Agencements and Qualculations: Fukushima, Knowledge-Making, and Radiation Contamination

In March 2011, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster released radiological contamination across a large part of Japan. Formal protective actions taken included mass evacuations, food restrictions, and decontamination programs; decisions about where to live, what to eat, and how to live with radiological contamination were taken both formally and informally. Informing the implementation, continuation, and cessation of protective actions taken by officials and by residents involves a plurality of determinations about radiological contamination. Collections of human and nonhuman entities come together, as qualculative agencements to produce new radiation knowledge and to produce qualculations which produce action and effects in response to the incident risks. I developed the “Assembling the Qualculator” framework to examine the constituent parts of these knowledge-making agencements. The framework identifies four qualculative roles that human actors perform (resource generator, gatekeeper, qualculator, and user) alongside three kinds of qualculative resources within the agencement. Two contrasting examples of schoolyard monitoring in Fukushima are explored through the lens of the framework. This highlights how the almost limitless number of qualculations in emergencies becomes constrained by resource availability, temporality, and spaces, and that qualculative potential is stabilized through formal emergency structures and policy instruments.