Dealing with Disaster in Japan

In today’s episode of Being Human we’ll be looking at the topic of disaster - how do people prepare for disasters, how can we mitigate their effects, and how do we use technologies to equip ourselves in times of trouble? We’ll be looking specifically at Japan, a country which has frequent natural disasters, and which on March 11th 2011 suffered the triple disaster of a tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear meltdown, killing nearly 20,000 people and causing long-term devastation for those affected.

Today's episode is hosted by Laura Haapio-Kirk, and she is joined by:

• Chika Watanabe, who is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK. Chika is interested in how different advocates of disaster preparedness in Japan and Chile persuade ordinary citizens to be prepared for disasters when we don’t know when they will happen. Chika tweets @drchikawatanabe. 
• Andrew Littlejohn, an environmental anthropologist who is currently Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The main question motivating his current research is how to live more sustainably in a world damaged not only by disasters but also the technologies we develop to mitigate them.
• Giulia De Togni, a social/legal anthropologist who is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at Edinburgh University Medical School. Her doctoral research project focused on the living conditions of the Fukushima evacuees who moved to temporary housing facilities after the triple disaster of March 2011. Guilia tweets @giulia_de_togni.

To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.