10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17347
This section draws from the opening plenary session of the 6th STS Italia Conference “Sociotechnical Environments” (Trento, 24-26 November 2016). The section was dedicated to the topic “Sociotechnical Environments: actors, technologies, geographies and new kinds of action”. It is composed by three contributions which articulate different relationships among actors, technologies and sociotechnical environments. Felix Ekardt presents an analysis of the scope of technologies with reference to societal problems, analysing the case of climate change. The idea of sufficiency as leading human behaviour for a sustainable normality drives the author’s analysis of the node technology-environments-action. The second contribution by Luigi Pellizzoni is an epistemological travel around possibilities and conditions of an alternative science. Drawing from philosophical and STS literature the author inquires the (not) surprising convergences between critical STS literature and neo-liberal approaches, pointing to the concepts of materiality and materialism, In the third piece of the section Christine Fassert focuses on the node of actors-technologies-geographies through the case of Fukushima contaminated territories. She presents technologies of zoning in their ambivalence towards residents’ life and multifaceted consequences of scientific controversies in territorialised risks.
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Luigi Pellizzoni
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
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Sociotechnical Environments. Actors, Technologies, Geographies and New Kinds of Action
Text.Serial.Journal
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Crossing Boundaries
2017-07-20
2023-06-22
2017-07-20
2023-08-21
103-128
TS
Luigi Pellizzoni
2017/07/20
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17347
103
Università di Pisa
2038-3460
1
STS Italia Conference
en
128
Sociotechnical Environments. Actors, Technologies, Geographies and New Kinds of Action
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8
                                                               Crossing Boundaries

Sociotechnical Environments
Actors, Technologies, Geographies and New Kinds
of Action

       Felix Ekardt                       Christine Fassert     Luigi Pellizzoni
         Leipzig (DE)                             IRNS (FR)     Università di Pisa (IT)



    Abstract: This section draws from the opening plenary session of the 6th
    STS Italia Conference “Sociotechnical Environments” (Trento, 24-26 No-
    vember 2016). The section was dedicated to the topic “Sociotechnical Envi-
    ronments: actors, technologies, geographies and new kinds of action”. It is
    composed by three contributions which articulate different relationships
    among actors, technologies and sociotechnical environments. Felix Ekardt
    presents an analysis of the scope of technologies with reference to societal
    problems, analysing the case of climate change. The idea of sufficiency as
    leading human behaviour for a sustainable normality drives the author’s anal-
    ysis of the node technology-environments-action. The second contribution
    by Luigi Pellizzoni is an epistemological travel around possibilities and condi-
    tions of an alternative science. Drawing from philosophical and STS literature
    the author inquires the (not) surprising convergences between critical STS
    literature and neo-liberal approaches, pointing to the concepts of materiality
    and materialism, In the third piece of the section Christine Fassert focuses
    on the node of actors-technologies-geographies through the case of Fuku-
    shima contaminated territories. She presents technologies of zoning in their
    ambivalence towards residents’ life and multifaceted consequences of scien-
    tific controversies in territorialised risks.

    Keywords: Sociotechnical environments; climate change; alternative sci-
    ence; contaminated territories; STS Italia Conference.

    Corresponding author: Felix Ekardt, Research Unit Sustainability and
    Climate Policy, Könneritzstrasse 41, D-04229 Leipzig, Germany.
    E-mail: mail@sustainability-justice-climate.eu.




TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
8 (1) pp. 103-128 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                    2017
104                                                           Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

Sociotechnical Environmnents: New Challenges for STS

Felix Ekardt

    This contribution analyzes some new challenges for STS which have
increasingly been discussed lately – especially the scope of technological
solutions for societal problems and the way we explain human behavior.
In the following, the big issue of climate change will serve as an example.
    Climate change is an existential problem for human kind, because an-
thropogenic global warming will threaten food and water supply. It will
increase the risk of massive natural disasters potentially triggering huge
migration movements and might lead to wars over scarce resources. Con-
sequently, a new global climate agreement was passed by heads of states
all over the world in December 2015. While details remain vague and are
legally not binding, the overarching target however is clear and binding.
The Paris agreement requires limiting global warming to well below 2 °C.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 2 °C
limit implies for an industrialized country with high per capita emissions
such as Germany to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 95 % by
2050 in comparison to the commonly used base year of 1990. Further-
more, the Paris agreement aims at pursuing efforts to limit the tempera-
ture increase to 1.5° C. A 1.5 °C limit (or a well below 2 °C limit) requires
reduction goals to be met considerably faster; this creates the necessity for
emerging countries to soon commit to reduction measures as well. Look-
ing at current politics, those targets however are beyond reach in our
hemisphere.
    Despite the common notion of us being the role model of climate pro-
tection, if not of environmental protection as a whole (Moreno, Speich,
Chassé and Fuhr 2015), neither Germany nor the EU in terms of either
absolute numbers or development pathways correspond to that image.
Being a role model is frequently falsely claimed officially and publically.
Looking at the development trend since 1990, emissions in Germany have
– weeding out calculation errors – by no means decreased by 25 %, as
official statistics claim (see ibid.). It is e.g. neglected that many emissions
have been transferred abroad – displacement effects since 1990 alone ac-
count for more than claimed emission reductions in the EU (concretely in
a mainstream economic calculation even almost twice as much – Peters,
Minx, Weber and Edenhofer 2011; Hoffmann 2015). In a globalized
economy, emission intensive production stages occur in emerging econo-
mies, even if the produced wealth goods are used by German consumers.
Sometimes, emissions during use are reduced at the cost of higher pro-
duction emissions (abroad). The alleged success of German toxic sub-
stance policy since the 1970s can be deconstructed in a similar manner
(neglected e.g. by Fatheuer, Fuhr and Unmüßig 2015; on the empirical
evidence Peters, Minx, Weber and Edenhofer 2011; Hoffmann 2015).
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                             105
    Renewable energies and energy efficiency as technical perspectives
might by themselves not be enough to meet the above-mentioned global
temperature limit. To address various problems associated with the cur-
rent energy supply system, sufficiency might become necessary. Sufficien-
cy describes in short the idea of a simple life. It stands for a sustainability
strategy and a vision for the future. A vision achieved through changing
behavior (instead of only technology).
    Even though purely technical solutions seem appealing to solve envi-
ronmental problems such as climate change, they might just not go all the
way. New technologies create new markets and employment, whereas be-
havioral change often means eliminating a good from the market and
eventually question an economic model which is based on growth. Also, a
purely technical transformation can be more convenient and therefore
easier to implement than changing behavioral patterns. There are differ-
ent aspects however, which speak against exclusive (!) technical problem-
solving. This is true for climate change, but even more so regarding other
environmental problems. Just to mention some of the relevant aspects:
    Firstly, the scope of problems caused e.g. through climate change has
to be considered. Taking into account the speed of innovation so far, it
seems not very probable that a transformation to increased renewable en-
ergies and energy efficiency will globally reduce greenhouse gas emissions
to zero by 2030 or 2040. It remains uncertain whether the potential of re-
newable energies is always estimated correctly by their proponents (see
DLR 2006). New findings of resources will merely put off the problem; in
case of climate change they even aggravate the situation.
    Essential is also that some problems cannot be solved by technology,
for example regarding food. The majority of produced emissions in the
food sector can be allocated to animal produce. This is because the long
chain from animal feed to animal calories leading to human nutrition re-
quires a multitude of plant production (for animal feed) and therefore a
multitude of fertilizer, land as well as other emission sources, such as the
notorious methane flatulencies of cattle. This can be avoided by reducing
consumption of meat and other animal products which does not however
imply technical measures, but behavioral change.
    This leads to the maybe most important point: in order to sustain liv-
ing conditions (as well as the economy and to preserve world peace) other
environmental problems besides climate change have to be tackled. How-
ever, for many of them, technical solutions are much less available than
they are for climate change. Key examples are damaged eco-systems and
loss of biodiversity, disturbed nitrogen cycles and soil degradation (for
more see Ekardt 2016). Solutions will require mankind to retreat from
land use and to restrain agricultural production. This implies putting a
stop to ever growing personal living space and continuously growing con-
sumption of animal products; likewise it will not be possible to compen-
sate the elimination of mineral fertilizers by constantly expanding land
use etc. It will also not be possible to replace all materials used for goods
106                                                          Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

