Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination After Fukushima

Following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster in 2011 many concerned citizens-particularly mothers-were unconvinced by the Japanese government's assurances that the country's food supply was safe. They took matters into their own hands, collecting their own scientific data that revealed radiation-contaminated food. In Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists Aya Hirata Kimura shows how, instead of being praised for their concern about their communities' health and safety, they faced stiff social sanctions, which dismissed their results by attributing them to the work of irrational and rumor-spreading women who lacked scientific knowledge. These citizen scientists were unsuccessful at gaining political traction, as they were constrained by neoliberal and traditional gender ideologies that dictated how private citizens-especially women-should act. By highlighting the challenges these citizen scientists faced, Kimura provides insights into the complicated relationship between science, foodways, gender, and politics in post-Fukushima Japan and beyond.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations  ix Preface   xi Acknowledgments  xiii Introduction  1 1. "Moms with Radiation Brain": Gendered Food Policing in the Name of Science  27 2. Engineering of Citizens  55 3. School Lunches: Science, Motherhood, and Joshi Power  78 4. Citizen Radiation-Measuring Organizations  104 5. The Temporality of Contaminants  132 Conclusion  155 Notes  159 References  173 Index  201

About the Author :
Aya Hirata Kimura is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and the author of Hidden Hunger: Gender and Politics of Smarter Foods.

Review :
“Addressing this post-3/11 environment through rich engagement with anthropological subjects, Kimura offers a rigorous theoretical analysis that extends far beyond the circumstances of Fukushima…. A significant contribution to the research areas of science and technology studies, post-feminism, neoliberalism, food studies, nuclear disaster and Japanese society.” - Joel Neville Anderson (International Feminist Journal of Politics) "Kimura gives a full account of the complexity of the issues she addresses by creating cross-disciplinary linkages that help readers to see the radioactive contamination of food in post-Fukushima Japan from new and multiple perspectives.  . . . This book stands out because it reminds us that scholarship is never objective, that social science scholars have to position themselves and that the thin line between scholarship and activism is often blurred. The greatest achievement of this book, however, is to give the marginalized women and citizen scientists a voice outside of Japan." - Cornelia Reiher (Pacific Affairs) "Radiation Brain Mom and Citizen Scientists makes a valuable contribution to feminist studies, science and technology studies, and sociological explorations of contemporary Japan. Readers will appreciate Kimura's keen observations and theoretical competence, which together give voice to psychosocially disoriented citizens – women in particular – who are confronting uncertain risks in contemporary society." - Ryo Morimoto (Monumenta Nipponica) “Radiation Brain Moms is an empirically grounded and theoretically sophisticated important piece of scholarship. This study will challenge and reward scholars; graduate students and general readers interested in contemporary Japanese society in the aftermath of the March 11 disasters; anthropologists, sociologists, and historians of disasters; people interested in social studies of science and technology; and those engaged in gender and feminist science studies.” - Tsipy Ivry (Journal of Japanese Studies)