Perceptions of risk, dilemmas of policy: Nuclear fallout in Swedish Lapland

Beach, Hugh

doi:10.1016/0277-9536(88)90259-6

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Clearly, the existence of the double standard for radiation risk has angered many in the community and created a distrust of scientific declarations. Hugh Beach documented this same doubt of scientific studies in the residents of Swedish Lapland who, after Chernobyl, were confronted with a similar change in the purported ''safe'' level of Cesium (Beach 1990). Like the Swedish Laplanders, the Bikinians' distrust is reinforced by the fact that different studies have resulted in conflicting recommendations.…”

Section: Scientific Studies: Conflicting Reports and Trustmentioning

confidence: 85%

“Is It Really Safe? That's What We Want to Know”: Science, Stories, and Dangerous Places

Davis

2005

The Professional Geographer

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This article presents a case study of risk perception and decision making regarding the former nuclear test site of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. This example demonstrates how people use combinations of scientific and anecdotal evidence to consider whether places are ''really safe.'' Furthermore, the article examines how scientific studies of risk operate as cultural systems and how a lack of dialogue and understanding across cultural systems can confuse discussions about risk and affect the development of places. The study is based on interviews with still-exiled Bikinians as well as with workers and visitors on Bikini Atoll.

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Section: Scientific Studies: Conflicting Reports and Trustmentioning

confidence: 85%

“Is It Really Safe? That's What We Want to Know”: Science, Stories, and Dangerous Places

Davis

2005

The Professional Geographer

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“…Within this area, anthropologists have focused on how corporations and nation‐states use scientific knowledge to define, study, and remediate biological injury (Michaels 1988; Nash and Kirsch 1988). Large‐scale disasters such as Chernobyl and the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, as well as the ongoing transnational spread of industrial toxins, have sharpened the ethnographic focus on the social construction of risk in bureaucratic formations (Beach 1990; Checker 2005; Petryna 2002; Stephens 1995). This body of work has exposed the intimate connections between “scientific expertise” and corporate agendas in managing health threats, as well as the role of citizenship in gaining compensation and social protections from biological injury (Petryna 2002:6–7).…”

Section: Research Approach Design and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

State Calculations of Cultural Survival in Environmental Risk Assessment: Consequences for Alaska Natives

Cassady¹

2010

Medical Anthropology Quarterly

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In 2007, the Alaska Division of Public Health issued their first-ever fish consumption advisory to reduce exposure to methylmercury. Interestingly, they utilized a toxicity level in their calculations of risk that is four times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) level, arguing that the EPA's calculation is "inappropriately restrictive" for Alaskans. This article explores the institutional reasoning and scientific calculations behind the state's fish consumption advice, with special attention paid to the consequences for Alaska Natives. I argue that a discourse of "Alaskan exceptionalism" is utilized by the health department to justify their assessment of risk. Although this exceptionalist discourse is intended to accommodate the unique lifestyles of Alaskan citizens, it may actually serve to undermine the very lifeways and traditions that it presumes to preserve. This article contributes insights into the ways that states can influence the social and material reproduction of communities through the deployment of "cultural difference" during the risk-assessment process.

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“…Beside an asymmetrical distribution of resources, industrial-scale energy infrastructures distribute risk unevenly. The Sami of northern Scandinavia were among those worst affected by nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl meltdown, due to the prevailing winds, though they made no use of the electricity the plant generated (Beach, 1990). In the Gulf of Mexico, the risks of offshore oil production were conferred to nonhumans, as the Deepwater Horizon blowout had disastrous effects on marine life (Thibodeaux et al, 2011).…”

Section: Ecologically Unequal Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

Out of steam: Energy, materiality, and political ecology

Cederlöf

2019

Progress in Human Geography

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Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines the notion of ecologically unequal exchange and unpacks discussions on how energy systems are co-productive of politicised environments. The outcome is an expanded definition of political ecology set out in relation to three modes of social power.

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Perceptions of risk, dilemmas of policy: Nuclear fallout in Swedish Lapland

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

“Is It Really Safe? That's What We Want to Know”: Science, Stories, and Dangerous Places

“Is It Really Safe? That's What We Want to Know”: Science, Stories, and Dangerous Places

State Calculations of Cultural Survival in Environmental Risk Assessment: Consequences for Alaska Natives

Out of steam: Energy, materiality, and political ecology

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