Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA (2006)
Hecht, Gabrielle (Author)
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 21
Pages: 25--48
Edition Details: Volume title: Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs
Language: English
Throughout most of its history, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been portrayed as a technical agency in which geopolitics are either extraneous or inappropriate. This chapter argues that this separation of technology and politics was discursive and never enacted in practice. Looking at the role of South Africa in the early history of the agency, this chapter shows that the IAEA's technopolitical regime was the continually contested outcome of negotiations between visions of a hierarchical, bipolar global order structured by cold war tensions and visions of a decentralized global order inspired by decolonization. This chapter also explores how dynamics between the apartheid state, decolonizing nations, and the United States inflected the meanings and implications of the "nuclear" in IAEA technopolitics. "Nuclearity"---that is, the degree to which a nation, a program, a policy, a technology, or even a material counted as "nuclear"---was a spectrum, not an on-off condition. Both nuclearity and its implications emerged in substantive ways from the dynamics between cold war and postcolonial visions of the world.
...MoreArticle Krige, John; Barth, Kai-Henrik (2006) Introduction: Science, Technology, and International Affairs. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (p. 1).
Similar Citations
Article
Frazier, Javan David;
(2008)
Almost Persuaded: The Johnson Administration's Extension of Nuclear Cooperation with South Africa, 1965--1967
(/isis/citation/CBB001231517/)
Article
Jo-Ansie van Wyk;
(2015)
Atoms, apartheid, and the agency: South Africa's relations with the IAEA, 1957–1995
(/isis/citation/CBB882095213/)
Book
Elisabeth Roehrlich;
(2022)
Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB775978058/)
Article
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin;
(2006)
Exorcising Ghosts in the Age of Automation: United Nations Experts and Atoms for Peace
(/isis/citation/CBB000830422/)
Article
Maria Rentetzi;
(2021)
With strings attached: Gift-giving to the International Atomic Energy Agency and US foreign policy
(/isis/citation/CBB321286517/)
Article
Maria Rentetzi;
(2017)
Determining Nuclear Fingerprints: Glove Boxes, Radiation Protection, and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB970461078/)
Article
Nielsen, Henry;
Knudsen, Henrik;
(2010)
The Troublesome Life of Peaceful Atoms in Denmark
(/isis/citation/CBB001033645/)
Article
Krige, John;
(2006)
Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence
(/isis/citation/CBB000670750/)
Article
Abraham, Itty;
(2006)
The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories
(/isis/citation/CBB000670745/)
Article
Elisabeth Roehrlich;
(2016)
The Cold War, the Developing World, and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1953–1957
(/isis/citation/CBB387447389/)
Thesis
Mallard, Gregoire;
(2008)
The Atomic Confederacy: Europe's Quest for Nuclear Weapons and the Making of the New World Order
(/isis/citation/CBB001561194/)
Article
Bahgat, Gawdat;
(2006)
Nuclear Proliferation: The Islamic Republic of Iran
(/isis/citation/CBB001031134/)
Article
DiMoia, John;
(2010)
Atoms for Sale? Cold War Institution-Building and the South Korean Atomic Energy Project, 1945--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB001230624/)
Article
McCray, W. Patrick;
(2010)
“Globalization with Hardware”: ITER's Fusion of Technology, Policy, and Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB001033657/)
Article
Gisela Mateos;
Edna Suárez-Díaz;
(2021)
Atomic Ambassadors: The IAEA’s First Preliminary Assistance Mission (1958)
(/isis/citation/CBB489453603/)
Book
Mueller, John E.;
(2010)
Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda
(/isis/citation/CBB001230659/)
Article
Turchetti, Simone;
Naylor, Simon;
Dean, Katrina;
Siegert, Martin;
(2008)
On Thick Ice: Scientific Internationalism and Antarctic Affairs, 1957--1980
(/isis/citation/CBB000931978/)
Book
Belanger, Dian Olson;
(2006)
Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica's Age of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000772048/)
Article
Elena Aronova;
(2017)
Geophysical Datascapes of the Cold War: Politics and Practices of the World Data Centers in the 1950s and 1960s
(/isis/citation/CBB204283086/)
Book
Gavin, Francis J.;
(2012)
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001550424/)
Be the first to comment!