Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2198356
Wen-Ling Tu
For EASTS 17.2, we are excited to present the special issue “War and Medicine during the Long Sino–Japanese Wars (1895–1945)” from guest editors Michael Shiyung Liu, James A. Cook, and Tina P. Johnson. As outlined in their introduction, this special issue includes articles from Nicolas Schillinger, Roberto Padilla, and Dan Shao and essays by Wayne Soon and Pi Kuo-Li that offer important historical scholarship on the topics of war, public health, and military medicine analyzed through an STS lens. In addition to our special issue contents—although interesting parallels can certainly be drawn—we have a research note titled “COVID-19 Making ‘Idols’: The Birth of Celebrity Scientists in China.” In this, Siyi Chen et al. investigate the case of four Chinese scientists with distinct public personas, all of whom have sparked an unprecedented storm of publicity since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the early months of 2020. The note explores how these celebrity scientists have played a key role in the governance of pandemic risks by guiding the public’s behavior and offering scientific ways to cope with them. We also include the essay “New Perspectives on Science, Medicine, and Language in Modern South Asia,” in which Andrew Amstutz reviews “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” a special issue of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Volume 13, Issue 1; Routledge, 2022). With the readership of EASTS in mind, this essay offers an excellent review with a special focus on historiographical and methodological issues relevant in the field of STS. Continuing from our previous issue, this essay provides us with a much-needed update of recent scholarship on STS in South Asia. In other news, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that have become available to the public, such as ChatGPT, have been the talk of the town as college campuses scramble to decide whether to ban them or incorporate them into the classroom. As we carefully observe how this phenomenon plays out in the coming months, we are excited to continue the conversation on open AI technologies in our future issues. We are also working toward participating in the 4S Meeting 2023 coming up in November, in Honolulu, Hawaii. As suggested in the meeting’s subtitle of “Sea, Sky, Land, Endangered Ecologies, Solidarities,” we are very much looking forward to reuniting with colleagues against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and to keeping the discussions going for the benefit of our planet and the environment.
{"title":"Editor’s Note","authors":"Wen-Ling Tu","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2198356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2198356","url":null,"abstract":"For EASTS 17.2, we are excited to present the special issue “War and Medicine during the Long Sino–Japanese Wars (1895–1945)” from guest editors Michael Shiyung Liu, James A. Cook, and Tina P. Johnson. As outlined in their introduction, this special issue includes articles from Nicolas Schillinger, Roberto Padilla, and Dan Shao and essays by Wayne Soon and Pi Kuo-Li that offer important historical scholarship on the topics of war, public health, and military medicine analyzed through an STS lens. In addition to our special issue contents—although interesting parallels can certainly be drawn—we have a research note titled “COVID-19 Making ‘Idols’: The Birth of Celebrity Scientists in China.” In this, Siyi Chen et al. investigate the case of four Chinese scientists with distinct public personas, all of whom have sparked an unprecedented storm of publicity since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the early months of 2020. The note explores how these celebrity scientists have played a key role in the governance of pandemic risks by guiding the public’s behavior and offering scientific ways to cope with them. We also include the essay “New Perspectives on Science, Medicine, and Language in Modern South Asia,” in which Andrew Amstutz reviews “Indigenous Knowledges and Colonial Sciences in South Asia,” a special issue of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Volume 13, Issue 1; Routledge, 2022). With the readership of EASTS in mind, this essay offers an excellent review with a special focus on historiographical and methodological issues relevant in the field of STS. Continuing from our previous issue, this essay provides us with a much-needed update of recent scholarship on STS in South Asia. In other news, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that have become available to the public, such as ChatGPT, have been the talk of the town as college campuses scramble to decide whether to ban them or incorporate them into the classroom. As we carefully observe how this phenomenon plays out in the coming months, we are excited to continue the conversation on open AI technologies in our future issues. We are also working toward participating in the 4S Meeting 2023 coming up in November, in Honolulu, Hawaii. As suggested in the meeting’s subtitle of “Sea, Sky, Land, Endangered Ecologies, Solidarities,” we are very much looking forward to reuniting with colleagues against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and to keeping the discussions going for the benefit of our planet and the environment.","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"79 1","pages":"129 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81116800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2186604
W. Soon
The diverse narratives of military medicine in wartime East Asia range from Dr. Robert Ko-sheng Lim (Kesheng Lin 林 可 勝 ) and his fellow Overseas Chinese medical personnel ’ s valiant effort in soliciting blood donations from reluctant Chinese soldiers in 1944, to the Unit 731 doctors ’ reprehensible human experimentation in Harbin in the 1940s. These stories are part of a larger narrative of military medical success, failures, opportunities, and realities in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese war that lasted between 1937 and 1945. Doctors, nurses, and medical personnel working under the demands of intense warfare also revealed stories of individual resiliency and personal transformation. Their experiences contributed to the history of state building, resource management, and medical reconstruction in twentieth-century East Asia. Nevertheless, it is critical to identify how existing narratives of military medicine were often shaped by the outcomes of wars and political revolutions, even as more recent scholars have successfully chal-lenged these narratives by focusing on the wide-ranging military medical practices, ideas, and personnel on the ground. This article argues that the
