Anti-nuclear Movement Research Articles

Notes on the 'Dog that didn't Bark': eco-internationalism in late Soviet Kazakstan

Ecological mobilization frequently assumed ethnonationalist forms in the late Soviet period. In Kazakstan, however, popular grievances defined in ethnic terms, which manifested themselves as republic-wide ethnic protest in 1986 and appeared to pose a profound ethnonationalist challenge to the Soviet state in the early years of its perestroika, did not fuel the environmental movement in that republic. On the contrary, ecological protest adopted inter-nationalist, rather than ethno-nationalist, tropes in late Soviet Kazakstan. This article employs theoretical insights from the social movement literature to argue that the processes by which political contestation becomes framed (framing processes) account for the critical variation between instances of nationalist and non-nationalist environmental mobilization. Specifically, it contends that in Kazakstan- a setting characterized by a poverty of finances, organizational apparatuses, meeting space, and expertise- a domestic mobilizational frame was selected to resonate with a transnational master frame to tap essential financial and symbolic resources and generate widespread support for the anti-nuclear Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement.

Critical masses: opposition to nuclear power in California, 1958-1978

Using first hand testimony this text tells how the citizens of California - from the tiny town of Wasco in the Central Valley to the vast suburbs of Los Angeles - challenged the threat of nuclear power and transformed the anti-nuclear movement in the years between 1958 to 1978.

Eco-Nationalism, Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine

Eco-Nationalism examines the spectacular rise of the anti-nuclear power movement in the former Soviet Union during the early perestroika period, its unexpected successes in the late 1980s, and its substantial decline after 1991. Jane I. Dawson argues that anti-nuclear activism, one of the most dynamic social forces to emerge during these years, was primarily a surrogate for an ever-present nationalism and a means of demanding greater local self-determination under the Soviet system. Rather than representing strongly held environmental and anti-nuclear convictions, this activism was a political effort that reflected widely held anti-Soviet sentiments and a resentment against Moscow's domination of the region - an effort that largely disappeared with the dissolution of the USSR.Dawson combines a theoretical framework based on models of social movements with extensive field research to compare the ways in which nationalism, regionalism, and other political demands were incorporated into anti-nuclear movements in Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Armenia, Tatarstan, and Crimea. These comparative case studies form the core of this book and trace differences among the various regional movements to the distinctive national identities of groups involved. Reflecting the new opportunities for research that have become available since the late 1980s, these studies draw upon Dawson's extended on-site observation of local movements through 1995 and her unique access to movement activists and their personal archives.Analysing and documenting a development with sobering and potentially devastating implications for nuclear power safety in the former USSR and beyond, Eco-Nationalism's examination of social activism in late and postcommunist societies will interest readers concerned with the politics of global environmentalism and the process of democratisation in the post-Soviet world.

Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. By Jane I. Dawson. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. xii + 221 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $16.95

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsEco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. By Jane I. Dawson. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. xii + 221 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $16.95lsebill V. Gruhnlsebill V. Gruhn University of California-Santa Cruz Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 3, Number 1January 1998 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 2Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3985443 Views: 2Total views on this site © 1998 American Society for Environmental History and Forest History SocietyPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War by Hugh Gusterson

