Book Series Science Diplomacy, vol. 1

The Missing Interaction

Science and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War

Maria Rentetzi (ed)

  • Pages: approx. 292 p.
  • Size:178 x 254 mm
  • Illustrations:17 b/w, 5 col., 2 maps b/w
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2025


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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61378-9
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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61379-6
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This volume focuses on the entanglements between science and diplomacy after the Second World War, bringing together history of science and technology, diplomatic history and international relations.

BIO

MARIA RENTETZI is professor and chair of Science, Technology, and Gender studies at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, a Science Diplomacy Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark and an ERC Consolidator grantee. Her research focuses on gender, nuclear history, and science diplomacy. She is the author of Living with Radiation (Cleio Press, 2025); Negotiating Radiation Protection (co-edited with Angela Creager and Susan Lindee, Pittsburgh University Press, 2025); Seduced by Radium (Pittsburgh University Press, 2022) and The Gender of Things (Routledge, 2023). Recently, she has ventured into the world of children’s books with Science Takes a Trip (Clavis Publishing, 2025).

Summary

This book enriches our understanding of the circumstances and conditions that have made the relation between science and diplomacy a primary concern of the political landscape in the twenty first century. As western liberal democracy and its effects on the environment but also on global war politics are under question, authors in this collective volume rethink the effects that an ahistorical definition of science diplomacy has had on world politics. They document the historicity of the entanglement between, on the one hand, epistemic practices and knowledge production and, on the other, foreign policy strategies and negotiation tactics. The book is the first in a series of what Rentetzi calls 'Diplomatic Studies of Science', a highly inter- and trans- disciplinary field that analyzes science and diplomacy as historically co-produced. It primarily focuses on the entanglements of science and diplomacy after the Second World War, bridging history of science, diplomatic history and international relations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. The Missing Interaction

Part 1. Diplomatic epistemology at large

Emily Baum (University of California, Irvine)
Needle Diplomacy. Acupuncture and Scientific Exchange in Cold War China and the United States

Aya Homei (University of Manchester)
From 'Integration Project' to 'Three-in-One Project'. Family Planning and Health Diplomacy between Japan and the People’s Republic of China, 1970s–1980s

Maria Rentetzi (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
The Global Experiment. How the International Atomic Energy Agency Proved Dosimetry to Be a Techno-Diplomatic Issue.

Grigoris Panoutsopoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Investigating CERN’s Science Diplomacy in the Midst of the Cold War. The Case of the CERN-Serpukhov Collaboration

Part 2. International organizations in focus

Gordon Barrett (University of Manchester)
A Disunited Front? The World Federation of Scientific Workers and the 1952 Korean Bacteriological Warfare Allegations

Loukas Freris (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
“Through Diplomatic Channels”. Science, Diplomacy, and Greece’s Efforts for Election to the IAEA Board of Governors, 1957–1961

Barbara Kirsi Silva (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)
Reaching for the Stars during the Cold War. Science and Diplomacy in the Rise of Astronomy in Chile

Gloria Maritza Gómez Revuelta (El Colegio de México)
Cosmic Diplomacy and Vertical Sovereignty. The Equator’s Claims over the Geostationary Orbit, 1975–1982

Part 3. Actors at the crossroad of science and diplomacy

Fintan Hoey (Franklin University Switzerland)
Imai Ryūkichi. Japan's Nuclear Diplomat

Maria Rentetzi, Kapil Patil, and Irina Fedorova ((Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Cooperation or Control? Scientist-Diplomats, the IAEA, and the Global Nuclear Order