Rebels and Pioneers: Technocratic Ideologies and Social Identities in the French Nuclear Workplace, 1955-69

Abstract

This paper compares the cultural meanings of `work' and `risk' at two French nuclear sites, run by different institutions in the 1950s and 1960s. Differences between the two sites stemmed not from technological constraints, but from differences in the political, social and cultural ideologies espoused by each institution. Responses to risk, for example, were as much responses to larger ideological constructs as they were responses to danger. Through this case study, the paper argues that we should find broader uses for analytic tools like `social constructivism' and `technological style'. It proposes analyzing the meanings given to technologies and risks after they are constructed, and examining the ways in which technological activity continues to be social, cultural or political, even after technologies are `black-boxed' or reach `closure'. Doing so leads to new ways of seeing critical connections between artefacts, structures and practices of technological activity and broader social, cultural or political issues.