The state comes home: Radiation and in-situ dispossession in Canada

In 1975 it was discovered that the small Ontario community of Port Hope was widely contaminated with radioactive waste from the local uranium refinery, including hundreds of homes. Through close analysis of state archives, regulatory documents, media, and key informant interviews, I analyze how the radioactive contamination of the home constitutes an in-situ dispossession, a material, corporeal and psychosocial dislocation in everyday life. In so doing, I reveal discrepancies between internal state positions and those publically conveyed, while showing how the categories of normal and abnormal are malleable social constructs and geopolitical tools of state power. By investigating the contamination of Port Hope through the lens of everyday life, I aim to add to critical geographies of home while contributing to scholarship demonstrating the multi-scalar interconnectedness of body, home, and nation-state.