Building Nuclear Communities: The Hanford Education Action League.

Autor/inn/en	Ratliff, Jeanne; Salvador, Michael
Titel	Building Nuclear Communities: The Hanford Education Action League.
Quelle	(1994), (20 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Community Involvement; Discourse Analysis; Discourse Communities; Higher Education; Literary Genres; Organizational Communication; Political Issues; Rhetorical Criticism; Social Action; Washington + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Diskursanalyse; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Literarische Form; Politischer Faktor; Soziales Handeln
Abstract	Many scholars have examined the jeremiad in American rhetoric and political discourse. The Hanford Education Action League (HEAL), which influenced policy changes in the operations of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, is a social movement organization whose founding members used the jeremiad to create a symbolic community which challenged established social order. The Hanford Reservation made the plutonium that produced the world's first atomic bomb and was operated without oversight under strict secrecy (as allowed by the Atomic Energy Act). HEAL's initial goal was to breach the walls that held Hanford's secrets to determine what effect its ionizing radiation had on health and the environment and to provide the public with the information. In May 1984, a local minister (and former research chemist), delivered a sermon drawing comparisons between the Holocaust and the nuclear establishment's "reckless use...of radioactive elements." A study group was formed, and by September, HEAL was organized. In 1986 information about the harmful effects of radiation was released to the local newspaper. The Department of Energy (DOE) released 19,000 pages of newly declassified data, and the HEAL newsletter began systematically analyzing the data, using the DOE's own methods of calculation. Of paramount interest was the "Green Run" of 1949, when Hanford, to test its monitoring equipment, secretly released radioactive material. Health problems (miscarriages, cancers, birth defects, etc.) suffered by people in the area were documented, and Hanford's reactors were eventually shut down, although nuclear waste and contamination are still a big issue. HEAL's jeremiad reconfigured history, offering a "counter-myth" which portrayed Americans as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries, of government secrecy, and DOE as villain rather than guardian. The jeremiad form, however, seems to have limited the scope of HEAL's social/political critique, since the jeremiad carries fundamental assumptions that limit serious considerations of structural change. (Contains 18 references.) (NKA)
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC