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The Shelf Life of a Disaster: Post‐Fukushima Policy Change in The United States And Germany
Author(s) -
Hoffman Steve G.,
Durlak Paul
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/socf.12419
Subject(s) - german , politics , nuclear disaster , nuclear energy policy , political science , political economy , public administration , sociology , nuclear power , law , history , engineering , ecology , nuclear plant , archaeology , nuclear engineering , biology
How can large‐scale disasters prompt policy change beyond the local environment in which they occurred? Working at the intersection of political sociology, disaster studies, and cultural sociology, we introduce the concept of the shelf life of a disaster to analyze the short and limited impact of Fukushima Daiichi on U.S. nuclear energy policy and its vitality within Germany. American media, nuclear industry representatives, regulators, and policy makers contributed to a tepid political environment for policy change by expanding symbolic distance from Fukushima, focusing on U.S. superiority to Japanese infrastructures. While this technicist orientation was evident in Germany as well, its distancing effects were offset by a conjunction of mechanisms that packaged Fukushima as a precursor to an inevitable German nuclear catastrophe.