Doctoral Dissertation Research: Evaluating Risk and Uncertainty in Radiation Exposure

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

How are risk and uncertainly managed amidst low-level radiation exposure? One approach to answering such a question effectively has been to focus on the clearest points of vulnerability. In areas of radiation exposure, children are biologically identified as the most vulnerable population by long-term exposure because of their faster cell division. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of rigorous scientific data collection and analysis, explores the strategies undertaken by families in evaluating risk and mitigating uncertainty as they raise children in these contexts. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, the project would engage a wider audience in the scientific process, and broadly disseminate its findings to organizations invested in understanding environmental risk. Duke University anthropology doctoral candidate, Jieun Cho, under the supervision of Dr. Anne Allison will explore the child-rearing and other social practices of parents raising children in areas afflicted by low levels of radiation. In post-meltdown Japan, the effort at constructing normal life continues to raise questions about how, and in what terms, this may be possible when the effects of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster remain uncertain. Despite concerns for health amidst an administratively raised level of permissible airborne radiation (which is necessary for re-building the region), many families have remained in, or returned to, their less-than-ideal neighborhoods in Fukushima Prefecture for various reasons like the presence of jobs, aging parents, and family farms. The research on such families in this area and their efforts at maintaining (or restoring) children's health will provide a microcosm for examining the dynamics through which futures are being made in a context with increasing environmental uncertainty. The researcher has chosen to focus on those families in cities across Fukushima Prefecture, where the populations were not evacuated and have chosen to remain, or return, to make lives within a raised level of airborne radiation with little official assistance. Although children's health has become a problem for parents, post-nuclear politics, and future imaginaries in post-Fukushima Japan, research on child-raising practices by ordinary families who are actually striving to survive in this area is almost totally lacking. In employing a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis, the researcher will collect sets of data on the strategies of living with radiation adopted by parents who knowingly bring up children in irradiated neighborhoods in Fukushima, the public debates surrounding radioactive uncertainty with regard to victimhood and entitlement in post-nuclear care, and forms of sociality that take shape through anxious care-giving in the post-disaster support networks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.