Nuclear Forgetting

Gamson, Willilam A.; Boyer, Paul S.; Thompson, Edward P.

doi:10.2307/2071179

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In the 1970s, scholars said repression unravels why persons accept rather than reject nuclear arms (Paarlberg 1973;Lowther 1973). In the 1980s, scholars credited elite manipulation, maintaining elites manage events in a way that proscribes resistance and inspires 'nuclear forgetting' (Gamson 1987;Boyer 1984;Boyer 1985). One version in which elites manage language rather than conventional events motivates scholars for decades.…”

Section: Natural Actsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unnatural acts: Nuclear language, proliferation and order

Woods¹

2007

Journal of Language and Politics

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International relations theory overdetermines proliferation but few states possess nuclear arms. This article maintains the linguistic construction of 'proliferation' accounts for the international nonnuclear order. Following an overview of its approach, the article begins with a review of earlier works and notes the inability of 'nuclear language studies' to account for the order of rejection rather than acquisition of nuclear arms. The article traces that limitation to a practical assumption about the world that animates scholars to attend to how words distort rather than create reality. The article then introduces a version of constructivism that claims speech acts produce constitutive rules that create what 'is' and oblige order (as 'same use') to suggest how language accounts for the order that turns on rejection of nuclear weapons. Finally, the article illustrates how states, following this constructivist process, often used discursive practices that emphasized the 'unnatural' to create 'proliferation' between 1958 and 1968.

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Section: Natural Actsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unnatural acts: Nuclear language, proliferation and order

Woods¹

2007

Journal of Language and Politics

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“…On the other hand, it was the source of the 'Great Fear' that conjured up images of vaporized cities (Boyer 1985;Weart, 1988). In other words, the bomb's confounding ambivalence produced competing symbolic and practical efforts aimed at managing it (Gamson, 1987). Corresponding to the sense of nuclear fear were efforts at international control, as the bomb was construed as a non-weapon that dictated a radical restructuring of international relations.…”

Section: Pre-hiroshima: the Bomb As A Speculative Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Great Collapse, Democratic Paralysis and the Reception of the Bomb

Ungar¹

1992

J Historical Sociology

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Expanding the traditional question of how and why the bomb was built when it was, this paper asks how socio-historical factors influenced the reception of the bomb in the West. It suggests that the bomb was received as the 'winning weapon' and that this view of it was linked to two historical factors: the Great Collapse, which undermined belief in historical progress and threatened the survival of the democracies; and the failure of balancing, the inability of the democracies, for a number of sociopolitical reasons, to act in their own collective security. As the winning weapon, the bomb was expected to overcome these problems. More broadly. the analysis suggests that when collective actions do not appear capable of redressing persistent threats, then leaders tend to invest their faith in technological panaceas.

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Unnatural acts

Woods¹

2007

JLP

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International relations theory overdetermines proliferation but few states possess nuclear arms. This article maintains the linguistic construction of ‘proliferation’ accounts for the international nonnuclear order. Following an overview of its approach, the article begins with a review of earlier works and notes the inability of ‘nuclear language studies’ to account for the order of rejection rather than acquisition of nuclear arms. The article traces that limitation to a practical assumption about the world that animates scholars to attend to how wordsdistortrather than create reality. The article then introduces a version of constructivism that claims speech acts produce constitutive rules that create what ‘is’ and oblige order (as ‘same use’) to suggest how language accounts for the order that turns on rejection of nuclear weapons. Finally, the article illustrates how states, following this constructivist process, often used discursive practices that emphasized the ‘unnatural’ to create ‘proliferation’ between 1958 and 1968.

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Nuclear Forgetting

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Unnatural acts: Nuclear language, proliferation and order

Unnatural acts: Nuclear language, proliferation and order

The Great Collapse, Democratic Paralysis and the Reception of the Bomb

Unnatural acts

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