Mitate Lab.’ Sessions on Post Fukushima Studies
Organisation: Cécile Asanuma-Brice (CNRS) & Olivier Evrard (CEA)
for Mitate Lab. Post Fukushima Studies
JUNE 14th 9:00-11:00 (France) / 16:00-18:00 (Japan)
- 9:00-9:05 / 16:00-16:05 Introduction
- 9:05-9:35 / 16:05-16:35 :
Valérie ARNHOLD
Sociologist and assistant professor at emlyon business school, attached to the OCE (Organisations: Critical and Ethnographic Perspectives) research center
Fukushima and the politics of normalcy. How nuclear institutions deal with large-scale accidents
This talk will present V. Arnhold’s dissertation work on the politics of normalcy of nuclear accidents. She argues that normalcy represented the founding paradigm of the public policies in France – in interaction with European and international nuclear organizations – aiming to address the problem of nuclear accidents after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These politics led to the development of a set of organizations destined to regulate nuclear operations and produce knowledge on nuclear accidents. These politics of normalcy led to affirm and anchor – in discourse, texts, organizations, regulation, infrastructures – the idea that nuclear accidents are surmountable and ultimately acceptable events. They have also transformed the processes through which nuclear accidents become public events and affected the ways in which the Fukushima accident was dealt with in France and on the international level.
- 9:35-10:05 / 16:35-17:05 :
Atsushi NAKAO
Soil scientist and associate professor at Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Kyoto Prefectural University. He studied minerals in soil as a key component of environmental health
Black sheet-like mineral prevents food contamination in Fukushima
This talk will introduce the importance of black sheet-like minerals in soils in Fukushima to prevent food from being contaminated by radiocesium. The name of this mineral is biotite, which is dominant in granitic bedrocks and their derivative soils. Biotite has dual roles concerning food protection; first is selective adsorption of radiocesium in the mineral cleavage, and second is the release of potassium which compete with radiocesium at the root surface. Without biotite in soils nor potassium fertilization, agriculture in eastern Fukushima might have had the higher potential risk of food contamination.
- 10:05-10:35 / 17:05-17:35 :
Florian GOLDMANN
Florian GOLDMANN works in the fields of visual arts, artistic research and media theory. He studied Sculpture, Media Art and Experimental Film in Edinburgh, Athens and Berlin, graduating from Berlin University of the Arts in 2012. From 2014 to 2018 he was a fellow at the Research Training Centre ‘Visibility and Visualisation’ at Potsdam University. In 2019 he was an artist in residence in the residency program of Nakanojo Biennial, Japan as well as at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany.
Modeling Catastrophe
Two miniature models of the damaged Fukushima power plant are taken as the starting point for a reflection on the means of defining, localizing and visualizing risk: one broadcast live on the Japanese public television channel NHK just after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami had hit the plant, the other crafted in the garage of a German retiree. Cross-hatched onto maps, risks can be approached deliberately, they can either be confronted or avoided. Yet, maps tend to take effect in one direction, that is, stemming from those in power – who are in the position to compile the map, and to decide what will be depicted and what precluded – onto the governed, who use the map, accept its depiction as given and thereby validate its claims to objectivity.
- 10:35-11:00 / 17:35-18:00 : Discussion
Access Online : https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/92255612295?pwd=Y1h1KzI1QVpCNzJORWZSTy9veDFFZz09
PIN code : Mitate2022