Stalin's bomb: Soviet physicists and the Cold War

Revisionist historians of the nuclear age have long argued that it was not necessary to have used the atomic bombs in August 1945 to bring the Second World War to an end, and that a more conciliatory approach by the Truman administration towards the Soviet Union—being franker with Stalin about the bomb and giving him an assurance that it would not be used—would have created a better chance of achieving a less confrontational postwar relationship between the two powers. They have also challenged the myth that the reason for using the bombs was to save American lives.     

The Grudging Modernizer: A Trip to the Middle East and Cold War Social Science

Minerva - The postwar era is generally recognized as a unique moment of impetuous growth of the social sciences, due to the interest of Western internationalist elites in the development of a set...     

The Rhetorics of Racial Power: Enforcing Colorblindness in Post-Apartheid Scholarship on Race

This article examines the reproduction of colorblindness discourse in selected post-1994 South African studies in economics, education, literature, philosophy, and sociology. It argues that the presence of dominant racial ideologies in this scholarship is emblematic of an active investment in maintaining racialized privileges. As it illustrates some of the rhetorical mechanisms that inform the articulation of colorblindness discourse at large, it shows that unpacking colorblind rhetoric is itself necessary if we are to make sense of the research emphases, arguments, logics, and findings of a significant body of South African scholarship on race published since the advent of democratic rule.     

A History of Universalism: Conceptions of the Internationality of Science from the Enlightenment to the Cold War

That science is fundamentally universal has been proclaimed innumerable times. But the precise geographical meaning of this universality has changed historically. This article examines conceptions of scientific internationalism from the Enlightenment to the Cold War, and their varying relations to cosmopolitanism, nationalism, socialism, and ‘the West’. These views are confronted with recent tendencies to cast science as a uniquely European product.

The Rise and Demise of the International Council for Science Policy Studies (ICSPS) as a Cold War Bridging Organization

When the journal Minerva was founded in 1962, science and higher educational issues were high on the agenda, lending impetus to the interdisciplinary field of “Science Studies” qua “Science Policy Studies.” As government expenditures for promoting various branches of science increased dramatically on both sides of the East-West Cold War divide, some common issues regarding research management also emerged and with it an interest in closer academic interaction in the areas of history and policy of science. Through a close reading of many early issues of Minerva but also of its later competitor journal Science Studies (now called Social Studies of Science) the paper traces the initial optimism of an academically based Science Studies dialogue across the Cold War divide and the creation in 1971 of the International Commission for Science Policy Studies as a bridging forum, one that Minerva strangely chose to ignore. In this light, attention is drawn to aspects of the often forgotten history of Science Studies in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European block. Reviewed also are several early discussions that are still relevant today: e.g., regarding differing concepts of Big Science, science and democracy, autonomy in higher education and what conditions are necessary to sustain academic freedom and scientific integrity (some of Edward Shils’ primary concerns). Finally, it is noted how the question of quantitative methods to measure scientific productivity lay at the heart of a “Science of Science” movement of the 1960s has re-emerged in a new form integral to the notion of a “Science of Science Policy.”     

Mediating Gender,Mediating Race: Women Writers in Colonial Algeria

Until recently women's roles in the French colonies received little or no attention although they, like men, played a significant part in the construction of the colonial identity. In colonial Algeria (1830–1962), gendered and racial structures were already in place when, after the civilian takeover in 1871, women emerged as players on the colonial scene. Women writers responded to colonial social structures in a number of ways. This article will explore the ambiguities and paradoxes of their situation in the colony and the ways in which they assumed the role of mediators of gender and race, to further their agendas.     

Perceptions of police-civilian encounters: Intergroup and communication dimensions in the United Arab Emirates and the USA

This study investigates the impact of perceived police accommodation on police–civilian interactions. Elaborating theoretically beyond a range of cross-cultural studies, we examine the cultural impact of accommodative communication in the United Arab Emirates and the USA, as the prior context demonstrates sociocultural parallels and differences including the influence of Sharia law. Between-country comparisons evaluate the mediating role of trust, affect, and intergroup orientation on various civic outcomes. Accommodative communication was the strongest predictor of trust for both nations and demonstrated a direct impact on moral alignment and willingness to help only in the United Arab Emirates.     

Implanting a Discipline: The Academic Trajectory of Nuclear Engineering in the USA and UK

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering—channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter—proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.

Identity Mobilization Practices of Refugees: The Case of Iraqis in the United States and the War in Iraq

Abstract

This study illustrates the narrative construction of diasporic refugee identities in times of sociopolitical tensions. Specifically, this paper is concerned with how Iraqi refugees living in the United States constituted their identities through narrating in times of the War in Iraq. Gergen's social constructionist approach towards narrating and current theorizing in diaspora studies build the theoretical bases for the analysis. Narratives were collected through participant observations, interviews, and group discussion in the Pacific Northwest of the United States before, during, and after combat operations in Iraq were declared to be over by President Bush. The paper answers three questions. First, which events triggered the construction of Iraqi refugee identities in the United States? Second, what is the role of narrating in constituting Iraqi identities? Third, do the Iraqi narrators construct diasporic imaginations and if so, how? The findings show that the narrative construction of being Iraqi and a refugee was a relational achievement and situated response. The respondents constructed imaginations of transnational communities that included Iraqis in Iraq, Iraqis in refugee camps, and Iraqis in the United States. By integrating their emerging political voices in the United States with their political resistor identities in Iraq, the narrators made salient transnational links between being Iraqi, a displaced person, and a member of U.S. society, disrupted political discourses about Iraqis in the United States, and affirmed moral values.     

War,Philanthropy, and the National Institute of Hygiene in France

The Rockefeller Foundation helpedestablish two health research institutes inFrance during the German occupation and Vichyrule. These institutes were the precursors ofthe Institut National de Santé et de laRecherche Médicale (INSERM), the Frenchequivalent of the National Institutes of Healthin the United States. This essay rescues theseinstitutes from oblivion, and examines theirorigins and their significance.     

Air power and governmental support for scientific research: The approach to the Second World War

Conclusion The development of radar, jet propulsion, ballistic missiles and the atomic bomb during the Second World War established and made visible to an unprecedented degree governmentally supported and directed research and development. National survival was now seen to depend on the mobilisation of a country's talents and resources in science and technology for military purposes.Prior to the Second World War, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had established its own role in research. It also established the legitimacy of governmental patronage for scientific research far beyond aeronautics. It was during that period that American politicians and the organs of public opinion became convinced and persuaded the electorate to think that science was indispensable for national security and well-being. A very great deal has been accomplished since then, but the credit for a pioneering role in the conduct of research with the financial support of the federal government must be given to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.