Engineering Citizens Available to Purchase

This chapter examines gendered demands on citizens to take risk and communicate risks to fellow citizens. Specifically, the chapter examines risk communication as a facet of food policing by looking at how the Japanese government, the nuclear industry, and international nuclear organizations engaged in a public relations campaign in the name of scientific risk communication. The chapter suggests that an important modality of food policing is increasingly community based and feminized. Departing from the traditional expert-led model, risk communication today takes a participatory approach and frequently makes women the messengers as well as the targets. The “correct” kind of understanding of radiation was cultivated from the ground up and in a seemingly democratic manner, implicating women as important partners in this policing process.