Facing Nuclear Risks: Lessons from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

This paper discusses the sociological lessons learnt from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident that occurred on 11 March 2011. This disaster is the second largest nuclear accident after the Chernobyl accident. Meltdown and explosions occurred because of the hydrogen released from the damaged core. A large amount of radioactive materials has been released. Many people, around 150 000, are still in evacuation by government order or by their own choice. The incident has several characteristics. First, it is the first severe accident of a nuclear power station, the complex disaster being triggered by a large earthquake and tsunami. Second, the four reactors were simultaneously endangered. Third, the uncontrolled situation of the melted‐down reactors has continued for more than 9 months. Fourth, it is the first severe accident of a nuclear power plant on the coast. Scientists are worried about serious contamination of seawater and damages to the ecosystem. This accident is a human disaster which an electric company and the national government are very much responsible for due to a series of “underestimates,” such as that of the height of a possible tsunami, the possibility of a “station blackout” and lengthy periods of no AC power. A lot of confusing and misleading information, along with the deliberate concealment of information and delay in information disclosure occurred. Located in the background of all of this is the “Atomic Circle,” a very closed relationship between politicians, government, academics, industry and the media. We should try and learn from all of this in building a post‐nuclear East Asia. This would be the greatest lesson from the tragic Fukushima disaster and the greatest message to East Asia, the world and future generations.     

The Nuclear Power Plant as God

There is a theological meaning to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. I can clarify this meaning through a sociological investigation of the significance of nuclear power in post‐war Japan. First, as preparation, I will compare the ideology of Christ to that of John the Baptist. Christ thought that we had already arrived at the Kingdom of God. This idea led to the activist aspect of Christ. Second, I will show that nuclear power was considered as a key for the gate to the Kingdom of God in Japan. We can distinguish three stages in Japan's post‐war period: the ideal, the fictive and the impossible. It was nuclear power that embodied the ideal during the first era. Third, I will explain how the Japanese fascination with nuclear power has been compatible with Japanese aversion toward it. For the Japanese, the nuclear power plant seemed to be like non‐alcoholic beer. In the fourth and fifth parts, I will prove that the nuclear disaster implies a message equivalent to Christ's announcement. Theodicy is an answer to the question of irrational misfortune in a world created by God. However the Book of Job as ultimate theodicy shows paradoxically the incompetence of God. This situation is similar to the disaster at Fukushima, which demonstrated the incompetence of nuclear power (as God). The distance between Job and Christ is short, because if God plays the role of Job himself, it becomes Christ. We will explain why Christ's message can be a call for revolutionary social movement.     

The Shelf Life of a Disaster: Post‐Fukushima Policy Change in The United States And Germany

How can large‐scale disasters prompt policy change beyond the local environment in which they occurred? Working at the intersection of political sociology, disaster studies, and cultural sociology, we introduce the concept of the shelf life of a disaster to analyze the short and limited impact of Fukushima Daiichi on U.S. nuclear energy policy and its vitality within Germany. American media, nuclear industry representatives, regulators, and policy makers contributed to a tepid political environment for policy change by expanding symbolic distance from Fukushima, focusing on U.S. superiority to Japanese infrastructures. While this technicist orientation was evident in Germany as well, its distancing effects were offset by a conjunction of mechanisms that packaged Fukushima as a precursor to an inevitable German nuclear catastrophe.     

Nuclear Tourism

This essay describes a new post‐war pilgrim—the nuclear tourist who visits the sites where the first nuclear bombs were created and tested. Some such pilgrims are history enthusiasts, some are impelled by diffusely patriotic impulses, and others go to protest nuclear weapons. All go to “imagine the real”—or at least their insufficient version of it. The 50th anniversary of the first nuclear test drew thousands of these nuclear tourists to New Mexico where contesting narratives of commemoration mingled and clashed. The article explores ways in which the testing grounds in New Mexico are comparable with other sites of disaster because they resist “proper” notions of reverence.     

Organizational Political Economy and Environmental Pollution

Environmental scholars have made important progress explaining the social forces associated with pollution. Although important exceptions exist, insufficient attention has been given to organizations, which is where most environmental pollution is produced. Even less attentions has been given to parent companies, which have ultimate decision‐making authority over their polluting facilities. To file this gap in the literature, this paper develops an organizational political economy perspective to advance our understanding of how organizational and political‐legal arrangements affect parent companies' capacity to externalize their pollution costs to society. Organizational political economy maintains that corporations' organizational complexity, financial characteristics, management operating systems, political embeddedness in subnational states, and the degree of compliance with national and subnational environmental policies affect their capacity to externalize pollution costs. This perspective also shows how the exercise of organizational power to externalize pollution costs subsidizes the managerial and investor classes by the middle and working classes, whose taxes pay for a large share of environmental clean‐up costs, thereby contributing to economic inequality that goes beyond standard inequality measurements.     

