Learning to Read the Great Chernobyl Acceleration: Literacy in the More-than-Human Landscapes
Name
702901.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
6.44 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0e5da9f135e424c61f178664f67e5bab
Author(s)
Brown, Kate
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Current Anthropology
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The explosion of reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986, is often described as mankind’s biggest nuclear accident. However, describing Chernobyl as an accident works like a broom to sweep away the larger story around it, which ismore important. Exploring the larger Chernobyl Zone with the help of two biologists and a centenarian villager, this article shows how the greater PripyatMarshes, where the 1986 accident took place, was already sullied with elevated levels ofman-made radioactivity before the plant was ever built.Major radioactive releases continue in the region to this day. By enlarging the scale and temporal dimension of this history, this article shows how the Chernobyl accident serves as only an exclamation point in a chain of toxic exposures that remastered the landscape, society, politics, and bodies, not just locally, but globally.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1086/702901
