Life Exposed Biological Citizens After Chernobyl

"An ethnographic triumph.Life Exposedis 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 "This extremely interesting work treats the social, political, and personal implications of Chernobyl as a prism--reflecting the political-economic, clinical, legal, and biographical processes that characterize this 'open-ended' catastrophe. There is nothing comparable. Very well written, it will be of major interest to readers in risk analysis and risk sociology, science studies, political science, as well as to anyone interested in the consequences of megatechnologies."--Ulrich Beck, author ofThe Brave New World of WorkandWhat is Globalization? "This is a marvelous piece of research on a timely topic that ought to be of great interest to a broad audience in sociocultural anthropology, to scholars and makers of public policy, to specialists in the politics of transition, and to social science and humanities scholars interested in contemporary Ukraine. Petryna's story is very moving and the material is wonderfully rich and suggestive."--Mark L. von Hagen, Columbia University, author ofSoldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship "Life Exposedis a fascinating and highly original ethnographic analysis of the fragile political, economic, and social transition to post-Soviet citizenship in Ukraine as viewed through the Chernobyl disaster. Above all, it opens a window on a harrowing world with which most English-language readers will be unfamiliar. Through Petryna's well-written presentation of the illness narratives we slowly come to comprehend the enormity of the situation. I know of no other work that makes such a clear case for the importance of biomedical world views, practices, bureaucracies, and negotiations as foundational to contemporary citizenship."--Rayna Rapp, New York University, author ofTesting Women, Testing the FetusPetryna, Adriana is the author of 'Life Exposed Biological Citizens After Chernobyl', published 2002 under ISBN 9780691090191 and ISBN 069109019X.