Reconstruction and resilience after Fukushima: A critical analysis of nuclear risk and disaster

This article revisits the concept of reconstruction in light of the Fukushima nuclear accident on March 11, 2011. It also offers an analysis of the reconstruction policy launched by the Japanese authorities in the context of the risk due to low-dose radiation. What does reconstruction mean after this nuclear disaster? What kind of reconstruction is considered possible in the contaminated territories by those affected by this disaster and confronted with this long-term health and environmental risk? To answer these questions, this article first examines the concept of reconstruction—very close to that of resilience in the Japanese context—which has sparked a controversy within the social sciences, at both national and international level. Second, based on more than 100 interviews conducted between 2013 and 2016 across the entire Nippon archipelago, this article analyzes the reconstruction policy's socio-cultural consequences on the victims of this disaster who leave, stay or return to the contaminated territories. Finally, it proposes a new approach to the reconstruction of Fukushima, one which would support the process of resilience at the individual and collective levels.     

How Does the Restoration of Tōhoku Society Begin? Center and Periphery in the Great East Japan Earthquake

What can we learn from the Great East Japan Earthquake? In this article, I examine the effects of the overarching physical and social system that has developed in Japanese society for the last half century. I use the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident as an example. I will also look to the meaning of kuni (the Japanese word for country, state or nation), and emphasize the urgent need to advance sociological comparative analysis of different forms of nation, state and country in times of emergency.     

Hazards of neoliberalism: delayed electric power restoration after Hurricane Ike

This case study explores how neoliberal policies shape the impacts of a natural disaster. We investigate the reactions to major damages to the electric power system and the restoration of power in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area in September 2008. We argue that the neoliberal policy agenda insured a minimalist approach to the crisis and generated dissatisfaction among many residents. The short-term profitability imperative shifted reconstruction costs to consumers, and prevented efforts to upgrade the electric power infrastructure to prepare for future disasters. We illustrate the serious obstacles for disaster mitigation and recovery posed by neoliberal policies that privatize public goods and socialize private costs. Neoliberalism neither addresses the needs of a highly stratified public nor their long-term interests and safety.     

Disaster‐time Economy and an Economy of Morals: A Different Economic Order from the Market Economy under Globalization*

With the experience of two severe disasters (the Hanshin Awaji Earthquake disaster of 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster of 2011), I wish to consider “subsistence” as human life, existence equaling the basic activities of life, an essential mutual act‐like existence economy. In this paper, I pursue a positive development of “disaster‐time economics” as a research object under the larger framework of the formation of a “moral economy,” as part of a critical process. In this paper, in order that a stricken area and society may aim at the realization of a new methodology about “creative revival” for newly developing independent research involving the state of the revival fund of a wide sense is carried out. Nevertheless, there is an overall understanding of who, in what areas, and using what methodology, has conducted research in the restoration and revival process, as well as the weak points that tend to hinder the process. There is no research on the rationality and function of public finance expenditures or national sources expenditures. Therefore, in this paper, the term “disaster‐time economy” is newly prepared. From this concept, many activities of the project, service, support, self‐efforts etc. of a social and private domain are grasped from a public sphere in connection with the process of maintenance/restoration under the disaster. The feature and subject point of the process are clarified. The market economy order that is going to be produced in this process does the basic work and determines the economic order for another self‐subsistence over life.     

Crisis communication online: How medium,crisis type and emotions affected public reactions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Social media play in today's societies a fundamental role for the negotiation and dynamics of crises. However, classical crisis communication theories neglect the role of the medium and focus mainly on the interplay between crisis type and crisis communication strategy. Building on the recently developed “networked crisis communication model” we contrast effects of medium (Facebook vs. Twitter vs. online newspaper) and crisis type (intentional vs. victim) in an online experiment. Using the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as crisis scenario, we show that medium effects are stronger than the effects of crisis type. Crisis communication via social media resulted in a higher reputation and less secondary crisis reactions such as boycotting the company than crisis communication in the newspaper. However, secondary crisis communication, e.g. talking about the crisis communication, was higher in the newspaper condition than in the social media conditions because people consider traditional media as more credible. We also found higher levels of anger in the intentional crisis condition than in the victim crisis condition. Anger in turn was related to reputation, secondary crisis communication and secondary crisis reaction. The results stress the need for more complex models of crisis communication.     

Influence at Work: A 25-Year Program of Research

Organization of any kind, from prehistorichunting societies to companies working through theworldwide web, operate with a distribution of influenceand power among their members. This distribution of influence has consequences at three levels: forthe people working in the organization, for theorganization itself, and, from time to time, for membersof society outside the organization. A series of action- and policy-oriented projects on thedistribution of influence were developed by or incollaboration with the Centre for Decision MakingStudies of The Tavistock Institute over a quarter of acentury. They started with a seven-country comparativeresearch on top management decision making, followed bytwo 12-country studies on Industrial Democracy and a5-year longitudinal program in seven companies in three countries. These and two longitudinalprojects in Britian, one on a motor car manufacturer andthe other on an airport, used a similar conceptualframework. The article draws on the evidence from this program of work, describes the evolvingtheoretical model and concludes that organizationalinfluence sharing appears to have made only limitedprogress during the last 50 years. Four explanations are put forward: overidealistic expectations;a tendency to ignore the need for certain necessaryantecedents, like competence; a tendency to act as ifinfluence sharing is not subject to contingencies like the nature of tasks; and probably mostimportantly, the almost universal tendency to designinfluence sharing measures through uncoordinatedmechanistic social engineering.     

Examining multiple behavioral effects of third-person perception: Evidence from the news about Fukushima nuclear crisis in Taiwan

This study focuses on examining the behavioral component of the third-person effect. It explores the self-other perceptual gap concerning the influence of nuclear pollution news on the prediction of different actions: corrective, protective, and promotional. The study analyzes data from a probability sample collected in Taiwan after the news about nuclear pollution from Fukushima was widely reported. The results showed that the discrepancy in self-other perceptions was a significant predictor of multiple behavioral intentions, which included seeking self-protection (e.g., taking iodide pills), supporting corrective actions (e.g., opposing the building of new nuclear power plants), and supporting government-led promotional measures (e.g., launching public educational campaigns on nuclear safety). These results indicate that the behavioral component of the third-person effect extends beyond the realm of willingness to censor.     

Space,People, Interventions and Time (SPIT): A Model for Understanding Children's Outdoor Play in Post‐Disaster Contexts Based On a Case Study from the Triple Disaster Area of Tohoku in North‐East Japan

Play in the outdoor environment is important for children as part of their childhood and is particularly important for children in a post‐disaster situation. This article explores issues around outdoor play opportunities in the Tohoku region of north‐east Japan, 13 months after the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant failure. A model of space, people, interventions and time (SPIT) is used to understand the situation in this unique case study.     

Making it Work: Supporting Group Representation in a Liberal Democratic Organization

Providing oppressed social groups with rights of representation is one suggestion for counteracting bias towards privileged groups in society. In order to counteract a bias towards their white, male, heterosexual, able‐bodied membership, a number of trade unions have provided social groups with resources to self‐organize and represent their group interests to mainstream decision‐makers. However, enabling group representation at the same time as individual representation is problematic in trade unions that are organized along liberal democratic lines. This case study of UNISON shows that while the union supported the self‐organization of oppressed social groups, these groups were excluded from matters affecting pay and working conditions. The article argues that this outcome reflects the difficulty of reconciling the representation of social groups with the representation of individuals in a liberal democratic organization. The implications of this organizational framework are illustrated by contrasting the organizing strategies of two women's self‐organized groups. While one strategy (the organization of women shop stewards) fits the prevailing organizational structure, the other (the organization of all women) attempts to be different and may have more potential for counteracting the bias towards privileged groups in the future. The article argues that a radical organizational framework is required if oppressed social groups are to gain real power within trade unions.     

Gender,the Body and Organization Studies: Que(e)rying Empirical Research

Even in organization studies scholarship that treats gender as performative and fluid, a certain ‘crystallization’ of gender identities as somehow unproblematic and stable may occur because of our methodological decision‐making, and especially our categorization of participants. Mobilizing queer theory — and Judith Butler's work on the heterosexual matrix and performativity in particular — as a conceptual lens, we examine this crystallization, suggesting it is based on two implicit assumptions: that gender is a cultural mark over a passive biological body, or is a base identity ‘layered over’ by other identities (class, race, age etc.). Following Butler, we argue that in order to foreground the fluidity and uncertainty of gender categories in our scholarship, it is necessary to understand gender identity as a process of doing and undoing gender that is located very precisely in time and space. Given this perspective on gender identities as complex processes of identification, non‐identification and performativity, we offer some pointers on how the methodological decision‐making underpinning empirical research on gender, work and organization could and should begin from this premise.     

