Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will present how intergenerational ties are represented in these coping strategies and contributing to rebuilding a sense of community when in many cases the ties expand in multiple locality.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational families in migration literature is expanding as we speak. It not only provides various patterns of family that expand beyond international borders but also offers new perspectives on family dynamics along the line of gender, aging, and intergenerational relationships. Administrating a family life in multiple locality is often a household strategy among transnational families.

Guided by these literature, first, I will explore a coping strategy of former residents of Fukushima and its vicinity who decided to move out after the nuclear meltdown post Tohoku earthquake, and examine how they are administering family lives in multiple locality. Some family decided to emigrate together as a household, while for others, several family members remained due to work and family commitments and education of children, while other members, especially among mother with young children, decided to leave. This arrangement has split a family life into two (or more) locality.

When faced with abrupt changes in our daily lives due to disasters, we take on various coping strategies which include denial, connecting with others for social support, and weaving a new narrative. In this paper, I will present how family dynamics in multiple locality are changing family dynamics along the line of gender, aging, and intergenerational relationships. I will specifically examine how intergenerational ties are represented in these coping strategies and contributing to rebuilding a sense of community when in many cases the ties expand in multiple locality.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how farmers facing severe contamination from upstream mines in the Bolivian highlands respond, in part, by engaging in new forms of split rural-urban residency that leads to spatially dispersed, multinodal community building.

Paper long abstract:

While rural-to-urban migration in the Bolivian highlands has many causes, for people living along the Desaguadero River in the Department of Oruro, water pollution presents a severe strain on their livelihoods. Farmers in the region depend on irrigation, but gold and tin mines discharge their wastes directly into the watershed, resulting in toxic levels of heavy metals and other contaminants. As land goes out of production, and livestock are born with birth defects, more people migrate to the nearby city of Oruro. This paper, based on 13 months of Ph.D. dissertation research in the highland village of El Choro, explores how people continue to create and experience community even after so many have moved away. Many migrants have settled in a new neighbourhood in Oruro called Villa Choro, where they build new lives in an urban setting but also regularly shuttle to the village of El Choro for different activities. In this paper I draw on Doreen Massey's conceptualization of places as spatiotemporal events that are constituted by intersecting trajectories to argue that these movements weave together a community of geographically disjoined places. I explore how these new forms of part-time residency emerge and engage with the countryside, which despite extensive contamination remains an important locus for political, social, cultural, and productive activities. By examining how split residents' nevertheless manage to create a spatially dispersed community, I argue that people in El Choro have more choices on how to respond to environmental pressures than may initially appear.

Paper short abstract:

The Rongelap is one of atolls belonging to the Marshal Islands that suffered from the US nuclear bomb tests. This presentation examines how the resettlement project of the Rongelap Atoll Local Government is leading to a new sense of community among the Rongelap people.

Paper long abstract:

The Rongelap is one of atolls belonging to the Marshal Islands that suffered from the US nuclear bomb tests. Through the analysis of the residents traditional land use, kinship, resource management and crisis management, this presentation examines how the resettlement project of the Rongelap Atoll Local Government is leading to a new sense of community among the Rongelap people.

Firstly, in order to elucidate the source of the people's attachment to their home, I will discuss the Rongelap people's traditional land use prior to the nuclear bomb test, in relation to their knowledge of natural environment, resource management, food distribution, and disaster prevention. Secondly, I will discuss the methods of decontamination and its scope, infrastructures and industrial reconstruction. Thirdly, I will discuss how the possibility of Rongelap atoll becoming their home once again.

　There were only 82 residents living in the Rongelap atolls before the nuclear testing, but even after 72 years, they have maintained the sense of a community. When you compare it to the communities that lost cohesiveness after Chernobyl's nuclear accident, this is a remarkable fact. This presentation explores the foundation of the Rongelap people's cohesiveness as a "community."

Paper short abstract:

It is explored the meanings of the silence, risk denial and the changes in the risk perception in two rural-communities. The first one exposed by chemical compounds, and the second one by plutonium contamination. We will prioritize the discourse of pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Paper long abstract:

The silence of the communities starts breaking. Environmental and health risks were silenced for more than a hundred years in the first community, located at the north east of Spain. In the second community, at the south of the country, two nuclear bombs were broken down in 1966 as a consequence of a flight accident. Both communities had no voice during decades. One of the reasons is the lack of information about the environment risks and health consequences on toxicity, waste management, ionizing radiation and nuclear pollution.

In the first community, people "protected" the chemical company even knowing the health effects of exposure to organochlorine compounds. In the influence area of the chemical company, epidemiological studies showed an increasing prevalence in thyroid cancer, soft tissue sarcoma and brain cancer. Nowadays, the community perception starts changing not only because of the epidemiological studies but also because the company informed that will close in 2017.