in wealthy societies with renewable or quasi infinitely available resources
(especially since most of them will compete with food production and
cause further problems: Ekardt 2016).
    Even if all of the points above prove to be wrong, and it would after
all prove to be possible to solve climate and other environmental prob-
lems purely relying on technology (and ergo with continuous growth here
and globally), there is the unsolvable problem that, with continuous
growth, we would have to constantly (!) improve technical options. Be-
cause then, more than the current level of energy consumption has to be
produced. At this point at the latest, the endless spiral is bound to collide
with the physically finite nature of this planet – thus the question is less
about “if”, but rather about “when”.
    Against this background, it can be said that technical improvements
are able to decouple growing prosperity from nature devastation. This
however will not be nearly enough and will eventually be exhausted in the
above explained manner (Hoffmann 2015; Becker and Richter 2015; mis-
sing the point Handrich et al. 2015). The dogma of decoupling, known
among economists as Kuznets curve, was not even valid at the point of its
invention in the early 20th century. A fact of which even Kuznets was well
aware (closer calculated by Piketty 2013). Of course, not only the future
in general, but also technical innovation cannot be predicted with certain-
ty. Furthermore, the development of environmental problems, one of
which being climate change, are also subject to high uncertainties. Also
the scope for action needed is subject to normative discussion, while gen-
eral objectives such as the far-reaching reduction of greenhouse gas emis-
sions, stabilizing ecosystems, stopping soil degradation etc. have else-
where been proven to be imperatively necessary (Ekardt 2016). It is
therefore possible to determine a tendency that behavioral change has to
play a central role. This is by no means exclusively an issue of distribu-
tion; it will not nearly suffice if only the rich restrict themselves as be-
comes evident looking at the figures above.
    There is a tension between sufficiency as one (!) part of a sustainabil-
ity transformation and the dominating political idea of infinite economic
growth on a global and occidental level. If, as seen, sufficiency needs to
play a crucial part in the sustainability transition, less goods and services
will be sold (e.g. less holiday flights). This could, if taken to a considera-
ble scope, lead to an unplanned transition towards a post-growth society,
meaning to a society that has to cope without growth or even with
degrowth in the long run (Schulz and Bailey 2014). The predicable finite
nature of growth is a thus fundamental problem, considering that modern
societies are in many ways dependent on economic growth.
    After what has been said, sufficiency is probably necessary, but am-
bivalent in its consequences. At the same time, the finding at the begin-
ning shows that the general enthusiasm for sufficiency is obviously limited
(even more so than for new technical options and their comprehensive
insertion in the short and middle term). On the other hand it seems that
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                            107
citizens, politicians, enterprises etc. are quite enthusiastic about non-
sustainable behavioral patterns – both individually and collectively – how
can that be explained? This leads to the next challenge for STS (which is
also relevant for subjects other than sufficiency). There are several com-
peting methods to unravel human behavior and its motivations. Only
some of them are promising. This lack of methodology presents – as can
only be briefly touched on in this article – a basic problem of social sci-
ences (Kivimaa et al. 2015; Ekardt 2016). It is sometimes forgotten here
that not only sociologists, but also economists, cultural scientists, psy-
chologists etc. do behavioral research.
     Inquiring after behavior and motivations, i.e. in interviews is con-
fronted with several problems. One obvious problem is that the respond-
ents might not be honest. Other falsifying factors include social desirabil-
ity, i.e. the wish to please the interviewer, or to remain within social con-
ventions. Also, the way in which questions are asked and the context of a
conversation will influence possible answers and might preclude some
answers from the start. The latter problems can be minimized by the set-
ting of the interview, even though it will be hardly possible to eliminate
them entirely. Other issues are harder to avoid. Especially regarding mo-
tivations, but also talking of a variety of every-day behavior, which is rele-
vant for sustainability, is limited by the complexity of its implications and
subconsciousness. People are also prone to misconceptions on their be-
havior and motivations of e.g. denial, cognitive dissonances etc. By the
mere act of actively raising a question, behavior and motivation is already
potentially considerably reshaped.
     These objections are in broad terms also applicable to experiments of
game theory and modified formats such as focal groups or real-world la-
boratories, even if such experiments can in fact be quite informative
(largely neglected by Schäpke et al. 2015). Additional problems are that
the realization of experiments presents a significant alteration to reality
and the translation of generally highly complex realities (regarding set po-
sitions and courses of action) that are almost impossible to reflect in a
simple experiment, and are also subject to the desire to comply with so-
cially acceptable behavior etc. It is also possible to repeat which is charac-
teristic for experiments in human science. Furthermore, set situations and
options for action are in reality tainted with many uncertainties and actors
are neither fully aware nor entirely unaware of motivations of others. This
cannot be adequately reflected in an experiment setting. The hypothetical
character of an experimental situation is also problematic. Because behav-
ior is hard to assess that way, the respective methods have to be comple-
mented by other approaches such as personal observation, i.e. participant
observation used primarily in anthropology and religious studies. Charac-
teristic for this method is that no observation setting is specially created,
but real-life situations are used to make observations. Self-observation,
ethnological or historical material and interpretations which allow for
conclusions from human tribal history can be useful as monitoring tool.
108                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

