The points I followed up on to get a better understanding of disaster aftermaths, especially ones involving nuclear technology were: 1) Fukushima 2) Three Mile Island and 3) more research into the Chernobyl incident through other articles.
1) The effects from the initial accident are recounted from the past history.
2) The healthcare system that deals with treating these patients are investigated.
3) The politics revolving around the first and second arguments form the third way that the author supports their argument.
The bibliography is not included in the excerpt that we received. Based on the text it appears that many other research articles and outside studies were used as well as interviews.
The main finding of the research article is that the aftermath and effects of the Chernoblyl incident are still wreaking havoc today on those that were exposed as well as on the healthcare systems which they rely on.
Some works that referenced or discussed the article include: “Test for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sports”, “Reimaging (Bio)Medicalization, Pharmaceuticals and Genetics: Old Critiques and New Engagements”, “Depression in Japan: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress”, “Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences”, and “Posthumanism”. According to Google Scholar there are eighty-five other articles that reference “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations”.
Doctor Adriana Petryna holds a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She holds an M.A. in Anthropology as well as a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan.
“…I have investigated the cultural and political dimensions of science and medicine in eastern Europe and in the United States (with a focus on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and on clinical research and pharmaceutical globalization). My concerns center on public and private forms of scientific knowledge production, as well as on the role of science and technology in public policy (particularly in contexts of crisis, inequality, and political transition). I probe the social nature of scientific knowledge, how populations are enrolled in scientific experimentation, and what becomes of citizenship and ethics in that process. The anthropological method involves charting the lives of individuals and institutions over time through interviews, participation-observation, and comparative analysis. It illuminates fine-grained realities that are often more nuanced than those described by policy makers or captured in controlled experiments. The anthropological scrutiny of large-scale political and medical change always entails attending to how ordinary people—often encountering bewildering and overburdened systems—cobble together resources to protect their health and citizenship.” – from the University of Pennsylvania bio.
The article spends a portion of its time looking at the effects on those who were first responders to the scene who were the most severely affected, many receiving over the lethal dose of radiation.
The claims are supported by personal interviews/surveys by the author as well as external data from the state and other sources and studies.
1) “The issue at stake is the state's capacity to produce and use scientific knowledge and nonknowledge [sic] to maintain political order.”
2) "Today, approximately 8.9 percent of Ukraine is considered contaminated."
3) “Dr. Guskova, who oversees the Russian compensation In Russia, the number of people considered affected and compensable has been kept to a mini-mum and remains fairly stable… told me that Ukrainians were inflating their numbers of exposed persons, that their so-called invalids ‘didn't want to re- cover.’ She saw the illnesses of this group as a "struggle for power and material resources related to the disaster.”