Anna Weichselbraun

About me
anthropologist of nuclear power, expertise, and bureaucracy

Hi, my name is Anna Weichselbraun (vye-xcel-brown) and I'm an anthropologist of knowledge, language, and organizations.

My work draws on semiotic analysis to examine how technology, knowledge infrastructures, and political values combine to form the “common sense” of global technological governance. I am currently a postdoctoral research and teaching associate ("Universitätsassistentin") at the University of Vienna's Department of European Ethnology.

From 2016-2018 I was a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. I earned my PhD in linguistic and sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in August 2016.

Contact
anna.weichselbraun[AT]univie.ac.at
Twitter
Academia.edu
ORCID
CV
Research
Current projects

Nuclear Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy, Boredom, & Objectivity at the IAEA
This research provides an intimate view of the practices and activities of nuclear safeguards inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and connects these quotidian practices to the geopolitics of nuclear governance. It investigates the question of the organization's political legitimacy through the capacity for the bureaucracy to produce objective knowledge.
Technologies of Truth and Trust
The Problem of Verification
This project explores technologies of verification as a problem of the unknowability of others’ intentions. By taking a longue duree perspective on trust-mediating technologies, this project will situate Blockchain in a longer history of technical artifacts and security practices that have similarly sought to solve problems of uncertainty.

To develop this project, I am participating in the interdisciplinary research group, The State Multiple, with colleagues in history and law at the University of Vienna.

Climate Change in California
The Cultural Politics of Decarbonization
This project ethnographically examines the concepts of “readiness” and “implementation” for climate adaptation policies that are designed to lead California to its ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. By interrogating what “climate readiness” looks like at various scales, this project will critically examine understandings of “implementation” across expert groups and local communities.
Writing

In-progress
Book manuscript: The Nuclear Order of Things: Bureaucracy, Objectivity, and Boredom at the IAEA
This book asks why the task of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons — with their spectacular destructive potential — was entrusted to an international bureaucracy. In answering this question, the book reveals globally held aspirations for bureaucratic organizations to calmly and rationally produce impartial knowledge about the world. Through a historical and ethnographic study of the international control of nuclear technologies ("nuclear safeguards"), with a particular focus on the International Atomic Energy Agency, this book shows the ideological force of these aspirations in the construction of the hierarchical global nuclear order while telling a story of bureaucracy's promises instead of its failures.
Publications (academic)
"Of Broken Seals and Broken Promises: Attributing Intention at the IAEA." Cultural Anthropology 34 (4), 503–528. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca34.4.02

"From Accountants to Detectives: Bureaucratic Objectivity at the IAEA” (under review)

Review of Containment. Directed by Peter Galison and Robb Moss. Redacted Pictures, 2015. 81 minutes. In Environmental History, January 2018.

“‘People here speak five languages!’: the reindexicalization of linguistic minorityhood among Carinthian Slovenes in Vienna, Austria.” 2014. Language in Society 43.4: 421–444.

“Language and Law” (with Justin Richland). 2014. In Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology. Ed. John Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press.
Op-eds, commentaries, blogs
Not Talking about Disarmament at the IAEA, Anthropology News, July 19, 2018.

Don't assume Trump is more responsible with nuclear weapons than North Korea, The Guardian, July 6, 2017.

“Crisis Talk” in Crisis and Nuclear Scholars’ Responsibility to Imagine, First 100 Days, Harvard STS Blog, April 14, 2017.

Page 99 for CaMP Dissertations, CaMP: Communication, Media and Performance Anthropology Blog, November 21, 2016.
Teaching

From Atom to Anthropocene
On the political techno-science of world-making
This course explores the relationships between modes of thought, knowledge practices and the modes and means of agentive politics that follow from such practices from the perspective of the anthropology of knowledge.
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Language and Culture
On the role of language in reflecting and producing social relationships
That language shapes culture is a commonplace understanding. But where does it come from and why does it appear so obvious? In this course, we will explore the historical development of the relationship between language and culture.
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Introduction to Anthropological Theory
The development of social & cultural systems
This course serves as an introduction to anthropological thought and theory to undergraduate students. Tracing the discipline from its problematic beginnings as colonial knowledge making enterprise up to the most recent "ontological" turn, the course examines the directions and disruptions that have shaped the way we understand anthropology today.
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Anthropology of Knowledge
The atomic age
This course introduces students to the anthropology of knowledge through the cultural, political, and scientific dimensions of the "atomic age." By reading primary source texts alongside critical ethnographic and historical works engaging various aspects of the nuclear age (including nuclear weapons strategy, studies of radiation in the environment, civil defense culture, nuclear accidents, nuclear law, and long term nuclear waste storage), we map out 20th century knowledge production across science, governance, and the environment.
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Bureaucracies and Power
On the role of organizational forms in the establishment of social and political order
This upper-level and graduate seminar conducts a historical survey of the structuring relationship between complex organizational forms and the order of social and political life. It examines the role of governance, the figure of the expert, and the function of files for communication, in order to trace out prevailing imaginaries of knowledge and power as they operate in contemporary culture.
Download syllabus
Curriculum Vitae
DOWNLOAD

About me

anthropologist of nuclear power, expertise, and bureaucracy

Research

Current projects

Nuclear Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy, Boredom, & Objectivity at the IAEA

Technologies of Truth and Trust

The Problem of Verification

Climate Change in California

The Cultural Politics of Decarbonization

Writing

In-progress

Publications (academic)

Op-eds, commentaries, blogs

Teaching

From Atom to Anthropocene

On the political techno-science of world-making

Language and Culture

On the role of language in reflecting and producing social relationships

Introduction to Anthropological Theory

The development of social & cultural systems

Anthropology of Knowledge

The atomic age

Bureaucracies and Power

On the role of organizational forms in the establishment of social and political order

Curriculum Vitae