Let there be light … and bread: the United Nations, the developing world, and atomic energy’s Green Revolution

Hamblin, Jacob Darwin

doi:10.1080/07341510802618166

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…It must include the social consequences of the policy implemented (De Hoogh 1991;Jochemsen 2008), not least indicating renewed attention to the opinions of farmers themselves (Guehlstorf 2008;Visser 2010). This new ethical attitude should also pay critical attention to the assistance provided to Third World countries towards modernizing and rationalizing their agriculture, perhaps more for political than for ideological reasons (e.g., the Green Revolution, as described by Cullather (2004) and Hamblin (2009)). Three steps can be distinguished in order to arrive at a form of ecological agriculture:…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are There Ideological Aspects to the Modernization of Agriculture?

Hardeman

Jochemsen

2011

J Agric Environ Ethics

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In this paper we try to identify the roots of the persistent contemporary problems in our modernized agriculture: overproduction, loss of biodiversity and of soil fertility, the risk of large animal disease, social controversies on the lack of animal welfare and culling of animals, etc. Attention is paid to the historical development of present-day farming in Holland as an example of European agriculture. We see a blinkered quest for efficiency in the industrialization of agriculture since the Second World War. Key factor is the cultural mindset at the foundation of our modern society, originating from the ideas of the enlightenment. It makes people vulnerable to ideologies, causing them to focus on a certain goal without considering the consequences. Due to the overemphasis on efficiency, modern industrial agriculture has never been comfortably embedded in its ecological and social context, and as a result displays the characteristics of an ideology. The cause of the inability to solve today's problems is therefore deeper than simply a failure to apply the right mix of standard remedies. Unless stakeholders in farming start to counter this very one-sided approach to efficiency, modernization will continue to cause all kinds of friction. The implications of the results for agricultural policy, farming and further research are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are There Ideological Aspects to the Modernization of Agriculture?

Hardeman

Jochemsen

2011

J Agric Environ Ethics

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“…For development and the origins of the IAEA, see Roehrlich (2016). 6 See Hamblin (2009;. The most recent literature on IAEA promotion of technical assistance includes Mateos & Suárez-Díaz (2020).…”

Section: Framework Of Nuclear Diplomacy and Moroccomentioning

confidence: 99%

Orphaned atoms: The firstMoroccan reactor and the frameworks of nuclear diplomacy

Adamson

2020

Centaurus

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This article examines the attempt by the Kingdom of Morocco—a country of pivotal geopolitical importance in the late 1970s and early 1980s—to secure a research reactor. It finds that by treating that reactor as a diplomatic object, we can observe the different diplomatic frameworks in which that object was conceived of, contextualized, and negotiated. The historical emergence of these frameworks occurred in close relationship with the IAEA, which acted as an intermediary linking various administrations, programs, and countries, including Morocco. In the end, this history reveals that the late Cold War nuclear world involved multilateral actions and forces, some of which encouraged Morocco in its bid to acquire a reactor, but others of which left that same reactor orphaned and unfinished.

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“…Atoms for Peace thus established and institutionalised a particular kind of chain of association between different kinds of nuclear things, envisaging a specific international technopolitical configuration: 'Atoms for peace remade US foreign and nuclear policy in the years to follow, [and] would reshape the political and technological map through the export of knowledge, fissionable material and equipment' (Drogan 2016: 974). The application of atomic energy to agriculture, as advocated in Eisenhower's speech, came to be a key part of wider efforts to 'modernise' agricultural production in developing countries in 1960s (see Hamblin 2009). The establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957 established within the United Nations 'America's drive to export the peaceful atom', while the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) evaluation of Atoms for Peace in the 1950s 'drew upon a host of existing notions about the relationship between social and technological progress' (Hamblin 2006: 737).…”

Section: Atoms For Peacementioning

confidence: 99%

Life in the nuclear age: Classical realism, critical theory and the technopolitics of the nuclear condition

Peoples

2018

Journal of International Political Theory

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Classical realist thought provides a diagnosis of the significance nuclear weapons that calls into question the very possibility of politics in the nuclear age. While sharing similarities with this outlook, critical theoretic reflections suggest a more expansive consideration of the nuclear condition as underpinned by combinations of dystopian fears of nuclear destruction and utopian visions of nuclear futures. Most prominently Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory intimates an understanding of the nuclear condition as one that is rendered tolerable so long as nuclear technologies are associated with and related to innovation, progress and modernity. The study of the technopolitics of the nuclear condition might thus look not only to classical realists’ concern with ‘Death in the Nuclear Age’ but also incorporate corresponding critical awareness of claims to the life-sustaining applications of nuclear technologies in areas such as energy production, industry and medicine. Applying an ‘aporetic’ form of immanent critique, and to exemplify how the international politics of the nuclear age has often been predicated on efforts to distinguish and relate different kinds of nuclear technologies, the article revisits the United States–led post-war vision of ‘Atoms for Peace’ and compares it to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s contemporary ‘How the Atom Benefits Life’ campaign.

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Let there be light … and bread: the United Nations, the developing world, and atomic energy’s Green Revolution

Cited by 21 publications

References 24 publications

Are There Ideological Aspects to the Modernization of Agriculture?

Are There Ideological Aspects to the Modernization of Agriculture?

Orphaned atoms: The firstMoroccan reactor and the frameworks of nuclear diplomacy

Life in the nuclear age: Classical realism, critical theory and the technopolitics of the nuclear condition

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