In the second community, the plutonium contamination by the nuclear bombs was a government secret for years. Ionizing radiation is perhaps the best characterized environmental exposure linked to effects on the thyroid. The most common thyroid manifestation of ionizing radiation is hypofunction, as well as thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer. Autoimmune thyroid disease has been linked to environmental radiation exposure.

Using an ethnoepidemiological approach, in our paper we are going to analyse the social and ecological factors behind the changes on the risk perception of internal chemical contamination in our communities, specifically from pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how spirits injured by Minamata disease (MD) are perceived, experienced, and transformed into tangible artifacts, which affect other people's lives through their movements, focusing on Kokeshi dolls - made by a man living with MD - and their social trajectories in the world.

Paper long abstract:

Minamata disease (MD), first discovered in 1956, is a neurological syndrome caused by the release of methylmercury into the wastewater of Minamata City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, by the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory. Methylmercury is absorbed by plankton, which are eaten by fish and shellfish, and then passed up the food chain. In 1990, part of Minamata Bay was transformed into a landfill by the Kumamoto prefectural government. In this process, the fish contaminated by high-concentration methylmercury were buried in the landfill along with toxic sludge. My fieldwork, which took place over 27 months between 2006 and 2016, revealed that the landfill is considered a memento of the tragedy and is called "a place where injured spirits gather" by some victims.

This paper analyzes how these spirits injured by MD have been perceived, experienced, and transformed into tangible artifacts, which affect other people's lives through their movements, focusing on the Kokeshi dolls - made by a man living with MD - and the social trajectories they trace in the world. This man has carved thousands of Kokeshi dolls from trees grown in the forest of the landfill areas of Minamata Bay, and given them to the Japanese Minister of the Environment, the chairman of Chisso, children who visited Minamata, and others, in order to breathe new life into the injured spirits, both human and nonhuman (such as the fish and birds), that were contaminated with mercury. The findings suggest a community engendered through learning to share suffering with nonhumans.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores environmental contamination and remediation in Hamilton, Ontario. It considers how human/non-human lives are defined in scholarly literature, and argues that these differences affect residents’ capacity to mobilize notions of community to expedite the remediation process.

Paper long abstract:

The highest concentration of metal-producing industry in Canada is located on the south shore of the Hamilton Harbour. In the 1980s, evidence emerged linking this industrial production to extensive environmental contamination. The Harbour's sediment is highly contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls (Poulton 1987). After decades of delay, construction crews just started work on a remediation project designed to contain the contamination. This paper considers the history of Hamilton Harbour's remediation, focusing on what it means to live and labour in Hamilton amid an ongoing ecological disaster. I explore the material and social relations that emerge from within contaminated spaces and make environmental remediation possible. More specifically, this paper examines the epistemological grounds for a local 'community' that is mediated by experiences with toxic contamination. This paper contributes to anthropological scholarship in two ways. First, it offers an alternative definition of ecological 'disaster'. Toxic contamination continues to accumulate in Hamilton; it is an ongoing condition of everyday life rather than the result of a momentary crisis. Second, it interrogates how local understandings of contamination are formed in relation to specific forms of scientific knowledge production. There is considerable evidence documenting the spread of these contaminants throughout local waterways and in non-human lifeforms, but to date, there have been no studies documenting contaminant loads within human residents. This paper concludes by discussing the implications of this scientific 'blindspot' on local residents' (embodied) experiences with contamination as well as their ability to seek redress from those responsible for the disaster.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the process through which toxic waste is materially and discursively removed and transformed in two island communities involved in post-movement environmental mitigation in western Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Many anthropologists and sociologists have studied social justice movements in the aftermath of toxic disasters. However, works on post-movement situation is still rare. This presentation explores the process through which toxic waste is materially and discursively removed and transformed in two island communities involved in post-movement environmental mitigation in western Japan.

Teshima, an island in western Japan, was a site of illegal toxic dumping since the 1960s. The island residents began to mobilize against this illegal dumping in the 1970s. And in 2000, they finally reached an arbitration agreement with the municipal government to decontaminate the dumping site. This mitigation process involved two steps: 1) prevention of the contamination of ground water and sea by creating impermeable dike, 2) transportation of toxic waste to its neighboring island of Naoshima.

In 2000, Naoshima declared its decision to accept the construction of an industrial waste processing plant as part of their "eco island" project. By situating this waste processing plant as a key player in "recycling society", Naoshima aims to create a new image of "eco-friendly society" while attracting industry. Meanwhile, Teshima uses its history of the movement and the effort to recover biodiversity of the surrounding sea as a resource to attract outsiders to the island. In this presentation I will explore how the relationship between the people's perception of risk of toxic waste and the conception of eco-friendly environment in two communities has contributed to their conception of waste and its fate.