Short Abstract:

This Author Meets Critics Session honours the winner of this year's 4S Rachel Carson Book Prize - the historian and STS scholar Gabrielle Hecht. Four STS scholars will examine and discuss Hecht's prize-winning monograph, 'Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade' (2012 MIT Press).

Long Abstract:

The winner of this year's 4S Rachel Carson Book Prize is the historian and STS scholar Gabrielle Hecht. Her prize-winning monograph, 'Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade' (2012 MIT Press) will be the subject of critical engagement and discussion during a 90-minute 'Author Meets Critics' session at EASST/4S in Barcelona 2016. During the session four distinguished scholars will examine some of the main themes of the book: ontological politics; markets; exposure; ignorance; STS geographies; and what Hecht terms nuclearity (the status of 'being nuclear').

The Rachel Carson prize is awarded each year for a book-length work of social or political relevance in science and technology studies. The Carson prize committee has deemed this book to be an example of outstanding scholarship in STS with profound political messages for nuclear and non-nuclear states across the globe. The session will allow ample time for Gabrielle Hecht to respond to her critics, and for questions to be put from the floor.