Testing times: A nuclear weapons laboratory at the end of the Cold War
This dissertation focuses on the role of discursive and other practices in the construction of two alternative regimes of truth in regard to nuclear weapons, and in the cultural production of persons at the Livermore Laboratory and in the local anti-nuclear movement. In the 1980s the scientists' regime of truth was challenged by a heterogeneous anti-nuclear movement recruited largely from the humanistic middle class - a class fragment profoundly hostile to the policies of the Reagan Administration. The movement attacked the Laboratory in a number of ways, ranging from local ballot initiatives and lobbying in Washington to civil disobedience at the Laboratory. By the end of the 1980s this movement, in combination with Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union and a decade of internal scandals at the Laboratory, left the Laboratory weakened - though Laboratory scientists and managers are currently working to adapt the system of ideas and practices evolved during the Cold War to legitimate continued weapons work in a post-Cold War environment.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 7021134
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
POLICY AND ECONOMY
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABORATORY
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
SCIENTIFIC PERSONNEL
PUBLIC ANXIETY
INTEREST GROUPS
INTERVENORS
ANIMALS
MAMMALS
MAN
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
PERSONNEL
PRIMATES
PROFESSIONAL PERSONNEL
US AEC
US DOE
US ERDA
US ORGANIZATIONS
VERTEBRATES
WEAPONS
290600* - Energy Planning & Policy- Nuclear Energy