Science, Technology and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard (via Zoom)

Date: 

Monday, February 8, 2021, 12:15pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Online Only

"The Improvised Expert: Performing Authority in Fukushima"

Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)

Speaker:

Makoto Takahashi, Lecturer, Technical University of Munich.

Contact:

Paul Sherman
paul_sherman@hks.harvard.edu

Co-sponsored by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.

This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.

Chair:

Sheila JasanoffFaculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.

Remote Access Information:

To join by computer:

https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpcO-pqjgiGtQRdBeBum8fk5pgNopLIPDq

Please note: This event requires registration in advance in order to receive the meeting link and password.

Abstract:

In recent years, concerns about a crisis of expert authority have been expressed across the globe. Japan is no exception to this trend. Scandals surrounding the (mis)management of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster severely damaged public confidence in public institutions, posing an additional challenge for those engaged in radiological protection. This paper examines how claims to expert authority are made in these perceived conditions of low public trust. To this end, it offers an ethnographic account of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA) Workshop on Post-Accident Food Safety Science—an event staged at the request of the Japanese Cabinet Office with the aim of inspiring confidence in Fukushima produce. Takahashi analyzes the practices through which the organizers craft a credible public persona using the idiom of dramaturgical improvisation; drawing attention to the ‘performed resourcefulness’ with which they adapted extant institutional scripts in response to a discerned crisis of public reason.

Speaker Bio:

Makoto Takahashi is a Lecturer at the Munich Centre for Technology in Society, TU Munich and a former Harvard STS Fellow. His core interests lie in how societies come to understand technological risks and how they decide who can credibly inform policy. He received his BA and MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and successfully defended his PhD in September 2019. His thesis examined how expert authority is claimed and contested in conditions of low public trust. This project drew upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork, conducted in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. During this time, Makoto also held a Visiting Fellowship at Waseda University. His work has found an international audience in both academic and policy circles: organizations in Britain (e.g. Foreign and Commonwealth Office), France (e.g. CEPN), Japan (e.g. Takagi School), and the US (e.g. AAG) inviting him to present his research.