{"title":"Military Medicine in East Asia: Histories of Instrumentalism, Resistance, and Agency","authors":"W. Soon","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2186604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2186604","url":null,"abstract":"The diverse narratives of military medicine in wartime East Asia range from Dr. Robert Ko-sheng Lim (Kesheng Lin 林 可 勝 ) and his fellow Overseas Chinese medical personnel ’ s valiant effort in soliciting blood donations from reluctant Chinese soldiers in 1944, to the Unit 731 doctors ’ reprehensible human experimentation in Harbin in the 1940s. These stories are part of a larger narrative of military medical success, failures, opportunities, and realities in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese war that lasted between 1937 and 1945. Doctors, nurses, and medical personnel working under the demands of intense warfare also revealed stories of individual resiliency and personal transformation. Their experiences contributed to the history of state building, resource management, and medical reconstruction in twentieth-century East Asia. Nevertheless, it is critical to identify how existing narratives of military medicine were often shaped by the outcomes of wars and political revolutions, even as more recent scholars have successfully chal-lenged these narratives by focusing on the wide-ranging military medical practices, ideas, and personnel on the ground. This article argues that the","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"56 1","pages":"222 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83880065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2197787
Taewoo Kim
Even amid heated discussion of anthropology’s turn to ontology since 2000, East Asia has remained almost an invisible area of research, having seldom been part of the new mode of theorizing and practicing anthropology. This phenomenon is revealing when we compare anthropological studies of East Asia with those of America and Oceania in which scholars have conducted influential ethnographic studies of the ontological turn, circulating pathbreaking concepts. If ontological anthropology critiques the very discipline’s reliance on a specific metaphysical assumption originating from the modern West, and if East Asia and modern Europe do not share the same metaphysical ground, it is natural to expect scholars to study ontological anthropology of East Asia. Filling the lacuna in the research and, further, articulating the potential of East Asian studies for the discussion of “turn,” in A Way of Life Judith Farquhar, a leading scholar in the studies of East Asian medicine, examines Chinese medical reality and its connectedness to thought and practice. Even though the author does not use the exact wording “ontological turn,” her intention regarding ontological discussion is clear in her critical application in Chapter 1 of John Law’s “One-World World” to Joseph Needham’s Chinese science project that premises “the evolution of world knowledge toward better and better accounts of only one world” (8). Delineating more than one ontological ground with East Asian medicine, A Way of Life speaks of beyond the One-World World and beyond only one way of life. Translation matters, probably the most, in Farquhar’s elaboration of Chinese medicine. Or, to put it another way, translation is an inevitably central issue, since, regarding the text’s ontology-involved translation, it is not just an equivalentword-seeking practice between East Asian and Euro-American languages. Rather, it is an inter-worldly endeavor since “[w]hen we embark on the translation of Chinese medical things, thought, and action... , new and marvelous worlds emerge” (12). Farquhar’s approach, however, faces the “impossibility” of translation, since nothing is fixed—both referents and referrers are moving on plural ontological
{"title":"A Way of Life: Things, Thought, and Action in Chinese Medicine","authors":"Taewoo Kim","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2197787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2197787","url":null,"abstract":"Even amid heated discussion of anthropology’s turn to ontology since 2000, East Asia has remained almost an invisible area of research, having seldom been part of the new mode of theorizing and practicing anthropology. This phenomenon is revealing when we compare anthropological studies of East Asia with those of America and Oceania in which scholars have conducted influential ethnographic studies of the ontological turn, circulating pathbreaking concepts. If ontological anthropology critiques the very discipline’s reliance on a specific metaphysical assumption originating from the modern West, and if East Asia and modern Europe do not share the same metaphysical ground, it is natural to expect scholars to study ontological anthropology of East Asia. Filling the lacuna in the research and, further, articulating the potential of East Asian studies for the discussion of “turn,” in A Way of Life Judith Farquhar, a leading scholar in the studies of East Asian medicine, examines Chinese medical reality and its connectedness to thought and practice. Even though the author does not use the exact wording “ontological turn,” her intention regarding ontological discussion is clear in her critical application in Chapter 1 of John Law’s “One-World World” to Joseph Needham’s Chinese science project that premises “the evolution of world knowledge toward better and better accounts of only one world” (8). Delineating more than one ontological ground with East Asian medicine, A Way of Life speaks of beyond the One-World World and beyond only one way of life. Translation matters, probably the most, in Farquhar’s elaboration of Chinese medicine. Or, to put it another way, translation is an inevitably central issue, since, regarding the text’s ontology-involved translation, it is not just an equivalentword-seeking practice between East Asian and Euro-American languages. Rather, it is an inter-worldly endeavor since “[w]hen we embark on the translation of Chinese medical things, thought, and action... , new and marvelous worlds emerge” (12). Farquhar’s approach, however, faces the “impossibility” of translation, since nothing is fixed—both referents and referrers are moving on plural ontological","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"52 1","pages":"273 - 276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85141298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2198353
