Papers by Magdalena E Stawkowski
Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era (Donna M. Goldstein and Kristen Drybread), 2022
Donald Trump stands out as the only U.S. president to break with historical precedent by openly d... more Donald Trump stands out as the only U.S. president to break with historical precedent by openly displaying regard for authoritarian leaders. One of the main recipients of Trump’s admiration has been the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. Both leaders have followed the strongman’s playbook: they have demonized large segments of society, conducted disinformation campaigns to forward their agendas, and under color of law, used police and the courts to punish the opposition. I argue for terming this form of governance manipulative statecraft, a set of strategic political practices that further the interests of the leader by bending the public interpretation of events into institutionalized and actionable agendas. I address two events in the last decade that illustrate manipulative statecraft and the corruption it fosters. The first is Trump’s deployment of federal forces in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, in mid-2020; the second is Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. I show that Trump’s admitted admiration for “strongman rule” is more complex than the mere hero worship it has been portrayed as; it is, more precisely, admiration for a particular form of statecraft, one that Trump sought to import for his own uses as president of the United States.
Études Rurales, 2017
This article is a case study of Koian, a former livestock and agricultural collective farm overla... more This article is a case study of Koian, a former livestock and agricultural collective farm overlapping the border of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan. I examine how, despite economic hardships, village residents have reinvented their collective farm as a “collective bank” on a post-Soviet agro-nuclear landscape. Although informal economies and social networks play an important role in ameliorating a lack of state commitment to the region, the village has become a relatively stable economic unit and a lynch pin of a broader strategy of upward mobility for family members who move to cities.
Culture, Theory and Critique, Aug 9, 2017
In recent years, the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology in Kazakhstan has proposed a plan ... more In recent years, the Institute of Radiation Safety and Ecology in Kazakhstan has proposed a plan to return large segments of the Soviet-era Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site to economic activity, notably farming and stock breeding. Despite fierce opposition to the plan, the Institute has framed these concerns as a case of ‘radiophobia’ or the irrational fear of radiation. In this article, I explore how a nexus of forces situates radiophobia as a mental health issue rooted in the irrational belief that radiation is harmful. Radiophobia is thus constructed as a mental disorder located inside the head of its victims rather than in the public domain. The deployment of radiophobia, therefore, illuminates a broader political and economic strategy in Kazakhstan that deprioritizes issues of public health and blocks the proper securitisation of a radioactive landscape.
American Ethnologist, Feb 2016
The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan
was conceived as an experimental landscape wher... more The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan
was conceived as an experimental landscape where
science, technology, Soviet Cold War militarism, and
human biology intersected. As of 2015, thousands
of people continue to live in rural communities in
the immediate vicinity of this polluted landscape.
Lacking good economic options, many of them claim
to be “mutants” adapted to radiation, while
outsiders see them as genetically tainted. In such a
setting, how do post-Soviet social, political, and
economic transformations operate with radioactivity
to co-constitute a “mutant” subjectivity? Today,
villagers think of themselves as biologically
transformed but not disabled, showing that there is
no uniform way of understanding the effects of
radioactive pollution, including among scientists.
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2017
Journal of the History of Biology, 2015
This article traces disagreements about the genetic effects of low-dose radiation exposure as wag... more This article traces disagreements about the genetic effects of low-dose radiation exposure as waged by James Neel (1915–2000), a central figure in radiation studies of Japanese populations after World War II, and Yuri Dubrova (1955–), who analyzed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. In a 1996 article in Nature, Dubrova reported a statistically significant increase in the minisatellite (junk) DNA mutation rate in the children of parents who received a high dose of radiation from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting studies that found no significant inherited genetic effects among offspring of Japanese A-bomb survivors. Neel’s subsequent defense of his
large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated
current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to
explain how the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies,
contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic
science during the Cold War.
Blogs/Op-Eds by Magdalena E Stawkowski
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2016
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Papers by Magdalena E Stawkowski
was conceived as an experimental landscape where
science, technology, Soviet Cold War militarism, and
human biology intersected. As of 2015, thousands
of people continue to live in rural communities in
the immediate vicinity of this polluted landscape.
Lacking good economic options, many of them claim
to be “mutants” adapted to radiation, while
outsiders see them as genetically tainted. In such a
setting, how do post-Soviet social, political, and
economic transformations operate with radioactivity
to co-constitute a “mutant” subjectivity? Today,
villagers think of themselves as biologically
transformed but not disabled, showing that there is
no uniform way of understanding the effects of
radioactive pollution, including among scientists.
large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated
current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to
explain how the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies,
contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic
science during the Cold War.
Blogs/Op-Eds by Magdalena E Stawkowski
was conceived as an experimental landscape where
science, technology, Soviet Cold War militarism, and
human biology intersected. As of 2015, thousands
of people continue to live in rural communities in
the immediate vicinity of this polluted landscape.
Lacking good economic options, many of them claim
to be “mutants” adapted to radiation, while
outsiders see them as genetically tainted. In such a
setting, how do post-Soviet social, political, and
economic transformations operate with radioactivity
to co-constitute a “mutant” subjectivity? Today,
villagers think of themselves as biologically
transformed but not disabled, showing that there is
no uniform way of understanding the effects of
radioactive pollution, including among scientists.
large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated
current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to
explain how the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies,
contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic
science during the Cold War.