Product Description

This text maps the nuclear landscapes of the US inter-desert southwest, a land sacrificed to the Cold-War arms race and nuclear energy policy. Valerie Kuletz documents in detail the consequences of these policies on the southwestern land and its native peoples. Consequently, a double exposure emerges of one landscape superimposed upon another: a landscape of national sacrifice over what many Americans understand as a geography of the sacred. Kuletz investigates how culture influences both native and scientific representations of nature as well as strategies for managing the relationship between nature and human society. The author draws on interviews with the Native Americans affected by nuclear activity while using mapping strategies, textual analysis and an ethnoecological approach to document the zones of national sacrificial land.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #567322 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From the Publisher
For Release:
Winner of the American Sociological Association’s 1997 Robert Boguslaw Award for Technology and Humanism...

The Tainted Desert
Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West
by
Valerie Kuletz

"A moving account of the "secret nuclear holocaust" spawned in the Southwest desert by the nuclear experimentation of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. . . .A deeply disturbing indictment of our government’s neglect and lack of responsibility to the land and its people."
-- Publishers Weekly

Culture, power, politics, and environmental concerns collide in THE TAINTED DESERT (Routledge; May 12, 1998; Canada; A Trade Paperback Original) as Valerie L. Kuletz outlines the consequences of nuclearism -- which have been kept secret for more than fifty years -- and documents the past, present, and future nuclear legacies of the United States and the world. In frightening detail, this controversial and timely book exposes the level of buildup of nuclear waste in toxic dumps around the country and reveals the tragic consequences that the Cold War arms race and thoughtless nuclear energy policy have had on America’s inter-desert region and its inhabitants over the years.

THE TAINTED DESERT is the first full-length study of the Yucca Mountain project, which could soon pose some serious consequences to the American West and the entire nation. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is the proposed permanent repository for a shipment of 27,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste that is being transported across the country and into the Southwest from twenty-eight countries at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars and the ruin of this land. Located at the boundary between the Mojave and the Lower Great Basin deserts on Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute land (less than 100 miles from Las Vegas), the site of the project is America’s first large-scale national high-level nuclear waste dump.

Kuletz combines interviews with scientists and Native Americans affected by the nuclear activity with concrete empirical data to shed light on both the scientific and human sides of this global controversy. Littered with eerily beautiful photographs of this poisoned land, THE TAINTED DESERT is an exploration of the American Southwest and the impending threat of a nuclear crisis. Kuletz focuses on issues of military secrecy, environmental racism, and the hazards to our health and safety of living with toxic waste. As thousands of tons of nuclear waste moves through America’s communities, the crisis will no longer be invisible -- for it can no longer be ignored.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Valerie Kuletz has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz and is currently Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The daughter of a weapons scientist, she grew up at China Lake Naval Weapons Center, a top secret Department of Defense research and testing facility in the Mojave Desert. Her opposition to her father’s work and philosophy on protecting the environment makes her own work and writing not only professional but deeply personal and quite moving. She is intimately aware -- and demonstrates in THE TAINTED DESERT -- that this is not simply a local problem, or even a national one, but a growing world-wide crisis. Her work on this book won the American Sociological Association’s 1997 Robert Boguslaw Award for Technology and Humanism.

From the Back Cover
For decades, nuclear testing in America's southwest was shrouded in secrecy, with images gradually made public of mushroom clouds blooming over the desert. Now, another nuclear crisis looms over this region: the storage of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste.

Tainted Desert maps the nuclear landscapes of the US inter-desert southwest, a land sacrificed to the Cold-War arms race and nuclear energy policy. It not only makes visible the millions of acres that were removed from public access for weapons testing and development--and, more recently, for waste storage--but also reveals the cultural significance of this contaminated land. Valerie Kuletz documents in frightening detail the tragic consequences of these policies on the southwestern land and its native peoples. Consequently, a double exposure emerges of one landscape superimposed upon another: a landscape of national sacrifice over what many Americans understand as a geography of the sacred.

After demonstrating how the consequences of nuclear power from the production of weapons and energy have been concentrated in the US inter-desert region, Kuletz then focuses on Yucca Mountain, the proposed permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. Located in Nevada at the boundary between the Mojave and the lower Great Basin deserts on traditional Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute land, Yucca Mountain illuminates the ways different cultures understand and interact with nature. Kuletz investigates how culture influences both native and scientific representations of nature as well as strategies for managing the relationship between nature and human society.

The author draws on interviews with the Native Americans affected by nuclear activity while using mapping strategies, textual analysis and an ethnoecological approach to document the zones of national sacrificial land. Having grown up near a testing center in the Mojave desert, she demonstrates that this is not just a local problem, or even a national one, but a global crisis that affects everyone's backyard.

About the Author
Valerie L. Kuletz, the daughter of a weapons scientist, grew up near a Department of Defense research and testing center in the Mojave Desert. She has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and currently is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her work on this book won the American Sociological Association's 1997 Robert Boguslaw Award for Technology and Humanism.