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Strategies of Disarmament, Civil Society and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Author: Roberta Mulas

Vol Doctoral Thesis, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, 2017, pp. 398

This thesis focuses on the (neglected) role of civil society in both maintaining the existing nuclear weapons system globally and in challenging it. Adopting Antonio Gramsci's theory of civil society, Mulas also draws on critical theoretical approaches to nuclear studies and security to challenge the dominant nuclear discourse. The thesis explores how civil society actors calling for forms of nuclear disarmament can either accept the dominant discourse of deterrence or pose a radical challenge to it. In Gramscian terms the former groups unwittingly act as part of the hegemonic apparatus, the latter constitute a 'counter-hegemonic' opposition.