Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Unsteady Earth: Predicting Nature's Uncertainties in Post 3.11 Japan

这项研究将调查世界上地震最活跃地区之一的地震知识。但是，即使在一个每天都会发生地震的地方，最近的一次大地震也提醒人们，地震具有惊人的能力，可以推翻以前的假设，摧毁和重塑世界。地震学家未能预测这次大地震，这给长期以来关于地震学知识的可能性和局限性的国际辩论火上浇油。使用民族志和历史的研究方法，这项研究探讨了周围的地震，这使得地震学成为一个领域，这是显着的，如果有时勉强，非常规的解释，方法和证据类型开放的不确定性。该项目还考虑人们如何不仅通过科学，而且通过民间传说，历史，灵性，公共教育，流行文化以及对奇怪天气和动物行为的观察来理解地震。该项目的核心是探讨地球的物理不稳定性如何可能迫使和重新配置观察，感知和了解自然本身的实践。这一努力将大大有助于人类学对科学、环境和人与自然关系的研究，这些研究很少密切关注地球物理活动及其如何渗透到日常生活中。通过提请注意地震科学作为一种情境，知识传统的变化混合物，而不是一个单一的，连贯的专业知识，这个项目可以提供见解，这将有助于备灾和恢复工作。资助这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

This research will investigate earthquake knowledge in one of the most seismically active areas of the world. But even in a place where tremors are an everyday occurrence, a recent massive quake came as a stark reminder of the tremendous capabilities of earthquakes to surprise, to undo previous assumptions, and to destroy and remake worlds. The failure of seismologists to predict this large quake has added fuel to long-standing international debates over the possibilities and limits of seismological knowledge. Using ethnographic and historical research methods, this study explores the uncertainty surrounding earthquakes, which has made seismology into a field that is remarkably, if at times begrudgingly, open to unconventional explanations, methods, and types of evidence. This project also considers how people understand earthquakes not only through science, but also through folklore, history, spirituality, public education, popular culture, and observations of strange weather and animal behavior. Centrally, the project inquires into how the physical instability of the earth might compel and reconfigure practices of observing, sensing, and knowing nature itself. This effort will significantly contribute to anthropological studies of science, the environment, and human-nature relations, which rarely attend closely to geophysical activity and how it permeates everyday life. By drawing attention to earthquake science as a situational, shifting amalgam of knowledge traditions, rather than a singular, coherent body of expertise, this project can provide insights that will be helpful for both preparedness and recovery efforts. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.