THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Mankei Tam
Living with Fukushima
Friday 12 April 2024, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
After Fukushima, what does it mean to live with nuclear fallout? Japan's 3.11 triple disaster has created an uncertain world of imperceptible radioactivity. This talk is about Iitate, a village that was exposed following the Fukushima meltdown, where radiation lingers still. My interlocutors are villagers who explore damaged ecologies and seek pathways to let their homes co-exist with flora and fauna that have become uncanny. Based on my fieldwork from 2015-23, this talk will present an anthropological study of the livable future(s) created by those who refused to surrender their homes and tried to eschew the dichotomized realities enacted by the state and anti-nuclear activism.
Mankei Tam (譚萬基) is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the HealthXCross project at the Ca' FoscariUniversity of Venice. This project focuses on the relationships between global health/biopolitics and microbiome technoscience evolving in Hong Kong and other key hubs that situate China globally. His previous project concerned citizens' self-empowering practices in critical assessments of radiation risks and their collaborations with scientists to explore new forms of agriculture after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. His research interests include Political Ecology, Science and Technology Studies, multispecies ethnography, and studies in social movements.