Big IDEAS - Unwanted Companions: Rethinking the Commons from the Post-Fukushima Sea

Many of today’s environmental problems are not simply about the depletion of shared resources but about how societies live with shared harms that circulate across ecosystems and political boundaries. Carbon in the atmosphere, plastics in the ocean, and industrial pollutants in rivers are not resources to be allocated but burdens that no single community fully controls. This talk revisits debates on the commons by focusing on what I call “common bads.” Since Garrett Hardin’s influential formulation of the “tragedy of the commons,” scholarship has largely examined how communities regulate access to shared goods such as pastures, forests, and fisheries. Drawing on ethnographic research on coastal fisheries in Fukushima after the 2011 nuclear disaster, I explore how communities respond when the commons becomes a site of shared exposure. As the damaged nuclear power plant undergoes decades-long decommissioning, treated radioactive wastewater continues to be released into the sea, shaping ecological relations and livelihoods. Drawing on Michel Serres’s reflections on parasitism and Donna Haraway’s call to “stay with the trouble,” the talk argues that (re)thinking with the commons allows us to explore ways to stay with shared disturbances and pursue more livable futures.