1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811355403321

Autore

Petryna Adriana

Titolo

Life exposed [[electronic resource] ] : biological citizens after Chernobyl / / Adriana Petryna ; with a new introduction by the author

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, N.J., : Princeton University Press, 2013

ISBN

1-299-38786-1

1-4008-4509-2

Edizione

[With a New introduction by the author]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (305 p.)

Disciplina

363.1799094777

Soggetti

Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986 - Health aspects

Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986 - Environmental aspects

Radioactive pollution - Ukraine

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Paperback reissue.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Introduction to the 2013 Edition: How Did They Survive? -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration -- Chapter 1: life Politics after Chernobyl -- Chapter 2: Technical Error: Measures of life and Risk -- Chapter 3: Chernobyl in Historical Light -- Chapter 4: Illness as Work: Human Market Transition -- Chapter 5: Biological Citizenship -- Chapter 6: Local Science and Organic Processes -- Chapter 7: Self and Social Identity in Transition -- Chapter 8: Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. Life Exposed is the first book to comprehensively examine the vexed political, scientific, and social circumstances that followed the disaster. Tracing the story from an initial lack of disclosure to post-Soviet democratizing attempts to compensate sufferers, Adriana Petryna uses anthropological tools to take us into a world whose social realities are far more immediate and stark than those described by policymakers and scientists. She asks: What happens to politics when state officials fail to inform their fellow citizens of real



threats to life? What are the moral and political consequences of remedies available in the wake of technological disasters? Through extensive research in state institutions, clinics, laboratories, and with affected families and workers of the so-called Zone, Petryna illustrates how the event and its aftermath have not only shaped the course of an independent nation but have made health a negotiated realm of entitlement. She tracks the emergence of a "biological citizenship" in which assaults on health become the coinage through which sufferers stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. Life Exposed provides an anthropological framework for understanding the politics of emergent democracies, the nature of citizenship claims, and everyday forms of survival as they are interwoven with the profound changes that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.