Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization after Fukushima
Dr. Polleri has examined the governance of radioactive contamination in post-Fukushima Japan, with a focus on how different social actors clashed and merged to govern something as controversial as disaster recovery. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Japan, his research argues that dominant practices of post-disaster governance have coalesced toward a politics of revitalization, which attempts to manage the vulnerabilities of an ecologically and economically insecure nation-state. More precisely, this politics emphasized a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual repatriation of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity – sometimes at the expense of other narratives and understandings of recovery. By ethnographically mapping the different ways in which the socio-material aspects of radiation hazards are managed in post-Fukushima Japan, the research illuminates the diverse strategies, historical factors, and sociocultural logics that enables this form of radioactive governance to thrive over other ones. In the end, the research provides better understandings on how the management of contamination is evolving in an era where the nefarious impacts of modernization represent permanent marks on the planet.
