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I am deeply grateful to everybody in Belarus who participated in this research by sharing his or her perspective and by helping establish further connections. I especially thank the following individuals, who were particularly generous with their time and information year after year: the late Vassily Nesterenko, Vladimir Babenko, and Mikhail Malko. I also received support from many other individuals who worked or continue to work in Chernobyl-related research institutes, nongovernmental organizations and international projects, and government organizations, including Comchernobyl and Minzdrav. Following the conventions for social research, most names in this book have been changed or omitted, except when the individuals are easy to identify because of their professional activities or publications. I thank my mentors at the University of California, San Diego, and my colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere who discussed this project with me, provided useful advice, and offered comments on earlier versions of this text: Daniel Hallin, Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, Andrew Lakoff, Steven Epstein, Valerie Hartouni, Vincent Rafael, Ravi Rajan, Mary Gray, Wenda Bauchspies, Kelli Moore, Kelly Gates, Astrid Sahn (who also shared her personal research materials), Andrei Stepanov, Gary Fields, Mary Judson, Jericho Burg, Lucy Tatman, Tom Kane, Gordon Mitchell , John Lyne, Ronald Zboray, Mary Zboray, Gabriella Lukács, Paul Josephson , Soraya Boudia, Jennifer Bails, and Olga Maslovskaya. Many thanks to Gabrielle Hecht for her perceptive feedback on the full draft of this manuscript . None of the individuals mentioned above bear any responsibility for the analysis that follows; their advice helped make this text better. I am particularly grateful to Geof Bowker and the late Susan Leigh Star, whose own research inspired much of this project. Acknowledgments xii Acknowledgments Many thanks to the MIT Press, and especially to Marguerite Avery, Katie Persons, and Deborah Cantor-Adams for their guidance and patience. I thank Audra Wolfe and Judith Antonelli for their editorial assistance. This research would not have happened without help from my family and friends, who provided active support throughout parts of this project and showed much patience at other stages. I thank Olga Maslovskaya, Nataliya Lvovich, Jericho Burg, Lucy Tatman, Irina Skoblya, Nina Zelutkina, and Tatiana Haplichnik; my mother-in-law, Natallia Rybianets; my brother, Arseni Kuchinsky; my parents, Tatiana Kuchinskaya and Gennadi Kuchinsky ; and my son, Sasha. I am deeply grateful to my husband, Ivan Graman, for his unwavering support and for so much more. Two chapters appeared in earlier versions as the articles “Articulating the Signs of Danger: Lay Experiences of Post-Chernobyl Radiation Risks and Effects,” in Public Understanding of Science 20, no. 3 (2011): 405–21, and “Twice Invisible: Formal Representations of Radiation Danger,” in Social Studies of Science 43, no. 1 (2013): 78–96. ...

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