The radiance of France : nuclear power and national identity after World War II / Gabrielle Hecht ; foreword by Michel Callon and a new afterword by the author.

By: Contributor(s): Language: English Series: Inside technologyPublication details: Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2009Description: xxviii, 461 p. : ill., map ; 23 cmISBN:
  • 9780262582810 (pbk. : alk. paper)
  • 0262582813 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Other title:
  • Nuclear power and national identity after World War II
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction: Technology, Politics, Culture, and National Identity -- Conceptual and Methodological Tools -- Research Stories and Oral Histories --- 1. A Technological Nation. State Engineering before World War II -- State Institutions after World War II -- What Is a Technocrat? -- The Future of France -- The Mentality of the Future -- The Plan --- 2. Technopolitical Regimes. The Creation of the CEA -- The Emergence of a Nationalist Technopolitical Regime -- The G2 Reactor: Developing a Nationalist Technopolitical Regime -- EDF: The Emergence of a Nationalized Regime -- The EDF1 Reactor: Developing a Nationalized Technopolitical Regime --- 3. Technopolitics in the Fifth Republic. Technology and Gaullism -- Technopolitics from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic: EDF2 and EDF3 -- Optimization and the Competitive Kilowatt-Hour -- Controlling Fuel and Pricing Plutonium -- Industrial Competitiveness, Exporting Reactors, and the Future of France --- 4. Technological Unions. The Politics of Unionism -- Conceptualizing National Technological Progress -- Recruiting Technical Elites --- 5. Regimes of Work. Marcoule -- Chinon --- 6. Technological Spectacles. Salvation, Redemption, and Liberation -- Reconciling Modernity and Tradition -- Châteaux for the Twentieth Century -- The Critics: "Two Steps Away Is the Abyss" -- Counter-Spectacle: "When the Tale of Marcoule Is Told" --- 7. Atomic Vintage. Representations of Public Opinion -- Peasants and Engineers: Bagnolais de Souche and Marcoulins -- Interlude: Reflections on Local Memory -- The Little Kuwait of the Indre-et-Loire --- 8. Warring System. Preliminaries to the War: Public Relations and Technological Mishaps -- The War Starts in Earnest: The Horowitz-Cabanius Report -- PEON: Defining the Context for Technological Development -- Breeder Reactors: Flexibility and Consensus -- Unions Strike Back -- Boiteux Declares the End of the Gas-Graphite Program -- The CEA Strikes -- Economic Comparisons, Union-Style -- Back to Bagnols -- The Cleanup at Saint-Laurent: Healing the Technopolitical Wound -- The Battle Fizzles Out --- Conclusion. Imagining a Technological Nation -- Technology and Politics.
Summary: In the aftermath of World War II, as France sought a distinctive role for itself in the modern, postcolonial world, the nation and its leaders enthusiastically embraced large technological projects in general and nuclear power in particular. The Radiance of France asks how it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or "radiance," which also means "radiation" in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. To answer this question, Gabrielle Hecht has forged an innovative combination of technology studies and cultural and political history in a book that, as Michel Callon writes in the new foreword to this edition, "not only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities" but is also "a seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France." Proposing the concept of technopolitical regime as a way to analyze the social, political, cultural, and technological dynamics among engineering elites, unionized workers, and rural communities Hecht shows how the history of France's first generation of nuclear reactors is also a history of the multiple meanings of nationalism, from the postwar period (and France's desire for post-Vichy redemption) to 1969 and the adoption of a "Frenchified" American design.
Item type: monograph
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SIP1906

Originally published: 1998. With new foreword and afterword.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Technology, Politics, Culture, and National Identity -- Conceptual and Methodological Tools -- Research Stories and Oral Histories --- 1. A Technological Nation. State Engineering before World War II -- State Institutions after World War II -- What Is a Technocrat? -- The Future of France -- The Mentality of the Future -- The Plan --- 2. Technopolitical Regimes. The Creation of the CEA -- The Emergence of a Nationalist Technopolitical Regime -- The G2 Reactor: Developing a Nationalist Technopolitical Regime -- EDF: The Emergence of a Nationalized Regime -- The EDF1 Reactor: Developing a Nationalized Technopolitical Regime --- 3. Technopolitics in the Fifth Republic. Technology and Gaullism -- Technopolitics from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic: EDF2 and EDF3 -- Optimization and the Competitive Kilowatt-Hour -- Controlling Fuel and Pricing Plutonium -- Industrial Competitiveness, Exporting Reactors, and the Future of France --- 4. Technological Unions. The Politics of Unionism -- Conceptualizing National Technological Progress -- Recruiting Technical Elites --- 5. Regimes of Work. Marcoule -- Chinon --- 6. Technological Spectacles. Salvation, Redemption, and Liberation -- Reconciling Modernity and Tradition -- Châteaux for the Twentieth Century -- The Critics: "Two Steps Away Is the Abyss" -- Counter-Spectacle: "When the Tale of Marcoule Is Told" --- 7. Atomic Vintage. Representations of Public Opinion -- Peasants and Engineers: Bagnolais de Souche and Marcoulins -- Interlude: Reflections on Local Memory -- The Little Kuwait of the Indre-et-Loire --- 8. Warring System. Preliminaries to the War: Public Relations and Technological Mishaps -- The War Starts in Earnest: The Horowitz-Cabanius Report -- PEON: Defining the Context for Technological Development -- Breeder Reactors: Flexibility and Consensus -- Unions Strike Back -- Boiteux Declares the End of the Gas-Graphite Program -- The CEA Strikes -- Economic Comparisons, Union-Style -- Back to Bagnols -- The Cleanup at Saint-Laurent: Healing the Technopolitical Wound -- The Battle Fizzles Out --- Conclusion. Imagining a Technological Nation -- Technology and Politics.

In the aftermath of World War II, as France sought a distinctive role for itself in the modern, postcolonial world, the nation and its leaders enthusiastically embraced large technological projects in general and nuclear power in particular. The Radiance of France asks how it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or "radiance," which also means "radiation" in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. To answer this question, Gabrielle Hecht has forged an innovative combination of technology studies and cultural and political history in a book that, as Michel Callon writes in the new foreword to this edition, "not only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities" but is also "a seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France." Proposing the concept of technopolitical regime as a way to analyze the social, political, cultural, and technological dynamics among engineering elites, unionized workers, and rural communities Hecht shows how the history of France's first generation of nuclear reactors is also a history of the multiple meanings of nationalism, from the postwar period (and France's desire for post-Vichy redemption) to 1969 and the adoption of a "Frenchified" American design.

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