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Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. By Gabrielle Hecht. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Pp. xx, 451; maps, photographs, appendix, publication history, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95/£20.95 cloth.
In 2003, false claims of Iraqi uranium acquisition from Niger helped provide justification for the invasion of Iraq. And subsequently, Niger was viewed as a nuclear state on the world stage. Why was Niger suddenly treated as a nuclear state as the result of false intelligence in 2003, but not as the result of years of previous uranium mining and sales as one of the largest uranium producers in Africa? For Gabrielle Hecht, this question cannot be answered in current literature on nuclear-related issues. Previous scholars have fetishized nuclear weapons leading to research focused on weapons, electricity generation, and traditional Cold War players (with the occasional addition of Japan and South Asia) that has reified an uncritical and exceptionalist understanding of "nuclear" (p. 13). In response, Hecht poses a timely and important question: "what things make a state 'nuclear,' what makes things 'nuclear,' and how do we know?" (p. 13).
To answer this question Hecht introduces nuclearity, a discursive construct produced and maintained through the social production of knowledge (especially technical and scientific...