technology and culture Book Reviews 133 Attention very much centers on his policy concerns and their expres­ sion. This may reflect the book’s origin. In 1983 Francis X. Gannon began the project as a set ofessays on the retired congressman’s nuclear energy views. It evolved into a socalled authorized biography supported by a group ofclose associates and friends organized as the Holifield Book Associates. When Gan­ non suffered a fatal heart attack in late 1988, the associates sought a successor and found Richard W. Dyke. In 1989 Dyke published his dissertation as Mr. AtomicEnergy: Congressman Chet Holifield andAtomic Energy Affairs, 1945-1974 (Greenwood Press) and early the following year accepted the new commission. Finally published in 1996, Chet Holifield retains marks of its original purpose, part testimonial and still mostly a series of essays on various topics related to Holifield’s congressional views and positions. Considering the book an essay collection rather than a biography shifts the basis forjudgment without much changing the final grade. Some of its shortcomings are relatively minor, but others are more serious. Such lapses as “profuse time” (p. xiv), “credible and au­ thoritarian sources” (p. xvii), or “Cold War Warrior” (p. 74), for instance, may be merely amusing or annoying, but infelicity of lan­ guage verges on downright error in a sentence like: “Human beings receiving high levels of exposure could and did experience serious biological mutations” (p. 159) Interviews form the book’s backbone, fleshed out with research in manuscript collections; reference to published literature later than the 1980s appears very limited. Anec­ dote, mostly bland if not pointless, largely seems to displace analysis, with scarcely a hint that Holifield might ever have displayed flaws ofjudgment or character. Although uncritical and relentlessly com­ mitted to Holifield’s viewpoint, the discussion of individual topics, most of them on matters nuclear, may nonetheless reward the care­ ful reader with some useful details. Barton C. Hacker Dr. Hacker is the author of Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947-1974 (University of California Press, 1994) and other prizewinning history and fiction. Since 1992 he has been associated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as historian and editor. NuclearRites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End ofthe Cold War. By Hugh Gusterson. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. xviii+351; illustrations, notes, bibliography, in­ dex. $39.95 (cloth). Hugh Gusterson’s Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War represents an important attempt by an anthropologist to understand the worldview of nuclear weapons scientists and anti­ 134 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE nuclear activists. Drawn to nuclear weapons production systems first as an antinuclear activist, Gusterson became fascinated with the question of how nuclear weapons designers maintain an image of themselves as good scientists and conscientious citizens while work­ ing on weapons of mass destruction. For historians of technology, Gusterson adds to our understand­ ing of the people who design technologies of mass destruction. In­ stead ofopening the black box ofthe weapons themselves, as Donald MacKenzie skillfully has done in his Inventing Accuracy, Gusterson examines the political and ethicaljustifications of the scientists, nu­ clear testing as a cultural ritual, and policy implications of this cul­ ture. This means that the book is short on the technical details that have filled many other official and technological accounts ofnuclear weapons design. However, it brings the people and institutions of the nuclear weapons complex into the foreground, something that few histories or sociological accounts of nuclear weapons have done successfully. The bulk of the book focuses on weapons scientists. As a preface to his analysis of the scientists, Gusterson presents a political history of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and of the eco­ nomic significance of the nuclear weapons industry for the city of Livermore, California. He then goes on to describe richly the texture of work life at the laboratory, from the secrecy that characterizes working at a site such as Livermore, to the socialization of newly hired scientists, to the ritual of nuclear testing, which celebrates and defines the elite community of weapons designers. In writing aboutweapons scientists, Gusterson strives to avoid...

Environmental Ethics

The societal roots of the environmental discussion are discussed. Attention focusses on the roles played by the nature conservation, environmental, consumer and anti-nuclear movements, popular and popularized science, the media and the development of environmental policy and regulation.The scientific approach and the societal background enable us to understand the concept of the “environmental crisis”, which itself provides the most important contextual background to environmental ethics. To illustrate contemporary thinking, an analysis of Agenda 21 shows how environmental problems are currently seen as the result of poverty, consumption and production patterns and demographic and decision making issues.Using this environmental knowledge background as a reference, the main lines of thinking in environmental ethics are overviewed. The overview begins by looking at approaches which value the environment because it is or might be of value to man. It continues by considering approaches which are intermediate between the anthropocentric and deep ecological viewpoints. In particular, Leopold's”Land Ethic” and Singer's”Animal Liberation” ideas are discussed.Deep ecology is based on the idea that nature as a whole has moral value. Reference is made to the work of the Norwegian philosopher Naess and to the more scientifically-rooted “deep green theory” of Sylvan and Plumwood.In addition to these different lines of theorising within environmental ethics, the ethical aspects of such anchorpoints in the environmental discussion as sustainable development and the Gaia theory, are also discussed.

