Paper long abstract:

It is vitally important to correct failure trajectory of public policy centering on advanced and potentially high-risk technologies, utilizing relevant expertise appropriately. Needless to say, nuclear field is one of the most typical areas in that context. After the biggest failure in the history of nuclear power utilization, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Japanese nuclear policy should have been reclaimed based on the lessons learned from the disaster.

However, the results of well-known major post-accident investigations have not been referred in the process of that reformation. Critical deficits of Japanese nuclear regulation are still remained even after the establishment of new regulatory body NRA (Nuclear Regulatory Authority).

Also, it will clarify the existence of similar trajectory in Japanese high-level radioactive waste (HLW) management field. It is one-lap behind debate ongoing centering on the improvement/reformation of HLW management policy in Japan now, even though many Japanese experts are very familiar with the experiences of socio-technical difficulties in HLW waste management in other nuclear countries and lessons learned from those and have committed to international academic and administrational efforts to mediate those issues.

By qualitative analysis of policy documents and data from interviews, this paper will shed light on the reproduced or even enforced chain of "structural disaster" mechanism, which is formulated and suggested by Miwao Matsumoto based on the studies on socio-technical failures, behind these common-mode problems in Japanese nuclear governance. It will also discuss the roles and responsibility of STS scholarship reflexively to cut the chain of "structural disasters."

Paper long abstract:

Disaster education can be understood as one of the main topics of science communication. Disaster education as communication between experts and non- experts and among each of them are recently in discussion. However, there are few fundamental discussions such as what communication is or what education is. As this reflection, most of current practices of disaster education are still based on the deficit model. The experts think non-experts do not have enough knowledge of disasters or disaster management, and this is the main cause of failure of disaster management.

The purpose of this presentation is to propose another perspective on disaster education as a counterpart of current educational practice. The current disaster education can roughly be defined as knowledge transfer from the experts of disaster management to lay people which based on the deficit model. However, it can easily prove that the effect of the knowledge transfer type of disaster education is limited by the lessons learned from recent disasters such as 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. In order to improve the situation related to disaster management, the cause of limited effect of traditional disaster education is discussed based on the time theory of disaster management. In addition, WebGIS system, which is called "Ai-Map System", is also introduced as a support tool for implementing new disaster education. Lastly an action research of disaster education using the Ai-Map System will be introduced as an example of the new disaster education practice.

Paper long abstract:

The task of designing and rebuilding Chilean cities after the tsunami disaster of 2010 radically challenged prevailing urban governmental rationalities shaped by neoliberal understandings of the social as a field of autonomous, entrepreneurial and self-responsible individuals. The urban environment understood as a biophysical, technical and spatial infrastructure of life emerged as the key object of governmental intervention, replacing at least temporarily the otherwise still prevalent reduction of urban politics to the regulation of land, construction and housing markets. In this talk, I will explore the timid emergence of post-neoliberalpropositions regarding the object of urban politics. I will dwell on two experimental reconfigurations. First, the recognition of tsunamis as inhuman forces capable of radically disrupting urban arrangements did not just pose the question of how many we are in coastal cities, but also a new type of governmental problem: how to deal with inhuman forces that do not respond to economic incentives or political rationales. Second, it also became evident that urban governmental instruments could not any longer be just oriented to set limits or condition urbanization processes, but to develop visions and proposals of the city to be built. Along these lines, I will engage with the notion of post-neoliberal biopolitics not as politico-ideological project of reclaiming the state, but rather as an empirically open inquiry into alternative ontologies for a politics of (urban) life.