ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Nuclear data and the global nuclear order: the techno-politics of IGO information networks

• In Event: Nuclear History as Global History: Current Debates and New Perspectives 1

English Abstract

This contribution concerns how IGO-based information systems influence the reach, nature, and governance of global technoscientific networks and technological systems by examining the distinct and prominent example of nuclear technoscientific data. While narratives of the global nuclear order often involve tracing the histories of competing and connected weapons and energy programs, it is equally possible to detect contested negotiations and hierarchies in the formation and operation of IGO-based data and information systems. Just as the global nuclear infrastructure consists of marked asymmetries of power and agency, so, too, do global nuclear information systems, as geopolitics background both their selectivity and their access. This can be seen, for example, in the creation and operation of the databases of the International Atomic Energy Agency, including INIS, the International Nuclear Information System, started in 1970. Both the particular selectivity of these data as well as the technopolitics of accessing them not only reflected but shaped the global nuclear order.

Author

• Matthew Adamson, McDaniel College, Budapest