ERG 251, Fall 1997
This fall, ERG 251 will be taking on an old problem from a new perspective. Last year, several students asked if we could revive the nuclear power - nuclear weapons course that John Holdren and I co-taught some years ago. That course covered the history, politics, basic physics, and engineering of fission and fusion weapons, present fission power reactors, and a variety of possible future reactors including plutonium breeders and hybrids. A number of students also inquired last year about the teaching of analytical methods, particularly those most useful for studying science and technology.
ERG 251 for the Fall term, 1997, will do both. We will cover enough of the basic scientific and technical detail to familiarize students with the basis for political concerns, e.g., over whether the spread of nuclear power also means spreading the capability to build nuclear weapons, the possible consequences of accidents (weapons as well as reactor) and how demanding it might be to dispose of nuclear wastes and shut-down nuclear reactors and sites. We will also cover the co-evolutionary history of nuclear energy from the Manhattan project until the present, setting a variety of decisions, and agencies, into their social and political as well as industrial and technical context.
What is new about ERG 251 this fall is that we will be going a step further, using some of the newer tools of social science, such as frame, narrative, and discourse analysis to "deconstruct" both the history and the politics in search of social context and meaning. In order to do so effectively, we will therefore be reading some social science theory and method, with a particular focus to the application of post-positivist analysis to the nuclear controversies. Because this will take us through such a wide range of issues (such as the governance of technology, public perceptions of risk, the social context of technology, moving from the laboratory to deployment at full industrial and technical scale, international negotiations, the role of scientists in public policy and public debate), the course will provide students with analytic and methodological material that can later be applied to a wide range of problems at the interface of science, technology, society, and public policy.
Because this is a graduate seminar course, it will be a bricolage of technique. There will be lectures and handouts, division of labor assignments for reading with intense discussion, and the viewing of at least five or six excellent videos to explore the narrative and discursive elements that create the social and cultural representations through which nuclear weapons, and nuclear power, have been and are being interpreted. I expect that it will be great fun.