Science and Technology in the Global Cold War edited by Naomi Oreskes and John Krige

Synopsis: The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it.

The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War.

Published: October 2014 | ISBN: 978-0262526531

Editor’s mini-bio: Naomi Oreskes is an American historian of science. She became Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University in 2013, after 15 years as Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. She has worked on studies of geophysics, environmental issues such as global warming, and the history of science. In 2010, Oreskes co-authored Merchants of Doubt which identified some parallels between the climate change debate and earlier public controversies. – Author’s Wiki Entry
Naomi’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NaomiOreskes

Editor’s Homepage: https://johnkrige.com

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Paperback Edition: Science and Technology in the Global Cold War (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)
Hardcover Edition: Science and Technology in the Global Cold War (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)
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