Based on fieldwork at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—the facility that designed the neutron bomb and the warhead for the MX missile—Nuclear Rites takes the reader deep inside the top-secret culture of a nuclear weapons lab. Exploring the scientists' world of dark humor, ritualized secrecy, and disciplined emotions, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson uncovers the beliefs and values that animate their work. He discovers that many of the scientists are Christians, deeply convinced of the morality of their work, and a number are liberals who opposed the Vietnam War and the Reagan-Bush agenda. Gusterson also examines the anti-nuclear movement, concluding that the scientists and protesters are alike in surprising ways, with both cultures reflecting the hopes and anxieties of an increasingly threatened middle class.

In a lively, wide-ranging account, Gusterson analyzes the ethics and politics of laboratory employees, the effects of security regulations on the scientists' private lives, and the role of nuclear tests—beyond the obvious scientific one—as rituals of initiation and transcendence. He shows how the scientists learn to identify in an almost romantic way with the power of the machines they design—machines they do not fear.

In the 1980s the "world behind the fence" was thrown into crisis by massive anti-nuclear protests at the gates of the lab and by the end of the Cold War. Linking the emergence of the anti-nuclear movement to shifting gender roles and the development of postindustrial capitalism, Gusterson concludes that the scientists and protesters are alike in surprising ways, and that both cultures reflect the hopes and anxieties of an increasingly threatened middle class.

Hugh Gusterson is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"An anthropological look at the unique community at Livermore to see what makes weapons scientists tick."—Lynette Singer, Times Literary Supplement

"Reading this fascinating and fairly written book is the best way to understand the moral dilemma that has haunted the inventors of high explosives, from Alfred Nobel to J. Robert Oppenheimer. . . . An anthropologist with a keen sense of humor, Gusterson illuminates this thorough study with poignant details."—Roger Rapoport, San Francisco Chronicle

"In Nuclear Rites, Gusterson focuses on how a weapons laboratory was able to meld such disparate individuals into a unitary elite of nuclear adepts. . . . [This book] offers a new way to make some sense of the arcane secrecy and classification systems associated with the national security states. It also offers a vision of the complex ways in which those who hold our lives in their hands arm themselves against what they are doing, turning (as Gusterson would put it) potentially mutilated bodies quite literally into bodies of data; or of how, in confusing their machines with themselves, they transform the potential horror of nuclear war into a technological aesthetic of pleasure. . . . Gusterson does have a fine eye for the exotic detail and his book has many striking touches."—Nation

"Gusterson provides an unusual and fascinating insight into the more personal, human aspects of how nuclear weapons scientists went about their work; what they thought about; how they reacted to the protests against their work; and how, to some extent, they contributed to that work's demise."—Michael Heylin, Chemical & Engineering News

"Gusterson goes inside the top-secret culture of scientists. He analyzes the ethics and politics of laboratory employees, the effects of security regulations on their private lives and the role of nuclear tests as rituals of initiation and transcendence. He also unrolls the dark humor that accompanies their secret work in the relatively isolated community of Livermore."—MIT Tech Talk

"Presents an ethnographic study of a nuclear weapons laboratory, considering the recent struggle over nuclear weapons policy in Americas as a struggle between different cultural values and political orders."—Journal of Economic Literature

"The author tries to makes sense of the struggle between weapons scientists and antinuclear activists as one who was once an active partisan of one side in the struggle."—Choice

"An extremely important work. . . . It demonstrates the power that ethnographic analysis can have when directed at an examination of our own society's central nervous system."—Faye Ginsburg, author of Contested Lives

"Essential reading for anyone trying to understand what Cold War science was in all its cultural aspects and what this same science now in transformation might yet be."—George E. Marcus, co-editor of The Traffic in Culture