    Based on these (pluralistic) methodological approaches, it was shown
elsewhere that non-sustainable and non-sufficient behavior has various
sources in different actors and that it should therefore be avoided to fo-
cus relevant aspects on behavioral science only. Pure knowledge of facts
has proven to be only a small aspect of triggering behavior. More im-
portant is an understanding of how actors are interdependent. The be-
havior of citizens for example is influenced by politicians and vice versa,
the same goes for the dependency between enterprises and consumers. It
is part of a certain economic system to constantly acquire customers that
buy more and new products without caring about the means of produc-
tion and that are inclined to find products which are produced socially
and ecologically exemplary too expensive. But it also requires enterprises
which offer – or in fact do not offer – customers products to trigger needs
in order to constantly increase their profits, ergo keeping up the spiral of
growth and high resource intensity. It would be misled however to simply
talk in Marxian tradition of exploitation and estrangement, particularly
since many individual liberties have been achieved in modern societies at
the same time (see Ekardt 2016). As suggestive offers to consume might
be, production and consumption are not forced by just one side and
many individual suppliers and demanders make their contributions1. The
role of factors – determined by all above mentioned methods – such as
self-interest, the dilemma of public goods, path dependencies and con-
ceptions of normality as aspects of motivation in this interaction, especial-
ly looking from an economic point of view has been described by many.
Two aspects crucial to comprehensively explaining the reluctance to act
on sufficiency are however frequently neglected.
    One aspect is the common conceptions of normality (see also
Deutscher Bundestag 2013; Schützenmeister 2010). Despite all intellectu-
al recognition, we continue living in a high-emission world. After having
put aside this article, the next meat buffet, the next car drive to work or
the next holiday flight will not be far. These things are just ordinary now-
adays, as long as one can afford them financially. Dismissing flights as a
whole might lead to social pressure and an image as “weirdo”. Lifestyle is
also relevant to social standing, if in a current situation the social sur-
rounding requires a certain apartment, cars and travels in order to belong
to a certain peer group. This is increasingly true for countries outside the
Western hemisphere, which follow the role models in industrialized
countries. Especially decision-makers in politics and enterprises are often
used to entertaining a lifestyle that includes frequent flights, opulent buf-
fets, global friendships, regular meat consumption, and now they are re-
quired to think of abolishing it (with foreseeable results?). Perceptions of
normality vary significantly at the moment; however the fact that people

    1
      This is still true if supposed that people nowadays are determined by many very
subtle mechanisms in jobs, leisure, romantic relationships, emotions, identities etc.,
even if this external determination utilizes the illusion of individual autonomy.
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                            109
develop those perceptions (unconsciously) in order to simplify ordinary
activities seems to be a biological invariable.
    Human emotions are likewise relevant for all of us, including entre-
preneurs, politicians, civil servants etc. (while the different aspects cannot
be precisely differentiated; Klöckner 2015; Deutscher Bundestag 2013).
Geographically and temporally distant, invisible, and highly complex cau-
salities make it hard to imagine damages due to climate change yet caused
by an ordinary activity. Those long-term or long-distant consequences are
usually not emotionally accessible to people (citizens, politicians, entre-
preneurs). On the other hand, a daily car drive to work and the next holi-
day flight are here and now allegedly very well visible. Time-space ab-
straction massively reduces empathy, which is also recognized in experi-
mental psychology, e.g. in the notorious Milgram (1974) experiment and
in holocaust research. Additionally, mankind has remarkable talent in
emotionally preferring the comfortable, the dwelling in the accustomed,
the denial of unpleasant interconnections etc. Another typical component
of emissions is a justifying mechanism: others are even worse (SUV driv-
ers, other political parties, other industries). The tendency to increase
what is mine (in terms of votes, profits or personal belongings), some-
times even resulting in greediness, also seems to be equally imminent to
mankind and can probably be traced back to evolution. The same might
be said for the fundamental human pursuit of appreciation from other
people, e.g. through “status goods”, which also determine ones identity
and place in social networks – by thriving for goods which display to my-
self and others that I am a well-off, nice, open-minded person. This is
complemented by other, empirically well founded human inclinations
(Stoll-Kleemann et al. 2001; Ekardt 2016) which also turn out to be ra-
ther fatal in the context of sustainability and climate change: inability to
belief that future catastrophes will happen; notoriously underestimating
moderate risks as well as the allegedly “only small” contribution to big,
highly complex occurrences; tendency to solve problems with already
known measures (which just might have caused the problem); tendency
to judge big problems by way of personal experience as well as prominent
or dramatic events (leading at times to major distortions); tendency to un-
realistically positive perceptions of one’s own efforts as well as shifted
perception of some maybe less important risks compared to others. Such
emotions well documented for the case of climate change; also in focus-
group experiments (Stoll-Kleemann et al. 2001).
    Whether the listed aspects should be categorized by “individual ac-
tions” and “collective structures” is a discourse in behavioral science dis-
ciplines and especially in sociology since Weber and Durkheim who
thought the opposite. The controversy is however questionable since this
would express concrete motivations of people, respectively interacting
groups of people, or at least their side-effects and aggregated conse-
quences. All aspects are to be encountered both in the individual and in
structures – there of course in human – forms. “Self-interest”, “concep-
110                                                                  Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

tions of normality” or “emotions” are not only visible in individuals but
are also shaping highly aggregated structures; so in the end, retention of
power or accumulation of capital are collectivized variations of self-
interest and path dependencies. Those who prefer to identify e.g. “capi-
talism” as a whole as driver for developments in society fail to clarify the
aspect to which they refer. This leads to the here proposed position that it
does not make sense to distinguish between “anthropology” and “social
theory”. At least, if assuming that not every social situation is deliberately
broad about by someone. There are unexpected or unintended conse-
quences to actions, and of course, individuals aggregate to structures. In-
dividuals act, as already discussed, by no means always rationally and de-
liberately2. This speech will therefore neither advocate for methodological
collectivism, nor for methodological individualism, but will rather assume
that this confrontation is empirically inadequate.
    Non-sufficient behavior is therefore easy to explain. At the same time,
these findings hint at the fact that a fundamental turn towards sustainabil-
ity and specifically sufficiency might be very hard to achieve, as there is
reason to assume that especially emotions are part of a core biological
configuration which cannot be eliminated. It will however be essential
that different actors will move at once – and that aspects which can be
changed are in fact changed, e.g. self-interest calculations or path de-
pendencies, which can be influenced through new political frameworks
such as levies or caps on fossil fuels. Pricing will also support a change in
conceptions of normality (more in Ekardt 2016). However, because of the
interdependencies of actors, it will hardly be possible to achieve change
exclusively through political measures. It is of particular importance to
have someone demanding new policies not only on the discourse level.
The crucial point will be practicing new and more sustainable normali-
ties.




                                          ***




    2
     Explicitly on this Greve (2015), who on p. 26 points out that individual actions
cannot be allocated to “collective attributions” alone, because these attributions would
again be actions, therefore leading to an infinite regress.
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                             111

Is Another Science Possible? And Can STS Say
Anything About It?

