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Introduction: British nuclear culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2012

JONATHAN HOGG
Affiliation:
Department of History, 9 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7WZ. Email: jgh@liv.ac.uk.
CHRISTOPH LAUCHT
Affiliation:
School of History, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT. Email: c.laucht@leeds.ac.uk.

Abstract

In the extended introduction to this special issue on British nuclear culture, the guest editors outline the main historiographical and conceptual contours of British nuclear scholarship, and explore whether we can begin to define ‘British nuclear culture’ before introducing the contributors to this special issue, whose work we have organized into three broad areas. The first part is devoted to three articles that offer explicit and extended attempts to reconceptualize British nuclear culture, illuminating the complex links between nuclear science, the state and the individual citizen. The second part of this issue is devoted to three articles that concentrate on aspects of the history of nuclear science – focusing particularly on intellectuals, nuclear scientists and enthusiasts – alongside analysis of the popularization of nuclear science as well as the relationship between the state and nuclear science and its practitioners. In the third part, four articles examine the diverse ways in which ‘official’ narratives of the atomic age can be questioned, disrupted or enhanced by analysing the significance of journalistic, anti-nuclear and fictional narratives to the development of nuclear culture in Britain.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2012

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