EXPLODING ANTHROPOLOGY'S CANON IN THE WORLD OF THE BOMB

Abstract

Where psychologists interested in the nuclear arms race have studied nuclear elites, ethnographers have mainly studied antinuclear activists. It is easier to carry through fieldwork among activists than elites, and it is important to explain the “subjugated knowledges” of activists, but this ethnographic bias also normalizes nuclear culture by exempting nuclear elites from examination. Unlike psychologists, who are concerned with dysfunction, antinuclear ethnographers studying nuclear elites have the difficult problem of reconciling their cultural relativism with their antinuclearism. This problem is best solved by rejecting objectivist styles of writing in favor of a more dialogic approach.