ABSTRACT

The authors of this volume discuss questions of disaster and justice from various interdisciplinary vantage points, including public policy, science and technology studies, law, gender, sociology and psychology, social and cultural anthropology, town planning and tourism.

The term "natural" disasters is a misnomer; cataclysmic natural events that impact humans can often be anticipated and their consequences should be prevented – the failure to do so is a failure of politics, policy and risk planning. Presenting research on more than a decade after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the chapters highlight not only the manifold challenges in the direct disaster response and policymaking but also the difficulties of "just" long- term recovery. Arguing for just distribution, recognition and participation, this volume provides a diversity of perspectives on these issues as experienced after the 2011 disasters through detailed and nuanced analyses presented by early career researchers and senior academics coming from various countries and continents of the world. The insights of this volume galvanise the discussion of disaster governance and highlight the variety of disaster (in)justices and the ways disasters force people to contest and reimagine their relationships with their countries, neighborhoods, families, and friends.

A valuable read for scholars and students researching issues related to mass emergencies, justice theory and civil activism.

part I|85 pages

Nuclear Disaster and Recovery Challenges

chapter 3|17 pages

Voicing the Invisible

Resilience, Adaptation, and Resistance in the Narratives of the Fukushima Plaintiffs

chapter 4|23 pages

Japanese Politics and Nuclear Energy in the Ten Years since Fukushima

A Meta-Political Justice Perspective

part II|52 pages

Dismissed Voices and Agency

chapter 5|13 pages

Disasters and Domestic Violence

Making Structural Injustices toward Women after the Great East Japan Earthquake Visible

chapter 6|21 pages

Citizenship and Disaster

Experiences of Foreign Women after 3.11

part III|56 pages

Discredited Voices in the Credibility Economy of Disaster

chapter 9|20 pages

The Right to Be Heard

Analyzing Parents' Activism in the Kantō Region

chapter 10|16 pages

Growing up in Fukushima Prefecture after the Nuclear Accident

Young People Give Voice to the Stories of Non-Evacuated Communities

part IV|64 pages

Place-making and Identity

chapter 12|17 pages

Lowering Mountains, Raising Walls

Impacts of Rebuilding in Coastal Miyagi Communities

chapter 13|15 pages

From Being Seen and Heard to Feeling Displaced

The Double-Edged Sword of Tōhoku's Post-Disaster Tourism