Biological citizenship:
Petryna defines biological citizenship as “[A] demand for, but not limited to, a form of social welfare based on medical, scientific, and legal criteria that recognize injury and compensate for it.” The term biological citizenship, or newly termed biocitizenship, has become a way for people to claim their citizenship, by gaining access to some type of medical resource or protection that is provided by the government.
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl’s Unit Four exploded in an ill-designed experiment. In this experiment, many of the safety systems were shut off, and this lead to a power surge into the reactor core which lead to the reactor overheating and exploding at two separate times. When the reactor burst, fires started, and attempts to put out these fires only raised the reactor’s core temperature and made the radiation plume even bigger. The wind and the weather contributed to the growth and spread of the radioactive debris as well. The New York Times compares it to a “Huge Dirty Bomb” because of the explosion and the fact that the radioactive debris was widely spread access Ukraine and Western Europe. In the aftermath of the event, an exclusion zone of around 1,000 miles was set up and the day after the explosion residents of this zone were given a few hours notice that they needed to evacuate. Even thirty years later, many people are still claiming to have health related issues due to the large amounts of radiation exposure.
When the Chernobyl incident occurred, the area was still under Soviet rule, but five years later Ukraine declared their independence. When they declared their independence, Ukraine took over the exclusion zone and the destroyed Chernobyl plant, and this left the new and still forming government of Ukraine to deal with the consequences of the explosion and the large amounts of radiation. Since there was no past research done about the long-term effects of expose to high amounts of radiation, the government was still in the processes of forming, and the fact that there were no exact measurements of the level of radiation that people in different areas were exposed to, this led to a large amount of uncertainty. Many people in Ukraine used their biological alignments to make a legitimate claim to their citizenship through gaining access to limited medical resources provided through the government. Due to their extra health risks and previous work experience, people who had previous experience working with Chernobyl had few opportunities to find work outside of the exclusion zone. So, they had to use their physical needs to gain legitimate citizenship. People were able to use the large amount of uncertainty regarding the situation for leverage when staking their claims. This created a large dependence on the resources and legality of their biological citizenship because by gaining access to these medical resources, they had better claims to economic and social resources (Petryna, 262). In addition, people who had access to such resources secured these, and future, resources for their families as well, and provided a sense of self-fulfillment that might have been lacking before due to inability to find or accomplish work (Rose and Novas, 23). Due to pharacuticlization, medications were becoming a commodity rather than necessity. An administrator who Petryna interviewed stated “People don’t have enough money to eat…Drug stores are commercialized…The diagnosis we write is money.” (Petryna, 263).
There was no doubt that there is a huge need for medical resources for those people affected by the radiation spread, but there is a changing idea about how to government is handling the issue. As mentioned before, there is such a large amount of uncertainty surrounding the claims, that many people have been able to use this to gain access to the country’s resources. Almost two million people in the Ukraine are labeled as “official victims” and are able to receive access to some level of medical treatment (Standish 2016). Since so many people were able to claim biological citizenship and access to medical resources, Petryna says that the Ukraine government non-intentionally created another “socialist-like population” (Petryna, 264). Many Ukraine residents are no longer as willing to help as they used to be, they see these people as taking away from government resources without providing anything in return. Ukraine has had to raise taxes on residents, make tax-except government accounts, and is now in the processes of constructing a concreate and stainless steel arch to contain the remains of the Chernobyl radioactive core. These endeavors add to the continuing expenses of the Chernobyl incident, and the country is now caught between their moral and financial obligations. Chernobyl has a continuing impact on the Ukraine government, and the events that have occurred and are still occurring are continuing to influence the future of the country.
References:
Fountain, Henry
2014 Chernobyl: Capping a Catastophe. The New York Times. Accessed Feb 20, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html?_r=0
Novas, Carlos and Rose, Nikolas
2003 Biological Citizenship. Global Anthropology.
Petryna, Adriana
2004 Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations. Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments 19:250-265
Standish, Reid
2016 Ukrainian Ambassador: Soviet Leadership Responsible for Chernobyl’s Victims. Foreignpolicy.com Accessed Feb 20, 2017
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