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. HUGH GUSTERSON. Berkeley: University of California, 1996; 351 pp. Hugh Gusterson's Nuclear rites: A weapons laboratory at the end of the Cold War, an anthropological study of the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons design laboratory in California, tells fascinating stories relevant to the sociologies of science and technology, social movements, bureaucracy, adult socialization, and legitimization. Drawing extensively from postmodern and orthodox social theories, Gusterson amply demonstrates the power of anthropological investigation and analysis for the interpretation of North American and European society. Although the secrecy enshrouding weapons research limited Gusterson's access to certain types of information, shortages of data that should have been available and presented render less forceful some dimensions of the analysis. Nuclear rites should provoke great discussion in undergraduate and graduate courses about the ethics and consequences of the science and technology industries. According to Gusterson, accepting the necessity of designing ever more powerful nuclear weapons depends upon believing the theory of ddtente. The greater the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the sturdier the dynamic equilibrium between contending forces, the less likely nuclear weapons would ever be used. Nuclear weapons designers think of themselves as peacemakers, not warmongers, like the MX missile they built. No simple social or psychological factors explain how weapons scientists come to accept the doctrine of ddtente. Weapons scientists do not profess uniform political or religious creeds. Although most weapons scientists are male, many women sustain weapons research through other kinds of work. Learning to accept detente is part of becoming socialized and developing a career as a nuclear weapons designer, processes emergent from actually working on weapons design. Security clearance procedures function as important devices for legitimating detente because they outwardly identify individual scientists' own identities with the laboratory's central mission. As weapons scientists' clearances rise, the scientists move from the periphery to the center of the lab's work in a process mirroring their career development. Participating in the live test of a nuclear device of their own design culminates and redefines the careers of nuclear weapons designers by initiating them into the most exclusive echelon of this elite cult. Gusterson juxtaposes the experiences of nuclear weapons scientists and anti-nuclear activists and explicitly cites dilemmas emergent from his personal participation in both social worlds. In the most compelling parts of this book, Gusterson explains how members of these two, often opposed communities develop commitment by melding body with mind in specific bodily disciplines. …

States and Anti-Nuclear Movements. Edited by Helena Flam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. 427p. $85.00.

States and Anti-Nuclear Movements. Edited by Helena Flam. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. 427p. $85.00.

Nuclear rites: a weapons laboratory at the end of the Cold War

Based on fieldwork at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - the facility that designed the neutron bomb and the warhead for the MX missile - Nuclear Rites takes the reader deep inside the top-secret culture of a nuclear weapons lab. Exploring the scientists' world of dark humor, ritualized secrecy, and disciplined emotions, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson uncovers the beliefs and values that animate their work. He discovers that many of the scientists are Christians, deeply convinced of the morality of their work, and a number are liberals who opposed the Vietnam War and the Reagan-Bush agenda. Gusterson also examines the anti-nuclear movement, concluding that the scientists and protesters are alike in surprising ways, with both cultures reflecting the hopes and anxieties of an increasingly threatened middle class. In a lively, wide-ranging account, Gusterson analyzes the ethics and politics of laboratory employees, the effects of security regulations on the scientists' private lives, and the role of nuclear tests - beyond the obvious scientific one--as rituals of initiation and transcendence. He shows how the scientists learn to identify in an almost romantic way with the power of the machines they design - machines they do not fear. In the 1980s the 'world behind the fence' was thrown into crisis by massive anti-nuclear protests at the gates of the lab and by the end of the Cold War. Linking the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement to shifting gender roles and the development of postindustrial capitalism, Gusterson concludes that the scientists and protesters are alike in surprising ways, and that both cultures reflect the hopes and anxieties of an increasingly threatened middle class.

Revis(it)ing nuclear history: narrative conflict at the bradbury science museum*

Nuclear criticism theorizes culture as the site of struggle between ideological narratives seeking authority over the meaning of nuclear symbols. Following the end of the cold war, various groups have conducted this struggle through public discourse about U.S. nuclear weapons organizations. This paper examines symbolic conflict over the history and future of one such organization, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This conflict was conducted between pro-nuclear Laboratory officials and employees of its Bradbury Science Museum, and local anti-nuclear activists. The conflict centered around the activists' construction of an alternative exhibit that was placed in the Museum, and that challenged its dominant narrative of nuclear history. Analysis reveals that the identities and activities of these two groups can be distinguished by three sets of opposing constructs: nuclearism/pacifism; monologue/dialogue, and fact/narrative. These frames guided the groups' interpretive practices, and heuristically condense the heteroglossia of post-cold war debate about nuclear history. They clarify, in turn, the process by which cultural memory is constructed and transformed to serve nuclear-ideological interests.

Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. By Jane I. Dawson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. xii, 221 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Map. $49.95, hard bound. $16.95, paper.

Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. By Jane I. Dawson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. xii, 221 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Map. 16.95, paper. - Volume 56 Issue 3

Amchitka, Alaska: Toward the Bio-Biography of an Island

Despite the recent international furor over French tests on the South Pacific island of Mururoa, the distinction of having sparked the loudest outcry against nuclear testing still belongs to a detonation on the Aleutian island of in 1971. The connotations of its code name, Project Cannikin, were misleading. A cannikin is a small drinking vessel; the nuclear charge for Project Cannikin was housed in a cavern, fiftytwo feet wide and more than one mile underground. At 5.2 megatons and $1i8 million, it was the biggest and most expensive underground test in U.S. history, ending a series that had started in 1965. When the role of the Cannikin controversy in the history of the anti-nuclear movement is assessed, the birth of Greenpeace will predominate.' itself will figure merely as the backdrop for a story dominated by people: atomic scientists, groups like the Alaskan Mothers' Campaign against Cannikin, and yippies aboard a converted halibut seiner. For most of those who so vehemently opposed Cannikin a quarter of a century ago, the place also was incidental. was simply the test venue, a small island-42 miles long, 4'/2 miles wide at its broadest-considerably closer to Japan, China, and the Soviet Union than to the continental United States. Little was known of the island, save that it was located in a highly active seismic zone, was part of a wildlife refuge, and had wretched weather. Some activists were even uninformed as to the island's fauna; one reported shortly before the Greenpeace sallied forth in that fall: We've discovered that it's impossible to get within even four miles of on the Gulf of Alaska side, because, well, the island is famous as a sea-otter sanctuary, and the reason the sea otters go there, logically enough, is because of the kelp beds. These kelp beds are apparently something else.2 Unfamiliarity with Amchitka's natural history was matched by a meager understanding of the island's human history. Prior to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) arrival, it seemed, had no past and no record of environmental change. This assumption was revealed in a remark by a Greenpeace founder when the AEC announced its decision to abandon the island in 1972: Amchitka would

Antinuclear and Pronuclear Empowerment and Activism

This study tested the proposition that university undergraduates would have higher empowerment scores with regard to advocating for antinuclear rather than pronuclear weapons issues. In addition, empowerment would be a determining factor of antinuclear but not of pronuclear activism among these students. Two components of empowerment were assessed in a decision-making task, namely, intentions to deal with the problems of nuclear weapons and confidence in those decisions. The intentions to deal with nuclear weapons issues were assessed by the students' endorsements of coping actions to deal with problem situations presented on a computer. Perceived empowerment was measured by their self-rated confidence in the correctness of the decisions. Concerns or worries about nuclear issues were measured by the frequency of self-reported antinuclear and pronuclear thoughts. The students' previous activities related to antinuclear and pronuclear advocacy were also measured with a questionnaire. The major findings were that antinuclear concerns, intentions to engage in antinuclear coping actions, and confidence in the decisions all contributed to the determination of antinuclear activism. In contrast, only pronuclear concerns determined pronuclear activism. It was concluded that empowerment is situationally determined or limited to specific issues in any particular group. The findings were discussed with reference to increasing the activism of citizens through public policies that are sensitive to the circumstances of particular groups and provide organized support for the development of empowerment on specific peace issues.

Nuclear weapons concerns, agency beliefs, and social responsibility values in disarmament activism.

This study examined the roles of attitudes and beliefs in determining disarmament activism. It investigated the contributions of nuclear weapons concerns, perceptions of control, and social responsibility values to the determination of antinuclear activism beyond the effects of attitudes and attitude strength. It was found that concerns about the danger of nuclear weapons, perceptions of personal control, and social responsibility values accounted for a larger proportion of the variance of antinuclear activism than antinuclear attitudes and attitude strength combined. The findings were discussed in terms of the nature of attitudes and beliefs and the relevance of these factors to involvement in peace and other social issues in a global community.

The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe

This paper investigates the relation between objective conditions and grievances and the construction of the nuclear energy “problem” and the mobilization of anti-nuclear movements in Western Europe. Using data on protest reactions to the Chernobyl disaster in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, we first discuss the effects of so-called “suddenly imposed grievances.” We then turn to the frame alignment model, which emphasizes the importance of processes of definition and interpretation for the mobilization of social movements. We confront this model with data on public attitudes towards nuclear energy and anti-nuclear movement mobilization in Western Europe. Our analysis indicates that objective conditions as such have little explanatory power, and that similar events and conditions have led to widely diverging interpretations and levels of anti-nuclear mobilization in different countries. We find that the differential success of the interpretative efforts of anti-nuclear movements does not depend on the nature of the discursive struggle itself, or on the evidential base for the anti-nuclear movement's claims. Our data show that the movements’ political opportunities, and the resulting cross-national variations in the degree to which anti-nuclear movements have been able to block or slow down the expansion of nuclear energy, have been crucial determinants both of the movements’ impacts on public opinion and of the movements’ levels of mobilization. We conclude that a combination of the political opportunity and framing perspectives is most fruitful in making sense of the differential careers of the nuclear energy conflict in Western Europe.

