Afterword

Abstract

This chapter reviews the collective exploration into the entanglements of science and technology, the state, the market, and everyday life in contemporary China. The chapter presents a compelling argument for why it is critical, at this particular moment, for anthropologists to step in and make their accounts and analyses of science in/of/and China relevant to academic and public discussions and debates. It emphasizes that China is not a place outside of the West where “usual science” proliferates and changes its forms in a non-Western national or cultural context. Rather, the translocal sociohistorical formation and the complex conceptual and institutional interplay of state, market, and technoscience shaping and shaped by post-Mao, post-socialist, and now Xi's authoritarian China demand thoughtful and experimental ethnographic engagement on the ground. The chapter also invokes governmentality as an analytical point of entry into the enmeshments of science, state, and market and as a way to forge a conversation with topics central to science and technology studies (STS) literatures.