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，即使在一个每天都有地震发生的地方，最近发生的一次大地震也清楚地提醒人们，地震具有惊人的能力，可以让人感到意外，推翻以前的假设，摧毁和重塑世界。地震学家未能预测到这次大地震，这加剧了长期以来国际上关于地震学知识的可能性和局限性的争论。利用民族志和历史研究方法，本研究探索了地震周围的不确定性，这使得地震学成为一个引人注目的领域，如果有时不情愿，对非常规的解释，方法和证据类型开放。该项目还考虑了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。该项目主要探讨地球的物理不稳定性如何迫使和重新配置观察、感知和认识自然本身的实践。这一努力将对科学、环境和人与自然关系的人类学研究做出重大贡献，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。通过引起人们对地震科学的关注，将其视为一种情境性的、不断变化的知识传统的混合体，而不是单一的、连贯的专业知识体系，该项目可以提供对准备工作和恢复工作都有帮助的见解。资助这项研究也支持了研究生的教育。

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.