Temporal Citizen Science After Fukushima

Abstract

This article investigates how various citizens framed the temporality of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster through the production and representation of data on soil contamination. Drawing on Beck’s risk society, Jasanoff’s civic epistemology, and Edwards’ knowledge infrastructures, this study uses the Minna-no Data Site (MDS), or Collective Database of Citizens’ Radioactivity Measuring Labs, to foreground the role of citizen science in shaping its temporality of the disaster. In doing so, it illuminates how MDS generated and processed its data as a political resource for intervening in the dominant temporality of the disaster secured by the Japanese state. Ultimately, this article contributes to the reimagination of citizen science via temporal pluralism.