Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemResilience in a different voice( 2022)What does it mean to stay resilient while also move forward resiliently in the “slow” nuclear disaster recovery? What happens if the means to remain resilient becomes undermined by the very ideas and practices done in the name of resilience? How can resilience be reimagined? In this thesis, I examine how the contested notion of resilience is shaped by civil society practice in disaster recovery context. Existing scholarship on the role of civil society in resilience-building tends to offer either instrumentalist evaluations assessing how civil society mobilizes resources to support the disaster-affected community or deconstructionist critiques uncovering how civil society facilitates resilience as a form of neoliberal governmentality. Offering a different voice to the debate, I demonstrate civil society practice as a site of contestation where the notion of resilience becomes critically reflected and creatively acted upon. From 2017 to 2021, I became a volunteer with SWK, a charity association based in Cairns, Australia, that acts alongside the children of Fukushima affected by “3.11” or the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident in Fukushima on March 11, 2011. Adopting an Action Research approach, I engaged in a collaborative inquiry to explore the different meanings and possibilities for action to create a place where children can be free from unwanted disaster-induced radiation concerns. On the one hand, I illuminate a paradoxical process of resilience in which the need for a place where children can be free from radiation concerns is being sustained, not merely by the diffusion of radionuclides as a result of the nuclear accident, but also by the very interventions done in the name of “building back better.” On the other hand, I shed light onto the grassroots resilience that reimagines how resilience can be done differently. I highlight the continuous (re)making of translocal relations (tsunagari) that center the concerns and hopes voiced by the children of Fukushima to explore more liveable, different futures —including nuclear-free future. I argue that, despite appealing to more peaceful and sustainable future, resilience thinking rooted in neoliberal environmentalism that preserves the sociotechnical imaginary of nuclear power is unsustainable, alienating and forecloses the capacity to pursue “better” futures. I call for a rethinking of resilience notion through a care perspective that places the flourishing of children and the planetary wellbeing at the heart of disaster resilience research, policies and practice.