Book ID: CBB433310944

Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (2022)

unapi

Sarkar, Jayita (Author)


Cornell University Press


Publication Date: 2022
Physical Details: 300
Language: English

India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program. Through nuclear and space technologies, India's leaders served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries. The politically savvy, transnationally connected scientists and engineers who steered the program obtained technologies, materials, and information through a variety of state and nonstate actors from Europe and North America, including both superpowers. They thus maneuvered around Cold War politics and the choke points of the nonproliferation regime. Hyperdiversification increased choices for the leaders of the nuclear program but reduced democratic accountability at home. The nuclear program became a consensus-enforcing device in the name of the nation. Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. It shows how geopolitical and technopolitical visions influence decisions about the nation after decolonization.

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Reviewed By

Review Monamie Bhadra Haines (2023) Review of "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War". Technology and Culture (pp. 981-983). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB433310944/

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Authors & Contributors
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin
Montmerle, Thierry
Tanja Penter
Barbosa, Thiago P.
Roger J. C. Thomas
Yi Zhou
Concepts
Nuclear power; atomic energy
Technology and politics
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Cold War
Modernization
International cooperation
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
United States
India
United Kingdom
Afghanistan
Ghana
Central Asia
Institutions
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
International Council of Scientific Unions
United Nations
International Astronomical Union (IAU)
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