Joseph Masco examines the psychosocial, material, and affective consequences of the advent of nuclear weapons, the Cold War security state, climate change on contemporary US democratic practices and public imaginaries.
Joseph Masco Books
Joseph Masco is a distinguished anthropologist whose work probes the intricate relationship between science, technology, and society. His research delves deeply into the dynamics of national security and its profound impact on human lives, tracing its evolution from the Cold War era to contemporary global conflicts. Masco meticulously analyzes how narratives of security are constructed and how they shape our collective understanding of the world and our individual experiences. His approach is marked by rigorous interdisciplinary inquiry and a keen insight into the complex interplay of power, knowledge, and existence.
The Nuclear Borderlands
- 456 pages
- 16 hours of reading
An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bomb In The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico understood and responded to the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post–Cold War period. He shows that the American focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on society, and that the atomic bomb produced a new cognitive orientation toward daily life, reconfiguring concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship. This updated edition includes a brand-new preface by the author discussing current developments in nuclear politics and the scientific impact of the nuclear age on the present epoch of a human-altered climate.