Living apart together: local governments and Citizen Radiation-Measuring Organizations after Fukushima

During the past decade, dozens of Citizen Radiation-Measuring Organizations (CRMOs), active throughout Japan, continued to observe the nuclear fallout in the environment and on the health of Japanese citizens. While monitoring radiation, CRMO’s activities intersect on a regular basis with those of the Japanese government. Recognizing the different policy levels involved in radiation measuring, this paper studies the relations between governments and CRMOs by examining how civic and governmental infrastructures initiated in the wake of the Fukushima accident (dis)engage with each other. We link these infrastructures within pre- and post-Fukushima sociotechnical imaginaries, demonstrating the shift from a pronuclear imaginary to one emphasizing the recovery process of Fukushima and situating the creation of new citizen-local government relationships. By doing so, we explore whether and how CRMOs challenge and reconfigure Japanese political culture in post-Fukushima Japan. We conclude that CRMOs and local governments have established themselves as separate infrastructures, living and operating in the same environment, yet apart in the majority of cases. We identify obstacles and opportunities for citizen engagement in the emergency and recovery process after a nuclear accident and contextualize CRMOs within citizen mobilization after Fukushima. Document analysis, fieldwork, and interviews with CRMOs and local governments and the Fukushima prefectural government make up the basis of our study.

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Open