Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (In-formation) [Hardcover]

Adriana Petryna (Author)

Book Description

Series: In-formation | Publication Date: October 28, 2002

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. Life Exposed is the first book to comprehensively examine the vexed political, scientific, and social circumstances that followed the disaster. Tracing the story from an initial lack of disclosure to post-Soviet democratizing attempts to compensate sufferers, Adriana Petryna uses anthropological tools to take us into a world whose social realities are far more immediate and stark than those described by policymakers and scientists. She asks: What happens to politics when state officials fail to inform their fellow citizens of real threats to life? What are the moral and political consequences of remedies available in the wake of technological disasters?

Through extensive research in state institutions, clinics, laboratories, and with affected families and workers of the so-called Zone, Petryna illustrates how the event and its aftermath have not only shaped the course of an independent nation but have made health a negotiated realm of entitlement. She tracks the emergence of a "biological citizenship" in which assaults on health become the coinage through which sufferers stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. Life Exposed provides an anthropological framework for understanding the politics of emergent democracies, the nature of citizenship claims, and everyday forms of survival as they are interwoven with the profound changes that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The book presents exceptionally rich anthropological material generated through observations and interviews. . . . The true scope of the human tragedy caused by this man-made catastrophe comes to the fore via biological stories of Petryna's informants. . . . Most of the book's heroes were directly affected by radioactive fallout and often paid a terrible price, losing their physical and mental health. (Larissa Remennick Journal of the American Medical Association )

[Chernobyl] is a dramatic and important story, and Life Exposed is a compelling book. . . . [A]n important study that will interest a wide anthropological audience. (Jonathan P. Parry Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute )

Review

An ethnographic triumph. Life Exposed is as much a cultural study of science as it is a history of a nuclear disaster and a story of the politics of nation making in Ukraine. As powerful an analysis of biological citizenship and national technical processes of managing risks as I have ever read. Yet also a moving meditation on the aftermath of disaster for a poor Eastern European state, including the moral and medical morass faced by those who negotiate its world of disability. (Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (October 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691090181
• ISBN-13: 978-0691090184
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,466,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Intriguing, October 10, 2007

By 

Maude "Claire" (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (In-Formation) (Paperback)

This is an excellent, detailed book defining the emergence of the concept of the biological citizen and the way in which this has reshaped the state and victims of Chernobyl. Highly recommended if you are interested in the way in which the concept of the body changes with situations.