Author Meets Critics: Carson Prize

Abstract

The 4S 2019 Carson Book Prize Committee has been awarded to Aya Kimura’s book Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination After Fukushima, published in 2016 by Duke University Press. In this session, convened to honor the awardee, Kimura will address commentary on the book offered by the panelists.

Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Science is about how citizen science, food activism and disaster politics played out on the ground after Fukushima. Kimura focuses on the constraints faced by citizen scientists, especially mothers challenging government expertise. She highlights the complicated relationship between science, foodways, gender, and politics in contemporary Japan and beyond.

The 2019 Carson Prize Committee included Gloria Baigorrotegui, Rohit Negi, Gwen Ottinger,
and Roopali Phadke.

Chair

• Roopali Phadke, Macalester College

Discussants

• Gabrielle Hecht, Stanford University

• Rebecca Lave, Indiana University Department of Geography

• Margherita Long, University of California Irvine, East Asian Studies

• Aya Hirata Kimura, University of Hawaii

Session Organizers

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

• Roopali Phadke, Macalester College