Risk Society And Education In Post Disaster Fukushima

In response to the explosion of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March 2011, this book examines how the concept of a risk society was handled in the various education programs implemented in post-disaster Fukushima. The explosion and subsequent radiation contamination that affected the biosphere of the Fukushima region and beyond, revealed that we live in a risk society. Despite this revelation, official discourses in Fukushima have been geared strictly toward the future, with the aim of restoring communities and resuming development projects. Based on the ethnographic data the author collected in Fukushima between 2013 and 2016, various contested emotions emerged in those education spaces as students and teachers remembered their romanticized and difficult past and dealt with the challenges presented by the risk society in their present lives. The emotionally-charged interactions between past and present also shaped their vision of their future community and of the actions they might take. The dialogues and actions that took places in these education spaces encourage readers to examine the meaning of development and question the basic assumptions and methods of education as society shifts to a risk society. A valuable resource for scholars and students in the fields of globalization and education, curriculum studies, sociology of education, and Japanese studies.

This book focuses on nuclear engineering education in the post-Fukushima era. It was edited by the organizers of the summer school held in August 2011 in University of California, Berkeley, as part of a collaborative program between the University of Tokyo and UC Berkeley. Motivated by the particular relevance and importance of social-scientific approaches to various crucial aspects of nuclear technology, special emphasis was placed on integrating nuclear science and engineering with social science. The book consists of the lectures given in 2011 summer school and additional chapters that cover developments in the past three years since the accident. It provides an arena for discussions to find and create a renewed platform for engineering practices, and thus nuclear engineering education, which are essential in the post-Fukushima era for nurturing nuclear engineers who need to be both technically competent and trusted in society.

This book examines the issue of disaster recovery in relation to community wellbeing and resilience, exploring the social, political, demographic and environmental changes in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The contributors reflect on the Fukushima disaster of earthquake, tsunami and radiation contamination and its impacts on society from an interdisciplinary perspective of the social sciences, critical public health, and the humanities. It focuses on four aspects, which form the sections of the work: Living with Risk and Uncertainty Vulnerability and Inequality Community Action, Engagement and Wellbeing Notes from the Field The first three sections present research on the long-term consequences of the disaster on community health and wellbeing. These findings are enhanced and developed in the ‘Notes from the Field’ section where local practitioners from medicine and community recovery reflect on their experiences in relation to concepts developed in the previous sections. This work significantly extends the literature on long-term wellbeing following disaster. The case study of Fukushima is a multi-faceted process that illuminates wider issues around post-disaster regeneration in Fukushima. This problem takes on new importance in the context of Covid-19, including direct parallels in the issues of risk measurement, social inequality, and wider wellbeing impacts, which public health disciplines can draw from.

How and why did credible scientists, engineers, government officials, journalists, and others collectively give rise to a drastic failure to control the threat to the population of the Fukushima disaster? Why was there no effort on the part of inter-organizational networks, well-coordinated in the nuclear village, to prevent the risks from turning into a disaster? This book answers these questions by formulating the concept of "structural disaster" afresh. First, the book presents the path-dependent development of structural disaster through a sociological reformulation of path-dependent mechanisms not only in the context of nuclear energy but also in the context of renewable energy. Secondly, it traces the origins of structural disaster to a secret accident involving standardized military technology immediately before World War II, and opportunistic utilization of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, thus reconstructing the development of structural disaster within a long-term historical perspective. Maintaining distance from conflicts of interest and cultural essentialisms, this book highlights configurations and mechanisms of structural disasters that are far more persistent, more universal, but less visible, and that have turned risk into suffering. The book seeks to cast light on an important new horizon of the science-technology-society interface in the sociology of science and technology, science and technology studies, the sociology of disaster, the social history of the military-industrial-university complex, and beyond.

Education is regarded as a cross-cutting issue for disaster risk reduction (DRR) through reviewing the Sendai Framework for DRR (SFDRR) 2015–2030. Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the education sector is one of the important efforts to enhance resilience in a community. DRR in the education sector not only focuses on provision of disaster education, but also includes securing a safe school environment, developing school disaster management plans, and building the capacity of school teachers and local educational officers. Japan, with its wealth of experience in DRR, has developed a good resilient system in its education sector, which has been tested and revised through experiences of past disasters. This book reviews the evolution of DRR in the education sector in Japan, including some of the recent developments after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, focusing on DRR governance and practices in national policies, curriculum development and teacher training, community linkage, and international cooperation, to enhance resilience in the education sector. The primary target groups for this book are students and researchers in the fields of disaster management and DRR studies. Another target group comprises practitioners and policy makers, who will be able to apply the collective knowledge from this work to policy and decision making. The book provides an overview of the current research trends and furnishes basic knowledge on this important topic.

This book, drawing on a political economic perspective of education development, is a comprehensive account of the question "why some education systems flourish while others falter." It provides a state-of-the-art review of the Vietnamese way of education development, figuring out the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities of neoliberal reform. It also sheds new light on the rise of neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Vietnam as the country intensifies its market-oriented economic transition. Starting from educational development concerns, this book differentiates the growth and development concepts in education. While "growth with limited development" is well reflected in many developing education systems, the Vietnamese experience of education development stands to provide readers with unique insights about education in developing economies, especially in understanding how a socialist-oriented education system is struggling to thrive in the times of neoliberal capitalism. Authored by scholars specialising in Vietnamese education and politics, the chapters address key issues pertaining to the political economy of education reform in Vietnam and the government’s enduring efforts to drive education toward international standards through its costly market-infused education reforms. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, educators, educational policy-makers and scholars interested in Vietnamese studies, Vietnam education reforms, education governance, education for sustainability, internationalisation of education and the politics of education reforms.

This edited collection, one of the first to be written chiefly by Vietnamese scholars, explores innovation in Vietnamese education under the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Vietnam is considered a booming country with its continued economic rise, and the contributors explore one of Vietnam’s strategies to achieve further economic growth, which is the innovation – and modernization – of its education system. The content is split into two parts, the first focusing on innovations in educational policy and management and the second looking at innovation in teaching theories and methods. It shows the vitality and innovation coming from developing countries like Vietnam, where necessity breeds fast adoption of education technology and development. This insightful edited volume will help researchers in comparative education, educational development, and Asian studies understand the achievements and challenges of Vietnamese general education and higher education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Great East Japan Disaster – a compound catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that began on March 11, 2011 – has ushered in a new era of cultural production dominated by discussions on safety and security, risk and vulnerability, and recovery and refortification. Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post-3.11 Japan re-frames post-disaster national reconstruction as a social project imbued with dynamics of gender, race, and empire and in doing so Mire Koikari offers an innovative approach to resilience building in contemporary Japan. From juvenile literature to civic manuals to policy statements, Koikari examines a vast array of primary sources to demonstrate how femininity and masculinity, readiness and preparedness, militarism and humanitarianism, and nationalism and transnationalism inform cultural formation and transformation triggered by the unprecedented crisis. Interdisciplinary in its orientation, the book reveals how militarism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism drive Japan's resilience building while calling attention to historical precedents and transnational connections that animate the ongoing mobilization toward safety and security. An important contribution to studies of gender and Japan, the book is essential reading for all those wishing to understand local and global politics of precarity and its proposed solutions amid the rising tide of pandemics, ecological hazards, industrial disasters, and humanitarian crises.