Nonscalability of “citizen science” in post-Fukushima Japan: Unpacking articulations of citizen radiation measuring organizations

This article explores and discusses understandings of citizen science with members of Japanese citizen radiation measuring organizations who began measuring radioactive contamination in food, soil, air, and human bodies after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Building on in-depth interviews with organization members and extensive multi-site fieldwork (2018, 2020), the article takes shimin kagaku (citizen science in Japanese) to examine articulations of citizenship and science, while discussing citizen radiation measuring organization activities. Adopting Tsing’s notion of nonscalability, it draws attention to the manifold articulations of citizenship and science, unearthing frictions embedded in Japanese science–society relations. In this way, this article outlines the diversity of notions of citizenship and science, and of citizen participatory practices in science. By bringing nonscalability to bear on an analysis of different articulations of shimin kagaku, this article encourages scientists and public authorities to engage with citizen participatory practices reflexively and responsibly by considering local articulations and knowledges.

(Not) Knowing and (Not) Caring About Animal Research

Animal research remains a practice marked by controversy and moral dilemma. However, UK science-society dialogues on the issue are increasingly managed via one-way transmissions of information which construct publics as passive and attribute their concerns to a lack of ‘correct’ knowledge. Challenging such assumptions, this paper questions how and why people actively manage their interactions with animal research through entangled practices of knowing and caring. Based on an analysis of writing from the UK Mass Observation Project, this paper explores difficulties and discomforts associated with animal research which can cause strategic withdrawals from engagements with the topic. In doing so, it extends existing concepts of ‘uncomfortable knowledge’ (Rayner) and ‘strategic ignorance’ (McGoey) to develop novel concepts of ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘strategic’ care. Finally, in examining desires to respond to animal research, I engage with Haraway’s notion of ‘response-ability’ to introduce the concepts of ‘responsive caring’ and ‘responsive knowing’

Protesting Populist Knowledge Practices: Collective Effervescence at the March for Science London

On 22 April 2017, 10,000 people joined the March for Science London, one of 600 events globally asserting the importance of science against post-truth. Here we report an online and on-the-ground observational study of the London event in its distinct, post-Brexit referendum context. We analyse the motives for marchers’ attendance, and their collective enactment of what science is and why and by what it is threatened. Drawing upon Interaction Ritual Theory and the concept of civic epistemology, we develop the notion of populist knowledge practices to capture the ‘other’ that marchers defined themselves against. We detail how this was performed, and how it articulated a particular vision for science–society relations in Britain. In closing, we argue that the March for Science is one in a chain of anti-populist activist events that retains collective effervescence while transcending specific framings.