Nuclear Borders: Informally Negotiating the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Davies, Thom

doi:10.1057/9781137483072_11

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…For communities who live within toxic geographies, who are exposed to the daily traumas and uncertainties of environmental hazards, the 'spectacle' of pollution -if not its actual materiality -is often plain to see. Having spent almost a decade investigating the lives of communities in various toxic geographies -including Chernobyl, Fukushima, and now 'Cancer Alley' (Davies 2013(Davies , 2015(Davies , 2018, the last thing I would describe these spaces as, is lacking in spectacle. Communities who are exposed to the slow violence of toxic pollution are replete with testimonies, experiences, and bereavements that bear witness to the brutality of gradual environmental destruction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?

Davies

2019

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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153

126

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Toxic pollution is a form of violence. This article explores the gradual brutalities that communities surrounded by petrochemical infrastructure endure over time. Contributing to political geographies of violence and environmental justice, this paper puts the concept of 'slow violence' into critical comparison with work on 'structural violence'. In doing so, the paper makes two key contributions: First, it emphasizes the intimate connections between structural and slow forms of harm, arguing that structural inequality can mutate into noxious instances of slow violence. Second, the paper pushes back against framings of toxic landscapes as entirely invisible to the people they impact. Instead of accepting the standard definition of slow violence as 'out of sight', we have to instead ask the question: 'out of sight to whom?' In asking this question, and taking seriously the knowledge claims of communities who inhabit toxic spaces, we can begin to unravel the political structures that sustain the uneven geographies of pollution. Based on long-term ethnographic research in a postcolonial region of Louisiana, nicknamed 'Cancer Alley', this paper reveals how people gradually 'witness' the impacts of slow violence in their everyday lives. Finally, drawing on the notion of 'epistemic violence', the paper suggests that slow violence does not persist due to a lack of arresting stories about pollution, but because these stories do not count, thus rendering certain populations and geographies vulnerable to sacrifice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?

Davies

2019

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Self Cite

153

126

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“…Whilst mostly explored by scholars from the hard or life sciences, Chernobyl has recently gained popularity in the social sciences across fields such as human geography (Davies, 2013(Davies, , 2015Rush-Cooper, 2013), anthropology (Petryna, 2002(Petryna, , 2011Phillips, 2005Phillips, , 2012, sociology (Kuchinskaya, 2011(Kuchinskaya, , 2012(Kuchinskaya, , 2014, history (Kalmbach, 2013), studies of tourism (Goatcher & Brunsden, 2011;Stone, 2013;Yankovska & Hannam, 2013), culture (Falkof, 2013), and visual studies (Bürkner, 2014). What these scholars share is the realisation that the Chernobyl disaster has multiple interpretations and realities, with contested impacts that stretch both within and beyond post-socialist space.…”

Section: Chernobylmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scrap metal collection from within the Exclusion Zone is also key among a spectrum of informal activities that takes place in this marginalised nuclear landscape (see Davies, 2015). This prohibited activity of crossing the nuclear border to salvage (and sell) the abandoned detritus from the Zone, contributes to the informal renegotiation of Chernobyl citizens' status as post-nuclear bare life.…”

Section: Rejecting Welfare and Embracing Placementioning

confidence: 99%

Informality and survival in Ukraine's nuclear landscape: Living with the risks of Chernobyl

Davies

Polese

2015

Journal of Eurasian Studies

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Recent debates on informal economic activities have partially switched away from a pure monetary logic towards a more complex one, embedded in long term relations and reckoning with non materialistic paradigms. The role of informality in certain aspects of people's lives has however, remained largely unexplored. This article uncovers what happens when the state retires from (providing benefits and social services to) a geographic area and what kind of mechanisms, practices and institutions are created to make up for this. We suggest that, in the face of de facto abandonment by state welfare, and the absence of a private sector alternative, a myriad of transactions and actors can make up for this by replacing these forms of welfare informally. Our case study focuses on the nuclear landscapes around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in north–central Ukraine as we reveal the ways the excluded and abandoned, which we frame as post-nuclear “bare life” (Agamben, 1998), have created a mechanism of social security that is independent from the state and yet complements it. Informal, local and unofficial understandings of nuclear spaces are central to survival in this marginalised and risky environment.

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“…How radioisotopes evade borders is increasingly understood through their embodied existence in local ecologies, biologies, and ecosystems (Brown 2015;Brown 2019). Moreover, radioisotopes from Chornobyl continue to leak into consumable products that are consumed locally and globally (Brown 2020;Davies 2015). Radioisotopes deposited in the soil are absorbed by vegetation, becoming embodied in bark, leaves, grass, fruit, and berries, amongst other things.…”

Section: Volumetric Sovereignty and Leaky Materialitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

Booth¹,

Lucas²,

French³

2022

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In this book, world-leading social scientists come together to provide original insights on the capacities and limitations of insurance in a changing world.Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the ways we think about insurance. This book moves beyond traditional economics and financial understandings of insurance to address the social and geopolitical dimensions of this powerful and pervasive part of contemporary life. Insurance shapes material and social realities, and is shaped by them in turn. The contributing authors of this book show how insurance constitutes and is constituted through the traditional elements of earth, water, air, fire, and the novel element of big data. The applied and theoretical insights presented through this novel elemental approach reveal that insurance is more dynamic, multifaceted, and spatially variegated than commonly imagined.This book is an authoritative source on the capacities and limitations of insurance. It is a go-to reference for researchers and students in the social sciences -particularly those with an interest in economics and finance, and how these intersect with geography, politics, and society. It is also relevant for those in the disaster, environmental, health, natural, and social sciences who are interested in the role of insurance in addressing risk, resilience, and adaptation.Kate Booth is a human geographer, specializing in the field of critical insurance studies. She is particularly interested in the economic and social geographies of insurance in a changing climate, and implications for inequality and inequity. Kate has also worked on projects looking at sense of place, and the role of arts and culture in urban regeneration. Her work is published in journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Urban Studies, and Qualitative Inquiry.

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Nuclear Borders: Informally Negotiating the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Cited by 10 publications

References 64 publications

Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?

Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?

Informality and survival in Ukraine's nuclear landscape: Living with the risks of Chernobyl

Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

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