Radioactive Ruins: Security in the Age of the Anthropocene

  
Between 1946 and 1958, the US detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, corresponding in yield to 1.6 Hiroshima-sized bombs per day. Kazakhstan and French Polynesia were equally subject to heavy testing. Yet, what happened at these sites rarely figure in accounts of international politics the nuclear age. RADIANT seeks to rectify this deficit by asking how contemporary life at these sites has been and continues to be shaped by their nuclear past.

Through our fieldwork, we also want to explore the deep connections between the nuclear age and the Anthropocene. Local pasts of radioactive ruination foreground not just the capitalist but also the military origins of the Anthropocene. Our aim is to add social texture to the Anthropocene by placing the concrete experiences of security and survival at former nuclear test sites at the center of our analysis. By examining the everyday negotiation of ecological dangers at former nuclear test sites, we may understand better what security and survival might mean in the age of the Anthropocene more generally.

Advisory board

Professor Kate Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (USA)

Professor Nils Ole Bubandt, University of Aarhus, Aarhus (Denmark)

Professor Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University, Stanford (USA)

Dr. Barbara Johnston, Center for Political Ecology, Santa Cruz (USA)

Professor Joseph Masco, University of Chicago (USA)

Dr. Audra Mitchell, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo (Canada)