Luigi Pellizzoni

    Is another science possible?
    Naïve question, possibly. And yet, addressing the issue of sociotech-
nical environments, new kinds of action and key challenges for STS, I’ll
venture to say something on that.
    Naïve question: science is what it is. If there is one thing that objectiv-
ist outlooks share with constructionist and co-productionist ones, it is the
assumption that science has its own paths. Not that knowledge acquisi-
tion and technology development necessarily follow a predetermined tra-
jectory. Rather, whether the chosen rationale is of ascertaining “givens”
on which to intervene or eliciting a “response” from an agential materiali-
ty, the result of the process is just that one. As it takes place it rules out
any other previous possibility, simultaneously opening a new space of
possibilities which would have never been precisely the same if things
went differently. Whatever the intricacies of the way research develops
and technologies take shape – intricacies which STS has documented ad-
mirably – what happens, happens. This conveys a sense of necessity, no
matter how much one tells oneself that inevitability appears only in retro-
spect.
    There is another, more specific, reason why there is something com-
pelling about the unfolding of science and technology, which SSK and co-
productionist outlooks did not wash away but, if anything, strengthened
by showing the embroilment of factors that characterize this unfolding.
The reason is what Vicky Kirby depicts as “the extraordinary challenges
and perceived success of so much scientific and technological research”
(2008, 7). Aircrafts and rockets fly. Computers elaborate information
with astonishing quickness. Drugs and surgery techniques become in-
creasingly precise. The success of science and technology exerts an unde-
niable fascination. It expresses a solidity that overwhelms any fundamen-
tal “questioning”. This constitutes a challenge for whoever aims to reflect
on alternatives to the existent. Browsing STS literature, one realizes that
technoscience’s overall success, in spite of or even thanks to evidence of
failures, is mostly taken as a starting point, very seldom as an object of in-
quiry.
    What does it mean, then, “another” science? And, first of all, why
should we think of, or search for, another science? Yes, we know that the
case for the unquestionable benefits of innovation, a narrative that from
the West has spread in the globalized world, can be and is contested. Yet,
contestation usually addresses issues of research choices (such as the
112                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

10/90 problem)3 or of distribution of burdens and advantages, losses and
profits, costs and gains of science and technology. Complaints nowadays
rarely address their fundamental rationale and attitude towards the world,
as it happened with such thinkers as Weber, Adorno or the much ma-
ligned Heidegger, whose critical writings have often been regarded as ex-
pressions of anti-scientism and technophobia rather than calls for another
science and another technology. Even Actor-network theory perspectives
make no exception in this regard. Once we realize we have “never been
modern” (Latour 1993) and that this mistake enabled an unbridled in-
termingling with materiality, the ensuing case for a greater intimacy with
and concern for the nonhuman world does not necessarily entail any ac-
tual change in the basic attitude, opening rather the way to, or legitimiz-
ing, technological interventions ever more powerful and invasive precisely
as they get more intimate and concerned with matter. The question, in
other words, is not intimacy and concern as such, but the spirit of such
intimacy and the ultimate goals of such concern. Admittedly, however,
this question resonates in recent approaches to the government of science
and technology, such as “responsible research and innovation” (or “antic-
ipatory governance”), according to which social actors and innovators
should be made “mutually responsive to each other with a view to the
(ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the inno-
vation process and its marketable products” (von Schomberg 2013, 63);
according to which, in other words, technology has to be inclusively
shaped before technological “lock-in” sets in, having regard to both
“how” and “why” issues. At least on paper, this sounds as good news, no
matter if the basic aim underlying this framework is not redirecting sci-
ence and technology but addressing people’s “resistance” to innovation.
    So, the theme of a different science can be not only inappropriate but
also untimely. And yet, we find ourselves increasingly immersed in perva-
sive sociotechnical environments on which we depend for any aspect of
our life. We are hit almost daily by worrisome announcements about cli-
mate change or energy and water scarcity. We are struck by claims con-
cerning forthcoming technoscientific revolutions capable of fulfilling any
possible need (clean energy, healthy food for everyone, personalized an-
swers to diseases or “enhancement” desires, and so on), while dazed by
opposed evidence of a decline in the rate of return on investments that
the blossoming of ICTs and biotech, a massive reduction in wages and
social expenditures, and the spiralling expansion of finance and debt have
to some extent been able to conceal but not to reverse. We are confront-
ed with equally dazing calls for “downshifting”, “voluntary simplicity”

    3
      The so-called “10/90 problem” concerns the fact that only 10% of health re-
search worldwide is directed towards problems accounting for over 90% of the global
burden of disease. In other words, the bulk of research is targeted to the health prob-
lems of affluent populations, instead of the more urgent ones of the poorest people in
poor nations. On this issue see for example Woodhouse and Sarewitz (2007).
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                           113
and “communal life”, often proclaimed by people who travel around the
world to diffuse the new gospel among admiring audiences that, in their
turn, live in comfortably warm and well-equipped houses, at close dis-
tance from hospitals provided with high-tech facilities. We are confused
by ag-biotech industry contentions that what they do is just what humans
did for thousands of years, only more competently and precisely, or in-
deed what nature always did, additional confusion coming from champi-
ons of traditions who find nonetheless in genetic interventions a precious
support for revamping forgotten plant varieties. We are disconcerted by
expert claims of safety, reliability and trustworthiness when compared
with (post-accident or side effects manifestation) statements from the
same experts about how prediction is limited, scientific knowledge is
progressive and hypothetical and the “costs of technology development”
are worthy of shouldering – whoever has to shoulder them.
    Fascinated and confused, attracted and worried or infuriated by this
and much else, Walter Benjamin’s image of modernity as an accelerating
train on the verge of derailing comes to mind: “Marx said that revolutions
are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps things are very different.
It may be that revolutions are the act by which the human race travelling
in the train applies the emergency brake” (2003, 402). It may even be that
the image of a train running faster and faster is not the right one; that a
more correct description of the technoscientific present is an engine run-
ning idle at growing speed and at constant risk of falling apart. Be that as
it may, the question about the possibility of something else, a thoroughly
different scientific and technical approach to the world, naïve or rhetoric
that it may look, takes a sense of urgency which sounds also as a call to
STS engagement.
    To address such call, however, STS meets at least two difficulties. The
first one has to do precisely with science’s success. If science “works”
(whatever the defects in its working), why not just trying to make it work
“better” (addressing such defects)? And could another science work (bet-
ter)? Coping with these questions raises a problem that Ian Hacking
(2000) has effectively described. The notion of science’s success, he notes,
verges on tautology. Even the discovery of “fundamental constants of na-
ture”, like the velocity of light, is not immune from tautology. Any differ-
ence in observation, to count as a difference, is to be achieved within the
same conceptual-experimental framework (same assumptions, equipment
and tacit knowledge to use such equipment). Yet, if the framework is the
same, no difference can emerge; or, if it emerges, it will likely be inter-
preted as a measurement error. Similarly, it makes little sense to say that
an alternative science, to exist, should lead to as good results (for example
in terms of yield of foodstuff) as the actual one. If this means that one has
to pull off exactly the same specific material results of actual science,
“then the alternative is not going to be an alternative” (Hacking 2000,
S64).
114                                                          Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

