Readings
Kuchinskaya, O. (2019). Citizen science and the politics of environmental data. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 44(5), 871-880. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919858669
In this commentary, I reflect on the differences between two independent citizen approaches to monitoring radiological contamination, one in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and the other in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. I examine these approaches from the perspective of their contribution to making radiological contamination more publicly visible (i.e., publicly recognized as a hazard). The analysis is grounded in my earlier work (Kuchinskaya 2014), where I examined how we have come to know what we know about post–Chernobyl contamination and its effects in Belarus, a former Soviet republic most heavily affected by the fallout. As I described in this study, much of what we know about the consequences of Chernobyl is based on the work of the Belarusian nonprofit Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad.” I compare Belrad’s approach to radiological monitoring with the work of the volunteer network Safecast, arguably one of the best-known citizen science projects in the world, which is working to monitor the scope of the post–Fukushima contamination. Through this comparison of approaches, I raise broader questions about a form of sensing practices—data-related practices of citizen science that make environmental hazards publicly in/visible.
Morimoto, R. (2023). Radioactive Mosquito Bite and Its Surreal Life: Science, the State, and the Invisible. Public Culture, 35(3), 319-330. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-10742481
The article explores the tensions between the state, science, and the lived experience among the residents in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima. The author proposes the analytics of the “surreal” to apprehend the incommensurable divide invisible radiation in society had produced between the state’s technoscientific focus on making the radiation visible and people’s diverse everyday experience of radiation in various aspects of life. Ethnographically retelling the struggles of a medical doctor who came to understand the manifold consequences of the accident in coastal Fukushima, the article shows how social science is a critical stakeholder in addressing the surreal to mediate between science and the lay public, the state and citizen, and risk and life to prevent the individuation of risk perceptions that follow with the emergence of invisible hazards in society.
Polleri, M. (2019). Conflictual collaboration: Citizen science and the governance of radioactive contamination after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. American Ethnologist, 46(2), 214-226 https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12763
In the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, citizen scientists collectively tracked and monitored residual radioactivity in Japan, legitimizing alternative views to an official assessment of the radioactive contamination. But initial practices of resistance have evolved in collaboration with the official Japanese politics of radioactive governance, supporting hegemonic understandings of radiation danger and normative visions of postdisaster recovery. Civic resources used to resist and reinterpret official narratives of contamination end up reinforcing a state-sponsored normalization of this disaster. Meanwhile, they become crucial techniques of neoliberal governmentality designed to govern the conduct of populations amid contaminated environments.