Doctoral Dissertation Research: Evaluating Risk and Uncertainty in Radiation Exposure

如何管理低水平辐射暴露中的风险和不确定性？有效回答这一问题的一种方法是关注最明显的脆弱性。在受辐射地区，由于儿童细胞分裂速度较快，从生物学角度看，儿童是长期受辐射影响最脆弱的人群。该项目旨在培养一名研究生掌握严谨的科学数据收集和分析方法，探讨家庭在这些环境中养育子女时，在评估风险和减轻不确定性方面采取的策略。除了提供经费培训一名人类学研究生掌握严格数据收集和分析的科学方法外，该项目还将使更广泛的受众参与科学过程，并将其研究结果广泛传播给投资于了解环境风险的组织。杜克大学（Duke University）人类学博士候选人赵杰恩（Jieun Cho）将在安妮·艾莉森（Anne Allison）博士的指导下，探索在低辐射地区养育子女的父母的育儿和其他社会实践。在核泄漏后的日本，重建正常生活的努力继续引发一些问题：在福岛第一核电站（Fukushima Daiichi）核灾难的放射性影响仍不确定的情况下，如何以及以何种方式实现这一目标？尽管在行政上提高了空气中可容许的辐射水平（这是重建该地区所必需的），人们对健康感到担忧，但许多家庭仍然留在福岛县，或回到他们不太理想的社区，原因有很多，比如工作、年迈的父母和家庭农场。对这一领域的此类家庭及其维持（或恢复）儿童健康的努力进行的研究，将提供一个缩影，以审查在环境不确定性日益增加的背景下，未来是如何形成的。研究人员选择把重点放在福岛县各城市的家庭上，那里的居民没有被疏散，他们选择留下来，或者返回，在几乎没有官方帮助的情况下，在空气辐射水平升高的环境中生活。尽管儿童健康已成为父母、后核政治和后福岛日本未来想象的一个问题，但对在这一领域真正努力生存的普通家庭养育子女做法的研究几乎完全缺乏。通过采用参与者观察、半结构化访谈和文献分析相结合的方法，研究人员将收集一系列数据，包括在福岛受辐射社区有意抚养孩子的父母所采取的辐射生活策略、围绕放射性不确定性的公众辩论，以及核后护理中的受害者和权利、以及在灾后支持网络中通过焦虑的照顾而形成的社会形式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How are risk and uncertainly managed amidst low-level radiation exposure? One approach to answering such a question effectively has been to focus on the clearest points of vulnerability. In areas of radiation exposure, children are biologically identified as the most vulnerable population by long-term exposure because of their faster cell division. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of rigorous scientific data collection and analysis, explores the strategies undertaken by families in evaluating risk and mitigating uncertainty as they raise children in these contexts. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, the project would engage a wider audience in the scientific process, and broadly disseminate its findings to organizations invested in understanding environmental risk.Duke University anthropology doctoral candidate, Jieun Cho, under the supervision of Dr. Anne Allison will explore the child-rearing and other social practices of parents raising children in areas afflicted by low levels of radiation. In post-meltdown Japan, the effort at constructing normal life continues to raise questions about how, and in what terms, this may be possible when the effects of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster remain uncertain. Despite concerns for health amidst an administratively raised level of permissible airborne radiation (which is necessary for re-building the region), many families have remained in, or returned to, their less-than-ideal neighborhoods in Fukushima Prefecture for various reasons like the presence of jobs, aging parents, and family farms. The research on such families in this area and their efforts at maintaining (or restoring) children's health will provide a microcosm for examining the dynamics through which futures are being made in a context with increasing environmental uncertainty. The researcher has chosen to focus on those families in cities across Fukushima Prefecture, where the populations were not evacuated and have chosen to remain, or return, to make lives within a raised level of airborne radiation with little official assistance. Although children's health has become a problem for parents, post-nuclear politics, and future imaginaries in post-Fukushima Japan, research on child-raising practices by ordinary families who are actually striving to survive in this area is almost totally lacking. In employing a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis, the researcher will collect sets of data on the strategies of living with radiation adopted by parents who knowingly bring up children in irradiated neighborhoods in Fukushima, the public debates surrounding radioactive uncertainty with regard to victimhood and entitlement in post-nuclear care, and forms of sociality that take shape through anxious care-giving in the post-disaster support networks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.