    The challenge, therefore, is to understand how an alternative science
and technology can be first of all imagined. The problem bears similarity,
but does not totally overlap, with an issue that Alfred Nordmann (2014)
has raised in regard to the rationale of anticipation. There is an inherent
contradiction, he remarks, in foresight exercises about technology. These
seek to go beyond the depiction of “trivial” futures, that is, beyond a
mere extrapolation from emergent trends, in order to grasp the possible
shape of actual novelty: “black swans”, “singularities” or at least “game
changers” bound to make the world of tomorrow substantially different
from the present. Yet, such “non-trivial” futures cannot be really antici-
pated, because a radically different world will be “inhabited not only by
different technologies but inhabited by different people” (Nordmann
2014, 89). Here the problem is the gap between – borrowing from Niklas
Luhmann (1976) – present-futures and future-presents, that is, between a
future whose seeds can be discerned now and the future as it will actual-
ize itself as a result of as yet indiscernible forces. The question of “non-
triviality” of anticipation bears obvious relevance to the issue of an alter-
native science. The latter, however, has not just to do with the limits of
discernibility and governability of change, but rather with whether and
how a radically different path of, and approach to, change can be devised.
Figuratively, we should conceive the gap as located not ahead of us but
aside. The leap to be imagined is not forward but lateral.
    The second difficulty in addressing the issue of alternative science
concerns STS’s conceptual equipment. Much research and technology
development is still carried out according to a traditional objectivist
framework, to analyse and criticise which STS has equipped itself, along
the years, with increasingly effective instruments. The cutting-edge of STS
outlooks can be considered the new materialist, or “ontological”, ap-
proaches that, in different versions, have gained growing momentum in
recent years (Woolgar and Lezaun 2013). Key to this strand is an account
of materiality as agential and in constant flux and transformation, of sub-
jectivity as “decentred” and equally “becoming”, and of human agency as
on a par with (or even lesser than) nonhuman one. This outlook is well
synthesised by Annemarie Mol and John Law (2006, 19) when they claim
that “knowing, the words of knowing, and texts do not describe a pre-
existing world [but] are part of a practice of handling, intervening in, the
world and thereby of enacting one of its versions – up to bringing it into
being”.
    This standpoint works fine when the task is to challenge traditional
approaches to science and technology, as grounded on binary thinking
(nature/culture, mind/body, subject/object, organic/inorganic, animate–
/inanimate, reality/representation, matter/information, etc.). What hap-
pens, however, with cutting-edge research which, from physics to life sci-
ences, from biomedicine to cybernetics, increasingly adopts non-binary
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                                    115
                                                                          4
thinking? Should one buy into such science just because of this , neglect-
ing in particular that an account of reality as disordered, emergent, con-
stantly changing is key to post-Fordist capitalism and neoliberal govern-
mental approaches? What happens if Friedrich Hayek’s plea for market
competition as the only efficient mechanism of value allocation, faced
with the complexity of the socio-material world, meets Crawford Hol-
ling’s ecology of disorder, with its celebration of instability and resilience
as the only antidote to sclerosis and decline (Walker and Cooper 2011)?
And if, whatever the researchers’ intentions, science’s increasing focus on
the extremes rather than the norm meets capitalism’s growing demand
for flexibility and speed of change (Cooper 2008)? What happens if one
finds that hardly distinguishable celebrations of technological transfor-
mations of an insubstantial humanity in the context of a dynamic, ever-
changing, self-organizing materiality underpin both radical critiques of
capitalism such as Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) case for the post-human, and
resolute restatements of the necessity of capitalism, as Roco and Bain-
bridge’s (2002) case for technology convergence? What happens if the
Anthropocene is increasingly taken, rather than a call to a profound
change in our approach to the world, as a justification for “post-
environmentalist” agendas aimed at an accelerated decoupling of social
systems from biophysical systems (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015), the ultimate
goal of which is “doing without nature”, and if non-dualist ontologies
underpin “post-natural” accounts of sustainability (Arias-Maldonado
2013) where human exceptionalism re-emerges in terms of agency over an
indefinitely pliable materiality?
    The convergence of cutting-edge STS with cutting-edge capitalist nar-
ratives and neoliberal regulations can be read in different ways. One, in-
spired to the idea of a “counter-revolutionary” use of notions and claims
born with opposite intentions (Virno 1996; Boltanski and Chiapello
2005), maintains that theories of disequilibrium and adaptation have of-
fered since the 1970s a framework for redirecting socio-ecological insta-
bility towards a new regime of accumulation (Walker and Cooper 2011;
Nelson 2014). From this perspective, current ontologies of becoming are
functional to legitimizing (even inspiring, perhaps) the most recent phase
of capitalism, as this thrives ever more on unpredictability, turbulence
and flux. Another reading, less unidirectional because drawing from Fou-
cault’s idea of “problematization”5, acknowledges that a deep, broad so-

    4
      New materialisms, actually, often build on new technoscientific outlooks on mat-
ter and agency, while these often find inspiration in philosophical and social science
accounts of reality and (post-)humanity, in a game of cross-influences on which I have
elaborated elsewhere (Pellizzoni 2014).
    5
      By “problematization” Foucault (e.g. 2001) means a way of conceiving and cir-
cumscribing the range of what can be regarded as a problem or a possible answer to
such problem that characterizes a historical period, being shared by even opposite ep-
istemic, ethic and political perspectives.
116                                                          Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

cio-cultural change has begun in the 1970s undergoing a crucial intensifi-
cation in recent years, but that such process has involved in a tangle of
reciprocal influences all social spheres: scientific and economic, political
and technological, philosophical and artistic (Pellizzoni 2015).
    Whatever the interpretation, the convergence between critical out-
looks on, and dominant approaches to, the government of science and
technology represents a problem for the endeavour we are discussing, to
the extent that it leads cutting-edge STS to linger on criticizing technosci-
entific conceptions and practices of lessening relevance while adhering
too much to emergent ones to be ready to acknowledge that what is as-
sumed to (and could earlier) work as transformative in an emancipatory
sense is now often made subservient to exploitative designs.
    Does this leave STS helpless faced with the compelling “facticity” of
current science and technology? I would not say so. STS has on its side at
least three important features that can work as antidotes to the over-
whelming power of such facticity: self-reflexivity, theoretical and meth-
odological pluralism, and a capacity to build bridges between the natural
sciences and the social sciences and humanities. Indeed, the point is not
disavowing any of STS’s conceptual equipment and research orientations,
but taking care to avoid reproducing what Foucault calls the “analytics of
truth”, that is the aspiration, profoundly inbuilt in the Western tradition,
to get closer and closer to the actual nature of things, to reality “as it is”
(no matter, in this sense, if conceived as substantial and stable or differen-
tial and endlessly becoming). As I have argued elsewhere (Pellizzoni
2015), it is crucial that – borrowing from Adorno – the non-identity be-
tween things and concepts, reality and our apprehension of the world, is
always acknowledged and respected.
    This basic orientation, I think, is premised on addressing the question
of an alternative science. Habermas (1983) once claimed, criticizing
Adorno, that “for the sake of removing socially unnecessary repression we
cannot do without the exploitation of external nature necessary for life.
The concept of a categorically different science and technology is as emp-
ty as the idea of reconciliation [with nature] is groundless” (Habermas
1983, 108). In this perspective the exploitation of nature constitutes a
universal, culturally invariant imperative for social reproduction. As hint-
ed, the overcoming of dualist thinking does not rule out but rather dis-
closes the possibility of an intensified exploitation. Opposed to this
stands Adorno’s case (but the same could be said for Heidegger and oth-
er supposed technophobes), which is not for a farewell to reason and en-
lightenment, but for the possibility of a different reason and a different
enlightenment – hence, first of all, a different science. D. Bruce Martin,
quoting Evelyn Fox Keller (1985), finds an example of this different sci-
ence in the work of geneticist Barbara McClintock, as based on a respect
for difference that impinges upon methodology, concepts and theory de-
velopment, whereby “the unique or exceptional is not seen simply as an
example that proves or disproves a general law, but as an opportunity to
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                                     117
make those exceptions or differences meaningful ‘in and of themselves’”
(Martin 2006, 148). However, we have to add, a different science entails
not only different theories, concepts and methods, but also, and first of
all, different goals and criteria of success – capable of avoiding that the
usual rationale is reproduced in disguised forms6.
     How to conceive of these different goals and criteria, building on the
available array of conceptual and methodological resources? This, to me,
is a (perhaps the) core challenge for STS.