The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe

The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe

Environmental sociology and the theory of social movements

The theory of social movements is useful to analyze environmental problems and environmental movements such as anti-pollution movements, natural conservation movements, antinuclear movements and movements to promote amenities. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the theory of social movements is related to the environmental sociology, which is new in the academic field. They are the same, in terms of the subject of the studies. However, they are different from each other concerning the sphere of the environmental problems. We analytically differentiate the sphere into six, using two axes, and . Then, we try to specify the approaches of the environmental sociology and the theory of social movements into suitable spheres for solving environmental problems.As approaches to environmental problems, we refer to the sociomaterial circulation, life environmentalism, social dilemma and community co-management in the environmental sociology, and new social movements, resource mobilization and networking in the theory of social movements. In this paper, we define the environment as the situation where the symbiosis between nature and human are sustained in the global circulation of nature, of which conservation has become political issues especially since late 1980s. It is the environmental sociology that analyzes and investigates these issues.

Balsamroot by Mary Clearman Blew

Reviews 299 Balsamroot. ByMaryClearman Blew. (New York: Viking, 1994. 211 pages, $20.95.) Among the West’sfirstchroniclerswere the memoirists, women speaking their days into books because the unwritten code was that one never spoke aloud that which was deeply felt. Back then, memoirists wrote of babies and horses and long roads. Now Mary Clearman Blewhasdusted offthe genre ofwestern memoir andgiven usasecondvolume ofher life story. Her book, Balsamroot, carries on the tradition, telling ofhorses and births and the long highways that separate family members in the West. Blew tells the story of a midwife who lived on the edges of the frontier society of Lewiston, Montana. When she lay dying, her lover, an Indian, brought her balsamroot, because the yellow blossoms had been her favorite. Blew’s book cherishes the lifesustaining moments and relationships, circles them, and comes back to pick them, over and over. Balsamrootismost concerned with Blew’s relationship with her aunt Imogen, a schoolteacher who has lived alone all her life. To Blew, who unabashedly celebrates the strength of women, Imogen’s life had seemed strong and independent. As the book unfolds, and it unfolds like a mystery, readers learn that Imogen’s once-clear mind is failing, and that her facade of strength has been cobbled together by necessity. ‘The livesofhorses run parallel to ours,”Blewwrites, tryingto discover, in her aunt’s memories, her own younger self. In chronicling the lives of long-dead horses, she recovers her relationship with her father, who raised horses, and discovers that Imogen’s mare, Dolly, had been given to her aunt by a lover. Horses carried women away from home the same way the automobile later bridged the 600 miles between western towns. Blew uses her aunt’sdementia as a pattern for her own storytelling; as memories in her aunt’s mind collapse into one another, so Blew writes her memoir, moving effort­ lessly between her aunt’s past and her own; between current and turn of the century western history. Blew’s lyrical prose is compelling and gentle: readers will want to ride with her wherever she leads. CATHYDOWNS University ofNorth Carolina SavageDreams:AJourneyIntotheHidden WarsoftheAmerican West. ByRebecca Solnit. (San Francisco: Sierra ClvibPress, 1994. 416 pages, $22.00.) This is an eclectic and personal account of travel into two of the most important federallymanaged landscapes in the West—Yosemite National Park and the NevadaTest Site. The author, an art historian and environmental activist, examines “what it means to be living in the American West, learning as much from encounters with landscape and people as from reading.” Solnit begins by describing a “large scale action”—nearly 1000 people arrested, including Solnit—against the testing of nuclear bombs. The first half of the book concerns the Nevada Test Site, with topics ranging from Thoreau’s act of civil disobedi­ ence, the economic ramifications oftestingfor local workers, the historyofnuclear bomb development and testing, accounts of residents killed or displaced by testing, the Shoshone anti-nuclear activists and actions, descriptions of tests, and descriptions of the landscape. Musing on the history of quantum physics, Solnit describes the physicistswho ...

