Abstract
Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the contamination of food poses serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan. This essay shows how different actors create differing spatializations of food risks in order to make food risks manageable in everyday consumption practices, food monitoring and risk communication. Starting out from the observation that risk communication about contaminated food differs from risk communication after the food scandal involving Chinese dumplings (gyōza) in 2008, I follow the question of how the nuclear crisis has challenged older boundaries between “safe” and “hazardous” places of origin. Accordingly, the essay deals with discourse on Japan’s food self-sufficiency-ratio, agricultural trade policy and food nationalism. My paper is based on insights from a recent qualitative consumer survey I conducted in the summer of 2011, and qualitative interviews I carried out in February 2012 in Japan.
Reiher, Cornelia