Is the universe of democracy,rhetoric, and public relations whole cloth or three separate galaxies?

Discussions of democracy, rhetoric, and public relations can conclude that these aspects of society and professional practice are contradictory paradoxes or partners for achieving harmony of collective interests. To that end, this paper briefly explores the rhetorical heritage as inseparable from democracy. It next examines, through the challenges of the public arena, ways that deliberative democracy can bring the three into partnership for the greater good. On this foundation, it features four premises of public relations and democracy based on power, infrastructure, private and public sphere, collective voices, language that co-manages meaning as social construction, and stewardship. As stewards of democracy, organizations can play a pivotal role in fostering environments, the infrastructures and collaborative processes, that allow and even facilitate collective decision making as well as blend the private sphere (individualism) and the public sphere (collectivism) so that self-interest can be satisfied and enjoyed by organizations and myriad publics as collective interests. By blending individual voices into collective voices and understanding the limits and pitfalls of language as culture, public relations can actually serve private interests by the co-management of meaning to make society better.     

Who Wants a Deliberative Public Sphere?1

Democratic theorists and social scientists suggest that a deliberative public sphere would be good for democracy by maximizing emancipatory possibilities and providing broad legitimacy to political decision making. But do ordinary Americans actually want a deliberative public sphere? I examine this question in the context of four contentious “religion and science” debates. Through a multidimensional evaluation exercise with 62 ordinary respondents, I find that evaluation of public representatives in these debates tends to favor open‐mindedness and ongoing debate. Further, respondents explicitly discount elected representatives who participate in public debate precisely because they are seen as violating deliberative norms through their affiliation with electoral politics. Respondents want a deliberative public sphere. However, this desire reflects an understanding of the public sphere and institutional politics as disconnected arenas with incompatible rules and objectives, raising multiple questions for democratic theory and for political sociology.     

Minamata Disease and Environmental Governance

Abstract: This article aims to clarify the conditions necessary for environmental governance through a case study of one of the most tragic examples of environmental destruction, the Minamata disease. The Minamata disease is methyl‐mercury poisoning resulting from the ingestion of contaminated fish and shellfish. The first incident of the Minamata disease occurred in the mid‐1950s, in Kumamoto Prefecture. In spite of the grave lesson that the pollution in Kumamoto provided, Japanese society went on to experience a second occurrence of Minamata disease in the mid‐1960s, in Niigata Prefecture. Conflicts between victims, the companies responsible for contamination, and the central and prefectural governments have continued for the past 50 years. As a whole, the history of the two incidences of Minamata disease shows a lack of environmental governance in Japanese society. Effective environmental governance is the ability to produce adequate solutions to a variety of environmental problems. In order to resolve an environmental problem such as Minamata disease adequately, four tasks must be achieved. These are the discovery of the cause, the prevention of suffering, recovery from suffering and the learning of a lesson. What factors are crucial to the achievement of these tasks? Through an analysis of the history of Minamata disease, I would like to point out three fundamental factors that have a decisive influence on the solution of an environmental problem. They are the existence of an effective and just juridical system, a mature public sphere, and the quality of individual actors who are concerned with an environmental problem. The following conditions are important to the fostering of environmental governance on a more concrete level: sensitivity of the society and the ability to set an agenda, autonomy of the research process and of any research groups, organization of the antipollution movement, an adequately designed system for compensation, and various measures which help to counter socially amplified suffering.     

Universities as peculiar organizations

We integrate contemporary sociological scholarship on higher education to appraise universities as peculiar organizations, on three dimensions. Universities are positionally central to the institutional order of modern societies, providing working links between state, market, civil society, and private‐sphere organizations. Universities are polysemic, embodying civic, economic, and sacred meanings simultaneously. And universities are quasi‐sovereign, enjoying a substantial margin of jurisdiction over their own boundaries and internal affairs. These insights are harmonious with classic insights on the character of academic organization and offer concise dimensions for observing variation in higher education systems across space and time.     

Framing human rights: exploring storytelling within internet companies

This article explores human rights storytelling within two of the dominant internet companies, Google and Facebook. Based on interview with company staff as well as analysis of publicly available statements, the article examines how human rights are framed, made sense of and translated into company norms, products, and governance structures. The paper argues that the companies’ framing in many respects resembles that of the United States’ online freedom agenda, celebrating the liberating power of the internet and perceiving human rights as primarily safeguards against repressive governments. The companies see freedom of expression as part of their DNA and do not perceive any contradiction between this standard and business practices that may impact negatively on users’ freedom of expression, such as terms of service enforcement. Likewise, there is no sense of conflict between the online business model and their users’ right to privacy.