Davies, Thom (2015) Nuclear borders : informally negotiating the Chernobyl exclusion zone. In: Morris, Jeremy and Polese, Abel, (eds.) Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces: Practices, Institutions and Networks. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 225-245. ISBN 9781137483065

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Abstract

This chapter explores the everyday experience of living in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Through several years of long-term ethnographic research with communities who live on the edge of the highly contaminated ‘Exclusion Zone’, the chapter reveals the informal methods and understandings of nuclear space that allow people to inhabit a landscape of extreme social, economic and environmental marginalization. The chapter finds that informal activity can be used as a means to circumvent the stealthy violence of state abandonment: a tactical method of asserting agency over spaces from which people have been excluded. By framing Chernobyl as a ‘space of exception’ (Agamben, 2005), we can begin to unravel the way that informal activities are used to circumvent and challenge people’s vulnerable status of post-atomic ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998). In doing so, the chapter reveals how the Exclusion Zone’s porous nuclear borders become contested and subverted, as people and materials informally (and illegally) pass in and out of this official nuclear geography. Though radiation is an ever-present and unseen reality in this post-atomic landscape, so too are the intricate and embedded uses of informal activities that challenge the official narratives and governance of nuclear space.

Item Type:	Book Item
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Informal sector (Economics) -- Europe, Eastern, Informal sector (Economics) -- Europe, Central, Informal sector (Economics) -- Former Soviet republics, Post-communism -- Economic aspects
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN:	9781137483065
Book Title:	Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces: Practices, Institutions and Networks
Editor:	Morris, Jeremy and Polese, Abel
Official Date:	2015
Dates:	Date Event 2015 Published
Date of first compliant deposit:	28 January 2016
Page Range:	pp. 225-245
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Funder:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC)
Related URLs:	Publisher

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