Love it or leave it?

In April 1995, the world's nations will gather in New York to determine the future of nuclear weapons policy. In so doing they will also determine the prospects for human survival. At issue is the fate of the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty, the NPT. Will nuclear weapons continue to spread around the world and lead some day to atomic war, or can the danger of nuclear proliferation be contained? The specific question before the 162 nations that have signed the treaty is whether the agreement “shall continue indefinitely, or shall be extended for an additional fixed period or periods.” The implicit assumption seems to be that the NPT is an effective instrument for restraining the nuclear threat. Unfortunately, there are ample grounds for challenging this assumption. The treaty is fundamentally inequitable and inherently contradictory and in some respects actually worsens the proliferation danger. For peace and antinuclear activists, the question of NPT extension poses thorny dilemmas.

Mobilizing against Nuclear Energy: A Comparison of Germany and the United States by Christian Joppke

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 885 genetic engineering has achieved wide significance. Hence the func­ tions Kay associates with the science of molecular biology are important to the history of technology. She suggests that however much the romance of molecular biology appears to be the story of a pure science coming to be applied, we are “really” confronted with enduring practical motivations. These were expressed through a science whose practical outcomes, realized as early as the 1960s, would bear the stamp of the original motives. It is a tribute to Kay’s work that she raises the important questions of the degree to which a technocratic worldview can be the principal sustaining force for science and the degree to which the appeal to technology is better understood as one of several weapons in the scientist’s armory of selfjustification. Robert Bud Dr. Bud is head of research (collections) at the Science Museum in London and the author of The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Mobilizing against Nuclear Energy: A Comparison of Germany and the United States. By Christian Joppke. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. xv+307; tables, notes, appendixes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $40.00. Mobilizing against Nuclear Energy, a revision of Christian Joppke’s doctoral dissertation in sociology, is a valuable study of antinuclear activism in both the United States and Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Joppke applies what he calls a “historical strategy” (p. 190) to examine the political context of social movements. He argues that sociological analyses often ignore the changes that occur over time in the political dynamics of social protests. Whether or not his efforts to correct ahistorical approaches impress his colleagues in the field of sociology, they have produced information and insights that are very useful to historians. Joppke shows how differences in political systems and structures in the United States and Germany led to different strategies by nuclear opponents. In the United States, the antinuclear movement generally remained moderate in tactics and in objectives because ample oppor­ tunities existed for participants to voice their opinions through expert dissent, licensing proceedings, and legal intervention. In Germany, antinuclear activism was more radical, because the government ofWest Germany in the 1970s viewed the growth ofnuclear power as essential to national prosperity and allowed nuclear opponents fewer opportunities to make their case through legal recourse. Since they remained outside of the established political system, nuclear protesters were more in­ clined than their American counterparts to take an anti-institutional position that questioned the very legitimacy of the state. 886 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Joppke argues that the decline of public support for nuclear power in both the United States and Germany was a result more of the economic woes of the industry and the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl than of antinuclear activism. Nevertheless, he suggests that the nuclear opposition played a major role in accomplishing its goals by creating a political atmosphere that was increasingly unreceptive to nuclear expansion. Joppke presents a thoughtful and well-reasoned account ofcomplex political and social issues. His analysis ofantinuclear motives and tactics is the best published to date. The book is not flawless, however. Although Joppke generally avoids using jargon, he occasionally slips into the habit of adding “-ize” to nouns to make them into verbs. The result is the creation of nonwords such as “contextualize” (p. 12), “temporalize” (p. 12), and “problematize ” (p. 19). More seriously, despite his recognition of the value of a “historical strategy,” his account is marred by factual errors. He is wrong, for example, to assert that the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy wanted a state-owned nuclear industry, that the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) left safety issues “to the complete discretion of the nuclear industry” (p. 26), that the AEC “silendy” (p. 28) revised reactor design objectives for radiation emissions in the 1970s, and that reactor experts had never anticipated the formation of a gas bubble following an accident such as occurred at Three Mile Island. Despite those shortcomings,Joppke has made a substantial contribu­ tion to the literature of the nuclear controversy. As he notes, the “bitterness and vehemence” of...