                                          ***


Living in/with Contaminated Territories: an STS
Perspective

Christine Fassert

Territorialisation of a Risk Society
   The “Risk society” described by Ulrich Beck (1986) now 30 years ago
has become, for a part of humanity, an enduring and daily experience,
which invades all parts of our daily life. Beck referred mainly to the ex-
tension of risks that do not stop at national borders, but I refer here to a
more territorialised aspect of risks, i.e. to the development and “manage-
ment” of contaminated territories. The causes of contamination may vary.
They may be the result of poor management of industrial waste, as it is
the case, for example, in the Marseille region in France. They may also be
the consequence of accidents. A series of industrial disasters has led to


     6
       This risk includes non-modern accounts of the embroilment of humans and ma-
teriality, if these are regarded as the solution to the problem. Think, for example, of
indigenous American outlooks on the gathering together of the human and the non-
human, the material and the spiritual. These are the addressees of many hopes as they
are seen to underpin new “ontological struggles” against dams, oil drills, mining, de-
forestation, genetically modified crops – ontological in that they denaturalize Western
binaries in favour of perspectives holding that “all beings exist always in relation and
never as ‘objects’ or individuals” (Escobar 2010, 39). One should consider, however,
that these “indigenous ontologies” are recent, indeed ongoing, elaborations of tradi-
tional cultures (Gudynas 2011), influenced by modern frameworks and understand-
ings. Their “otherness” is therefore spurious: one might just find in them a distorted
mirror of Western modernity.
118                                                              Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

the multiplication of contaminated territories worldwide. More and more
people are now living in territories that are durably contaminated by a
number of various toxic substances (petrochemicals, chemicals, pesti-
cides, radionuclides). The extension of contaminated territories is part of
the development of what Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas (2015) name a
“toxic world”, growing fast while current regulations fail to prevent the
development of toxic substances in our modern society, making our
world a more and more poisoned one.
    Short-term and longer-term management of contaminated territories
raise a number of questions: what is the basis for deciding that a territory
is contaminated and what is the exact role of science and expertise in the
“qualification” process? What are the actual choices of victims for staying
or leaving these territories? What are the criteria defining “legitimate”
victims? If staying, what may be the sanitary and psychological impact for
the inhabitants? A number of research studies in social sciences, amongst
which we can cite a few: Fortum, (2001), Centemeri (2015), Frickel
(2007), and Kuchinskaya (2014) have explored how these questions are
intertwined. The category of “contaminated territories” itself is a con-
struct mixing scientific knowledge, State expertise, policy-making, and
environmental activism. The New Political Sociology of Science proposed
by Scott Frickel and his colleagues sheds a new light on the importance of
power asymmetries, and institutional arrangements around those issues.
In the post-Chernobyl situation, Kuchinskaya (2014, 9) uses the concept
of “articulation”: “the process of defining the scope and character of ra-
diation danger and its actual effects, along with how to make them ob-
servable”; she argues that its very possibility often depends on “the exist-
ence of adequate infrastructural resources such as information systems
and equipment”, themselves embedded into institutional arrangements.
She shows how some kind of invisibility of a number of health effects was
produced after the Chernobyl accident. The resulting assessment of the
consequences for health of the accident was indirectly supported by a
number of international institutions, while local doctors and researchers
grasped an entirely different reality concerning the consequences for the
health of the population.

Zoning as a Political and Administrative Tool
   Regarding the issue of “making visible/invisible” some risks, I will fo-
cus on the territorialisation of radiological contamination, and on its con-
sequences for inhabitants after the Fukushima nuclear accident, drawing
on research led these last years with Japanese colleagues7.

   7
     Reiko Hasegawa (Sciences Po), Rina Kojima, (ENPC) and Masashi Shirabe (To-
kyo Tech University). This research led by IRSN focuses of the social and political
consequences of the Fukushima nuclear accident, and is based on an extensive field
work led these last five years in the Prefecture of Fukushima.
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                              119
    The policy of “zoning” is framed here as a political and administrative
tool. In fact, zoning establishes and “reifies” the territorialisation of a risk
which is, however, intrinsically difficult to circumscribe spatially and
temporally: there are still important uncertainties on a number of aspects
of contamination, and amongst others, on the radioecological models that
predict the evaluation of long-term contamination in rural areas. Zoning
boundaries establish an obligation for people to evacuate but also rights
for a financial compensation. In Japan, after the Fukushima accident, the-
se compensations were set up by TEPCO, the operator who caused the
accident, following the recommendations made by a special panel of ex-
perts under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MEXT). Zoning is,
at the same time, a dispositive which excludes from these rights certain
persons who can be in a very similar “radiological situation” as those de-
fined as “victims” under the compensation scheme. Zoning traces limits,
which simultaneously includes some people and excludes others. In “The
Land of Hope”, the film maker Sion Sono shows how two neighbouring
families, formerly friends, are brutally separated after a nuclear accident,
with a border drawn by the zoning between their homes, which defines
the forbidden zone and the other where people are allowed to stay.

