Technology and Empire in the Nuclear Age: A Global and Local History of Uranium Mining

FAIN: FA-37825-03

Gabrielle Hecht
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382)

No project description available

Associated Products

Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Book)
Title: Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade
Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Abstract: Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa’s other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something--a state, an object, an industry, a workplace--to be “nuclear.” Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear--a state that she calls “nuclearity”--lie at the heart of today’s global nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-nuclear
Primary URL Description: Publisher's site
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: MIT Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Martin A. Klein Prize
Date: 1/1/2012
Organization: American Historical Association
Abstract: First awarded at the 2011 annual meeting, the Martin A. Klein Prize recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on African history published in English during the previous year. Focusing primarily on continental Africa (including those islands usually treated as countries of Africa), books on any period of African history and from any disciplinary field that incorporates a historical perspective are eligible. The prize committee pays particular attention to methodological innovation, conceptual originality, literary excellence, and reinterpretation of old themes or development of new theoretical perspectives.

Martin A. Klein Prize
Date: 1/1/2012
Organization: American Historical Association
Abstract: First awarded at the 2011 annual meeting, the Martin A. Klein Prize recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on African history published in English during the previous year. Focusing primarily on continental Africa (including those islands usually treated as countries of Africa), books on any period of African history and from any disciplinary field that incorporates a historical perspective are eligible. The prize committee pays particular attention to methodological innovation, conceptual originality, literary excellence, and reinterpretation of old themes or development of new theoretical perspectives.

Robert K. Merton Prize
Date: 7/1/2013
Organization: American Sociological Association
Abstract: Best book award by SKAT section of ASA. The purpose of the Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology (SKAT) is to promote scholarly research and professional activity relating to sociology, science, knowledge, and technology.

Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize
Date: 4/10/2014
Organization: Glasscock center for humanities research, Texas A&M University
Abstract: Prize for interdisciplinary humanities research

Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Book)
Title: Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade
Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Abstract: Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa’s other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something--a state, an object, an industry, a workplace--to be “nuclear.” Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear--a state that she calls “nuclearity”--lie at the heart of today’s global nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-nuclear
Primary URL Description: Publisher's site
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: MIT Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Book)
Title: Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade
Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Abstract: Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa’s other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something--a state, an object, an industry, a workplace--to be “nuclear.” Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear--a state that she calls “nuclearity”--lie at the heart of today’s global nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-nuclear
Primary URL Description: Publisher's site
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: MIT Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Book)
Title: Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade
Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Abstract: Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa’s other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something--a state, an object, an industry, a workplace--to be “nuclear.” Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear--a state that she calls “nuclearity”--lie at the heart of today’s global nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-nuclear
Primary URL Description: Publisher's site
Access Model: Published book
Publisher: MIT Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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