Nuclear Borderlands Essay

The Nuclear Borderlands Abstract
Masco’s The Nuclear Borderlands offers an anthropological perspective on the psychosocial effects of the atomic bomb, the most influential techno-scientific project of the twentieth century. New forms of social consciousness, ideas of international order, mutant ecologies, and schemes of the psychosocial imaginary were created, transforming everyday life within a fresh articulation of the global and the local. Masco investigates the consequences of nuclear weapons by closely examining the different parties involved – the Los Alamos weapons scientists, the neighboring Pueblo and “nuevomexicano” communities, antinuclear protestors, the contaminated environment itself, and the U.S. government. In analyzing their different perspectives, Masco highlights the underlying ironies, in what he calls the “nuclear uncanny” – how a weapon of mass destruction can also be considered a beautiful techno-aesthetic work of art, how Los Alamos is both a radioactive polluter but also one of the only means of steady employment for the surrounding communities, how an obsessive focus on the imaginary threat of a nuclear apocalypse fueled
With these resources, he was able to analyze diagrams and charts delineating nuclear strategies, technical maps of the affected regions, photographs of bomb testing, and descriptions from the scientists themselves. He also gave the historical and political background of the events and cultural transformed he discussed, in order to keep the reader aware of the larger context. In regards to subjects in which evidence was harder to collect, such as with nuclear hyper security, Masco used media coverage of nuclear espionage scandals and policies regarding nuclear