Zoning and Individualization of Risks
    Zoning is a major issue for populations after an accident because it
simultaneously defines orders and rights to evacuate through the defini-
tion of compensation schemes for the population. It has a strong authori-
tative and constraining aspect, but it is combined with an insistence on
individual choice: inhabitants may choose to return or not in their home
villages after the Lift of Evacuation Orders. Moreover, if zoning “reifies”
and territorializes risks, some inhabitants, outside of the “risky zone”,
may feel in danger: 60 000 inhabitants have evacuated the area even
though they were not living in the designated evacuated zones. They were
voluntary, or “self-evacuees”, who made the decision to leave their home
village mainly because they felt worried about the radiological situation.
Zoning as a policy, and the process of drawing a line between what is
“safe” and what is not, are fascinating objects for STS.
    Zoning also results in a series of specific situations, which makes the
framework more complex than: “risk/evacuated versus no risk/not evac-
uated”. For example, the Watari district of Fukushima city, was said to
be, together with the Oonami district, the area most contaminated by ra-
dioactive fall-out within the city. The survey conducted by Professor
Tomoya Yamauchi (specialist in radiation physics, radioactivity meas-
urement and ion tracks) of Kobe University in September 2011 found
that the level of radiation dose in the soil sample collected beside a tem-
ple exceeded 40,000Bq/kg and the air-born radiation level was recorded
at over 20 µSv/hour at 1cm above the ground and 2.68 µSv/hour at 1m
120                                                                  Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

above8. In October 2011, Fukushima city and the government’s Nuclear
Emergency Response Headquarters organized a meeting with Watari res-
idents who were demanding that “radiation hot spots”9 be designated
within the district thereby assisting the families living in the elevated radi-
ation environment to evacuate from the area. There was a discrepancy be-
tween the measures elaborated by the authorities and the measurements
conducted by the residents. The government and municipal officials
stressed that they would decontaminate the area. As a result, there was no
case of evacuation assisted by the government from the Watari district
nor Fukushima city as a whole.
    What about the concerns of inhabitants in such a situation? Some in-
habitants with young children evacuated their town, and others decided
to stay. However, the consequences of radiological contamination on
health have a slow outset, and cancers may develop after several decades.
A father in the Watari district of Fukushima city confessed: “the difficult
thing is that we have to wait for years to know whether we made the right
decision for our children”10.
    The zones evacuated raise other concerns. After the Fukushima acci-
dent, a part of the inhabitants were evacuated and then could not return
in their homes. The Mandatory Evacuation Zone established within the
prefecture of Fukushima resulted in the evacuation of 110 000 inhabit-
ants. The mayor of one of the evacuated villages, Kawauchi, explained:

     “Some old people died before this (evacuation) order was lifted, and said
how much they regretted dying without the possibility to come back to their
home villages. This was one of the reasons that pushed me to hurry the lifting of
the evacuation order”11.

   Indeed, the Japanese authorities took the decision to “recover” the
contaminated territories through a programme combining intensive de-
contamination and revitalisation measures. They promoted a “return”
policy, and their overall objective was to lift all the evacuation orders by
March 2017, except in some very specific zones (the “difficult to return
zone”, and the villages of Futaba and Okuma). The mayors of the evacu-
ated towns had the very difficult task of implementing this strong “re-

    8
        Tomoya Yamauchi (Kobe University), Report on the level of radioactive contam-
ination – limit of decontamination in the Watari district, commissioned by Friends of
the Earth (NGO), Fukuro-no-kai (NGO) and residents of the Watari district, 20 Sep-
tember 2011.
     9
       The radiation hot spots are the spots detected with an air radiation dose of more
than 20mSv per year situated outside of the official evacuation zone. Upon the valida-
tion of such spots by the local authority, the government designates them as ‘specific
spots recommended for evacuation’ and provides financial assistance to the families
living around the spots if they wish to.
     10
         Interview R. Hasegawa and C. Fassert. October 2014.
     11
        Interview October 2016, R. Hasegawa and C. Fassert, SHINRAI project.
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                                    121
turn” policy while facing the different wishes and specific interests of the
inhabitants. For example, by “hurrying” to lift the evacuation order, the
mayor of Kawauchi was confronted with another type of criticism, ad-
dressed by the inhabitants who were to some extent forced to return12 to
a place where some radiological contamination remained despite decon-
tamination works. The promise, by the authorities, of the return to a ra-
diologically “normal” situation (the 1 mSv/y recommendation of ICRP
for so-called “existing situations”) was not reached, mainly because in ru-
ral areas such as Kawauchi, covered by forests and mountains, contamina-
tion is difficult to remove, and even comes back. What does life look like
when returning to “still contaminated” villages? With regards to children,
the school director explained:

     “Well, they live like before the accident, (…) well not exactly like before the
accident. Pupils commute to school by bus and do not walk anymore. They are
not authorized by their parents to go into the forests, or to swim in rivers like we,
as children, used to do before. We were not allowed to do it, but still we did it
(laughs). They do not climb trees”13.

    When the evacuation order was lifted, inhabitants were encouraged to
return but some of them decided not to return. A majority of families
with young children made this decision. Children are indeed more sensi-
tive to ionizing radiation effects. The decision meant that parents had to
weigh up the risks at stake, and it could lead to dramatic and engaging
questions. A parent of two young children told in an interview14:

     “On radiation risk, I heard from a friend who had consulted a doctor in
Iwaki city, that the effect from radiation exposure could appear 10 years or even
30 years after the exposure. Therefore, even if there is no health problem today, it
doesn’t mean that there won’t be in the future. When I understood this, I decided
not to return to Naraha town. Because if one of my children gets sick in the fu-
ture, I don’t want to be in a situation where I wouldn’t be able to answer their
question: “Mother, why did you choose to return to Naraha when you knew the
possible risk?”.

    The idea that you are accountable to your children for the decisions
you made after the nuclear disaster carries a heavy responsibility and a
feeling of enormous guilt for many parents. Such heart-breaking thoughts
and decisions are now also part of the life in contaminated territories. It
shows also the ethical dilemma that inhabitants face: some families were
separated because the parents did not agree on leaving or not, or on re-
turning or not to their former village.

     12
        This is mainly because one year after the Lift of Evacuation Order, the compen-
sations given to evacuated families will be suspended.
     13
        Interview led by C. Fassert and R. Hasegawa. October 2016.
     14
        Interview conducted by Rina Kojima. October 2015.
122                                                          Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)


