Description
The aim of this paper is to make visible the extent of the machinery needed to produce nuclear deterrence. Rather than being an inevitable, self-perpetuating practice, nuclear deterrence requires vast resources and political will. The production of nuclear weapons impacts people and communities in multiple ways and intersects with other issues including economics, education, health and social inequality. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in New Mexico, which as well as being the site of the development and resting of the first weapons, sites across the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to waste storage. This research analyses the ways in which nuclear weapons sites impact on places and peoples, how communities make trade-offs between socio-economic realities and living in the shadow of nuclear weapons, and how the everyday politics of nuclear weapons influence and are influenced by wider political dynamics.
