Doctoral Dissertation Research: Evaluating Risk and Uncertainty in Radiation Exposure

如何在低水平辐射暴露中管理风险和不确定性？有效回答这样一个问题的一种方法是关注最明显的脆弱性。在辐射暴露地区，由于儿童细胞分裂速度较快，在生物学上被确定为长期暴露最易受伤害的人群。该项目对研究生进行严格的科学数据收集和分析方法的培训，探索家庭在这些情况下抚养孩子时在评估风险和减少不确定性方面采取的策略。除了为人类学研究生提供严格数据收集和分析的科学方法方面的培训资金外，该项目还将让更多的受众参与科学过程，并将其结果广泛传播给致力于了解环境风险的组织。杜克大学人类学博士生赵杰恩将在安妮·艾利森博士的指导下，探索在低水平辐射地区抚养孩子的父母的育儿和其他社会实践。在熔毁后的日本，在福岛第一核电站核灾难的辐射影响仍不确定的情况下，构建正常生活的努力继续引发人们的疑问，即这可能是如何实现的，以及在什么情况下可能实现。尽管在行政部门提高了空气中允许的辐射水平(重建该地区是必要的)的情况下，人们对健康感到担忧，但许多家庭仍然留在或返回到福岛县不太理想的社区，原因有很多，比如工作、年迈的父母和家庭农场。在这一领域对这类家庭的研究及其维持(或恢复)儿童健康的努力将提供一个缩影，以考察在环境不确定性日益增加的背景下，未来是如何产生的。研究人员选择把重点放在福岛县各城市的这些家庭身上，那里的居民没有被疏散，他们选择留下来或返回，在几乎没有官方援助的情况下，在空气中的辐射水平上升的情况下生活。虽然孩子的健康已经成为后福岛时代日本父母、后核政治和未来想象中的一个问题，但关于实际在这一领域努力生存的普通家庭养育孩子的做法的研究几乎完全缺乏。通过采用参与者观察、半结构化访谈和文件分析相结合的方法，研究人员将收集一组数据，这些数据涉及故意在福岛受辐射的社区抚养孩子的父母所采取的与辐射共处的策略，围绕核事故后护理中受害者和权利的放射性不确定性的公开辩论，以及在灾难后支持网络中通过焦虑照顾形成的社交形式。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.