Fieldnote May 2 2023 - 1:18pm
In this visit, we were focused on stringing seashells onto the wooden branches as art pieces for the exhibition.
Fieldnote Apr 19 2023 - 4:34am
In this visit, I spent most of my time talking to an ah ma from my weekly group.
FIELDNOTE MAR 29 2023
We started our time at Naluwan with some morning dance moves to warm up our bodies. It was pleasant to see the elders actively participating in the exercise.
Fieldnote Apr 12 2023 - 1:34pm
For this visit, Juanjuan and I were grouped with five grandmothers, three from the previous visit and two new grandmothers due to the absence of our classmates.
Fieldnote Feb 21 2023 - 10:56pm
Driving through the small alley of the place where the Amis live felt odd as the modern view on my left - wind turbines, bridges, was a vast contrast from the view on my right which saw village-lik
Conflictual Collaboration: Citizen Science and the Governance of Radioactive Contamination after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
In the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, citizen scientists collectively tracked and monitored residual radioactivity in Japan, legitimizing alternative views to an official assessm
Radioactive Performances: Teaching about Radiation after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and its release of radioac- tive contamination, the Japanese state put into motion risk communica- tion strategies to explain the danger of radiation e
1619 Project
ramahAnnotation of
This may not be the right place to post/share this, and I am happy to delete or move it! But I wanted to make a plug for the 1619 Project, and this post in particular, as helpfully complementing some of the other readings (such as McKittrick and Moore et al) on America's plantation history.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capital…
Hazardous waste work, race, and making disaster "professions"
ramahAnnotation of
I began my research for these field notes by thinking about what kind of labor becomes available in the context of disaster relief/climate change? In my teaching this week, I have been talking about Cyclone Idai and mold as an example of one of how disasters unfold over different temporalities, as in Kim’s work, and via ‘aftershocks’ (Bonilla and Lebron 2019). Thinking about mold got me googling respiratory infections/respiratory health in New Orleans, which lead me to various sites that offer hazardous waste worker training programs (including under the auspices of environmental justice/community development work - e.g. http://www.dscej.org/our-work). This seems one example, among others, of how exposure to environmental harm is transformed into new sites of professionalization. This called to mind discussions of risky labor in the context of disaster, such as in Fortun 2001 or Petryna 2002, and to the centrality of respiration to thinking about anthropocenic processes (Kenner 2019). It highlighted how that transformation of geographical exposure into professional opportunity is then refracted via race and class; while some become hazardous waste clean up experts, others become climate change experts and professionals, who deploy expertise in the wake of other storms. Other accounts (https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2018/03/06/meet-the-refugees-fighting-for-the-future-of-new-orleans/) highlighted specific communities, such as refugee communities, as key sites of resistance to energy infrastructures including a new gas plant, which is being constructed in a FEMA-designated high-risk flood zone. This short stint of googling also lead me to a number of studies of respiratory health, many using spirometric readings to calculate the impact of exposure (for instance to remediation workers involved in cleaning after Hurricane Katrina) (eg. Rando et al 2012). Having recently read Lundy Braun’s book about race and spirometry (2014), these accounts highlighted for me how racialization is built into these processes in multiple ways: not only does race (along with class, professional background, geographical situation, etc) shape who is exposed and in what ways, it also shapes the how health and harm are measured and made visible in this context.Reference:Rando, Roy, John Lefante, Laurie Freyder, & Robert Jones. 2012. Journal of Environmental and Public Health. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2012/462478/
A statue is built in the middle of the walkway that separates the river and the land that the Amis lives on.