They highlight the "fuzziness" of memory and everyday experiences, the power of collective images, and the differences between rural and urban environments. Although the authors do not articulate this observation, many of the programs seem to have obscured the science and technology behind (thermo) nuclear warfare. Science literacy among...