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    Unmaking wastelands : inheriting waste, war, and futures at the Hanford site

    Author
    De La Torre III, Pedro
    View/Open
    178298_delaTorreIII_rpi_0185E_11081.pdf (27.91Mb)
    Other Contributors
    Fortun, Kim; Campbell, Nancy D. (Nancy Dianne), 1963-; Fortun, Michael; Kinchy, Abby J.; Ticktin, Miriam Iris;
    Date Issued
    2017-05
    Subject
    Science and technology studies
    Degree
    PhD;
    Terms of Use
    This electronic version is a licensed copy owned by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Copyright of original work retained by author.;
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13015/1982
    Abstract
    Hanford, located on the Columbia Plateau in Washington state, hosted plutonium production facilities for the U.S.'s nuclear weapons arsenal from 1943 until 1988. It is the site of one of largest environmental remediation efforts in the world. It is also a territory to which three indigenous nations hold reserved treaty rights, and a site that is increasingly becoming a site of national historical commemoration. It is, thus, a geography where the long-lasting material, cultural, and political legacies of nuclear weapons production is being negotiated, connecting policy, education, and advocacy to multi-generational environment-making projects and processes. Through both an ethnographic engagement with advocates, officials, educators, stakeholders, and others involved negotiating the extended legacies of nuclear production at Hanford, as well as the many texts they produce, I map out some of the key spatiotemporal conditions, fissures, and inadequacies surrounding the governing the deep times of nuclear sacrifice zones, as well as the active processes of “inheriting” and disavowing them. I make four key arguments: 1. Remediation is a geopolitical environment-making process that reorganizes remains to prepare sites of actual or potential injury ” for imagined futures. 2. “Un-forgetting” the key, structuring absences of national myths, as well as technological ones, is a vital political task, particularly around sites of “slow violence.” 3. The inheritance of sites of multigenerational slow violence spurs advocacy with a logic of iteration. 4. The governance of the far future inherent in many environment-making processes can only ever be incomplete, in part because existing repertoires of governance, representation, and advocacy are often inadequate for the task.;
    Description
    May 2017; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
    Department
    Dept. of Science and Technology Studies;
    Publisher
    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
    Relationships
    Rensselaer Theses and Dissertations Online Collection;
    Access
    Restricted to current Rensselaer faculty, staff and students. Access inquiries may be directed to the Rensselaer Libraries.;
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    • RPI Theses Online (Complete)

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