From Radioactive Fallout to Environmental Critique: Ecology and the Politics of Cold War Science (2013)
Lindseth, Brian Sewell (Author)
University of California, San Diego
Thorpe, Charles
Edition Details: Advisor: Thorpe, Charles
Physical Details: 467 pp.
Language: English
This work explores the question of the place of science in society by focusing on two cases in which ecology as a science entered into very different kinds of political projects in the cold war period. The first case hinges on the usefulness of ecology to the Atomic Energy Commission's effort to manage radioactive fallout as a problem that was both epistemic and political in nature. In this alliance with the cold war state, ecology benefited from an unprecedented level of external funding as well as access to experimental technology such as radioisotopes and Geiger counters. As a result ecology was introduced to the world of 'big science,' and radiation ecology emerged as a new specialty. Along with access to funding and technology, however, the state was often also interested in asserting a level of control over the research agendas of ecologists, and ecologists devised ways of asserting the autonomy of their discipline in order to maintain control over their research. The second case centers on the relationship between ecology and environmentalism as a social movement. With the environmental movement came a large public audience interested in what ecologists had to say about matters of politics and ethics. While many ecologists held this interest at arms length, others saw in it the possibility for a new place for science in society. For these ecologists, science should be useful to the problems of society. Like the tension between different forms of environmentalism, however, ecologists differed on how science should be useful. For many, this usefulness meant providing expert advice to political leaders, while for others, it meant entering into a radical oppositional relationship with the place of technology in cold war culture. In both of these cases, ecologists challenged norms of value neutrality associated with the organization of academic labor into highly specialized disciplines in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. In doing so, they confronted challenges to their professional autonomy but also experienced opportunities to redefine both themselves as scientists and the place of science in society.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 1347671188.
Similar Citations
Article
Rachel Rothschild;
(October 2016)
Détente from the Air: Monitoring Air Pollution during the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB787336419/)
Article
Petra Loučová;
(2023)
"An attempt to look out of the ecxological depression": Samizdat and alternative ecological journalism in communist Czechoslovakia, 1969-1989
(/isis/citation/CBB654106670/)
Article
Holden, William N.;
(2013)
The Least of My Brethren: Mining, Indigenous Peoples, and the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines
(/isis/citation/CBB001201776/)
Book
Kumar, Deepak;
Damodaran, Vinita;
D'Souza, Rohan;
(2011)
The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia
(/isis/citation/CBB001201905/)
Thesis
Jessee, Emory Jerry;
(2013)
Radiation Ecologies: Bombs, Bodies, and Environment during the Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing Period, 1942--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB001560759/)
Article
David K. Hecht;
(2021)
Embracing Mystery: Radiation Risks and Popular Science Writing in the Early Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB155434883/)
Thesis
Harkewicz, Laura J.;
(2010)
“The Ghost of the Bomb”: The Bravo Medical Program, Scientific Uncertainty, and the Legacy of U.S. Cold War Science, 1954--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB001567171/)
Essay Review
Yearley, Steven;
Mercer, David;
Pitman, Andy;
Oreskes, Naomi;
Conway, Erik;
(2012)
Perspectives on Global Warming
(/isis/citation/CBB001500133/)
Book
Ingram, Annie Merrill;
(2007)
Coming into Contact: Explorations In Ecocritical Theory and Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB001035376/)
Article
Rothschild, Rachel;
(2013)
Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001213269/)
Article
Jennifer A. Martin;
(2016)
Seeing Jaws
(/isis/citation/CBB962881277/)
Book
Robert Lifset;
(2014)
Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB072173985/)
Article
Stephen Brain;
(2016)
The appeal of appearing green: Soviet-American ideological competition and Cold War environmental diplomacy
(/isis/citation/CBB578816845/)
Article
Edwin A. Martini;
(2016)
World on fire: the politics of napalm in the Global Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB384650123/)
Book
Ashley Carse;
(2014)
Beyond the Big Ditch: Politics, Ecology, and Infrastructure at the Panama Canal
(/isis/citation/CBB368970305/)
Book
Charlotte Vallino;
(2023)
Salvaguardare la natura, proteggere l'ambiente, difendere la Terra. I pionieri del pensiero del nostro tempo
(/isis/citation/CBB029916093/)
Book
Astrid Mignon Kirchhof;
McNeill, John Robert;
(2019)
Nature and the Iron Curtain : Environmental policy and social movements in Communist and capitalist countries, 1945-1990
(/isis/citation/CBB996986160/)
Thesis
Philip William Clements;
(2015)
Science in extremis: The 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition
(/isis/citation/CBB770725945/)
Thesis
Rachel Emma Rothschild;
(2015)
A Poisonous Sky: Scientific Research and International Diplomacy on Acid Rain
(/isis/citation/CBB367307908/)
Article
Sanita Reinsone;
(2016)
Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB830388363/)
Be the first to comment!