Attachment to Territory and its Limits
    In Fukushima, people express very different forms of attachment to
their hometowns. In Kawauchi, for example, some senior inhabitants
have made the choice to return to their home. They present a common
profile: people in their 60s, in good health, who possess a house that has
sometimes been a “Family home” for several generations. These inhabit-
ants, after the catastrophe, were evacuated, and most of them moved sev-
eral times, sheltered by relatives, family or friends, or in dedicated tempo-
rary housing built in the aftermath of the accident. In this case, attach-
ment is strongly linked to a set of desirable habits and rituals that form a
way of life: a rural way of living (growing your own vegetables, sharing
them with the neighbourhood, getting sensai (wild plants) in the for-
est…). It is also a way of living attached to community links and a strong
sense of solidarity in this isolated part of the mountains: “I didn’t want to
come back if my neighbours didn’t; in the mountains, you cannot live on
your own” explained one of the senior people we met in an interview.
    In her book, Traverser Tchernobyl, journalist and essayist Galia
Ackerman shows the complexity and sadness of the post-Chernobyl situa-
tion, 30 years after the accident. She shows how some inhabitants of the
so-called “exclusion zone” were forced to evacuate but they came back,
illegally, in their former homes. They are called the “samossioly” and rep-
resent a form of resistance to the administrative scheme proposed by the
government. Other inhabitants saw their houses destroyed by the author-
ities, in order to prevent them from returning (Ackerman 2016).
    Attachment of people to their hometown is not an absolute rule, it is
only a part of the picture. A number of reports and institutional recom-
mendations that claim to “learn from the Fukushima accident” insist on
the “dangers of evacuation” and on the need to foster “remediation strat-
egies”, supposedly helping people to recover after a nuclear accident. At-
tachment of inhabitants to their hometown is here essentialised, if not
considered as a dogma. This is for example the case in Publication 111 of
ICRP (2009) that states: “Worldwide experience following nuclear and
non-nuclear accidents shows that neither nations nor individuals are very
willing to leave affected areas”. Also the reference to resilience spread out
in a number of discourses linked to the Fukushima post accidental “man-
agement”. However, these discourses are underlined by a number of
strong assumptions that need to be examined in the light of concrete situ-
ations, in order to reveal a more complex reality than this straightforward
and unconditional “attachment” notion. First, the case of “self-evacuees”
shows that attachment is far from being unconditional. Besides, attach-
ment comes with mixed and contradictory feelings in the nuclear accident
victims: resentment against the nuclear operator, feeling of loss, anger,
and fear for future and anxiety for health, claims for justice, willingness to
“turn the page”. No large scale inquiry that allows us to grasp the extent
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                                123
and solidity of “people attachment” to their living area has been conduct-
ed yet. Such an inquiry would allow us to examine, for example, how
much attachment to home town may, after a nuclear accident, resist nega-
tive effects such as durable radioactive pollution, the need to manage
your contamination through a set of “appropriate behaviours”, the loss of
services, or of employment.

A “Safe” Threshold?
    Zoning policies are based on the choice of a threshold which distin-
guishes the “safe” zones from “unsafe” ones; this threshold becomes an
essential element which determines evacuation policies and their related
consequences. It is difficult to trace back precisely the criteria which led
to the choice of a “20 mSv” threshold in Japan. Authorities have justified
their position by insisting on the harmlessness of ionizing radiations at
“low doses”. They have communicated, from the beginning, a very reas-
suring view on the dangers of ionizing radiations, advocating that there
are almost no risks below the threshold of 100 mSv/year in spite of an
enduring controversy on the “low-dose” radiation risk (Fassert 2016).
    The Japanese authorities have also insisted on the fact that they have
chosen the lowest limit of the values (20 – 100 mSv) established by the
International Commission of Radiological Protection (in charge of setting
recommendations for radiological protection in normal and accidental
situations). In fact, when they set up this threshold, in April 2011, the sit-
uation was no more considered as “an emergency situation” in terms of
radiological risks. According to the evacuation order issued at the time,
the inhabitants could indeed evacuate their homes within the period of
one month (e.g. Litate village). The situation could be thus qualified as an
“existing situation”, where values should be rather chosen between 1 and
20 mSv/y (and not 20-100 mSv/y) (Boilley 2016).
    This shows that the selected threshold of 20 mSv/y was not purely
drawn from scientific basis but also from other considerations. Simulation
tools can indeed tell the scope of possible consequences for the popula-
tion at any chosen threshold. The French Institute for Nuclear Safety and
radioprotection (IRSN) calculated, using these simulation tools, that at
the threshold of 10 mSv/year, half of the chosen dose, 70,000 more resi-
dents would have had to evacuate, which would have caused an addition-
al financial burden to TEPCO and an economic impact on the region.
Furthermore, this would have produced a strong symbolic message of a
grave nuclear accident. Yamauchi15, for example, estimates that such a
threshold was precisely chosen in order to avoid evacuating important
key cities of the Fukushima prefecture: “Fukushima city is the capital. It
was symbolic, you could not evacuate the capital city without recognizing
the significance of the consequences of a nuclear catastrophe”.

    15
         Interview conducted by R. Hasegawa and C. Fassert, Kobe, May 2016.
124                                                                Tecnoscienza - 8 (1)

    The threshold was decided, without addressing the intrinsic uncer-
tainties and controversies on the dangers of low doses with representa-
tives of the affected population16. It was decided by the authorities who
took into account political, symbolic and economic interests in addition
to (controversial) scientific evidence. These aspects have been given little
public scrutiny. Moreover, the global strategy based on intensive decon-
tamination and recovery of territories is also a general framework which
was not discussed with the population.
    Accidents are an opportunity to “deconfine” controversies, and may
offer opportunities for “citizen science” to be more visible in the public
space, opening debates on radiological measurements and health issues
(Kimura 2015). The 20 mSv/year threshold played an important role on
this scene and sparked vivid debates and protests. They came mainly
from within Japan, but also from the international scene. In Japan, the
most spectacular protest was the resignation of a government advisor for
radiological protection, Professor Toshiso Kosako, who declared that he
could not scientifically nor morally accept the 20mSv/year as the thresh-
old applied also to children. A number of scientists, such as Kodama and
Shimazono (University of Tokyo), Koide (University of Kyoto), and Sa-
kiyama, a member of the parliamentary accident investigation commission
(NAIIC), also criticized publicly against this threshold. Protests also came
from a number of NPO (Greenpeace Japan, Citizens’ Commission on
Nuclear Energy, in Japan, and, for example, ACRO in France). The Spe-
cial Rapporteur of United Nations, Anand Grover, also addressed in his
report a number of criticisms to the Japanese government for its post ac-
cidental policies. His criticism goes beyond the “threshold” controversy.
Indeed, Anand Grover discusses the very basis of radioprotection for
post accidental situations. He argued: “The ICRP recommendations are
based on the principle of optimization and justification, according to
which all actions of the Government should be based on maximizing
good over harm. Such a risk-benefit analysis is not in consonance with the
right to health framework, as it gives precedence to collective interests
over individual rights. Under the right to health, the right of every indi-
vidual has to be protected.” (Grover 2012, p. 16). This criticism may re-
sult on a reconfiguration of the controversy on “low doses”, and on a
more fundamental questioning of radioprotection policies in the future.

Conclusion
    I will terminate this set of reflections with a methodological plea: con-
taminated territories and their residents, staying or leaving, demand spe-
cific types of research settings which require extensive field work over a
long period of time, not restricted to the immediate aftermath of the acci-

   16
        Masashi Shirabe, Tokyo Tech, internal deliverable of SHINRAI project. August
2016.
Ekardt, Fassert and Pellizzoni                                                125
dent that led to the contamination. Research agendas are more and more
guided today by short-term results and concerns. However, the conse-
quences of accidents, and the life in contaminated territories demand
long-term involvements of researchers in STS but also in transdisciplinary
settings. Ulrich Beck (1986) had predicted “accidents without an end”:
this calls for a type of involvement that lasts even when the accident is de-
clared “over” in the political discourse.


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