Andrew Amstutz
, Andrew
,安德鲁
{"title":"New Perspectives on Science, Medicine, and Language in Modern South Asia","authors":"Andrew Amstutz","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2198353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2198353","url":null,"abstract":", Andrew","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"67 1","pages":"266 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84955307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2183608
Kuo-Li Pi
The considerable research already conducted on the second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 has mainly addressed military and diplomatic affairs, though research on relevant cultural and even medical history has gradually picked up pace in recent years (Watt 2011 [2013?]; Keith 2011). However, most of the research on modern Chinese medical history, especially traditional Chinese medicine, has little to do with war (Pi 2020). Let me start with a brief review of some related literature. Social historians of medicine in the West have focused much on the effects of war on civilian medicine in general and upon medical policy in particular. Mark Harrison, for example, comments on the processes of both the “medicalization of war,” or how medical personnel were incorporated into the armed forces, and the ensuing “militarization of medicine,” whereby the former process affected the practice of medicine (Harrison 1996). How these processes developed in the case of China, with its long history of traditional Chinese medicine, is only beginning to be researched. As we shall see, the field of medicine in China had a very different relationship to these processes, particularly during the Second World War. For example, Michael Shiyung Liu has recently raised the issue of “Chinese physique” in a study on Chinese military nutrition (Liu 2019). Interestingly, this concept had existed in Chinese medicine as early as the confrontation with Western medicine in the 1920s. However, there is a lack of in-depth discussion within the academic community about the history and impact of Chinese medicine upon the medicalization of war and the militarization of medicine. If the war had such a positive impact on the development of Western medicine, then what was the impact of war on traditional Chinese practices? The purpose of this note, therefore, is to explore the actions of practitioners of Chinese medicine in dealing with the urgent need that arose from the Sino-Japanese War for surgery and for the modification of Chinese medicine.
{"title":"Saving Chinese Medicine for Modern Warfare in China: A Study Note","authors":"Kuo-Li Pi","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2183608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2183608","url":null,"abstract":"The considerable research already conducted on the second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 has mainly addressed military and diplomatic affairs, though research on relevant cultural and even medical history has gradually picked up pace in recent years (Watt 2011 [2013?]; Keith 2011). However, most of the research on modern Chinese medical history, especially traditional Chinese medicine, has little to do with war (Pi 2020). Let me start with a brief review of some related literature. Social historians of medicine in the West have focused much on the effects of war on civilian medicine in general and upon medical policy in particular. Mark Harrison, for example, comments on the processes of both the “medicalization of war,” or how medical personnel were incorporated into the armed forces, and the ensuing “militarization of medicine,” whereby the former process affected the practice of medicine (Harrison 1996). How these processes developed in the case of China, with its long history of traditional Chinese medicine, is only beginning to be researched. As we shall see, the field of medicine in China had a very different relationship to these processes, particularly during the Second World War. For example, Michael Shiyung Liu has recently raised the issue of “Chinese physique” in a study on Chinese military nutrition (Liu 2019). Interestingly, this concept had existed in Chinese medicine as early as the confrontation with Western medicine in the 1920s. However, there is a lack of in-depth discussion within the academic community about the history and impact of Chinese medicine upon the medicalization of war and the militarization of medicine. If the war had such a positive impact on the development of Western medicine, then what was the impact of war on traditional Chinese practices? The purpose of this note, therefore, is to explore the actions of practitioners of Chinese medicine in dealing with the urgent need that arose from the Sino-Japanese War for surgery and for the modification of Chinese medicine.","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"53 1","pages":"232 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91341566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2197799
H. Whittaker
We all live on the same planet and are part of the same biosphere. We have come to recognize that we are in a situation of increasing interdependence, and that our future is intrinsically linked to the preservation of the global life-support systems and to the survival of all forms of life. The nations and the scientists of the world are called upon to acknowledge the urgency of using knowledge from all fi elds of science in a responsible manner to address human needs and aspirations without misusing this knowledge …
{"title":"Innovation Beyond Technology: Science for Society and Interdisciplinary Approaches","authors":"H. Whittaker","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2197799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2197799","url":null,"abstract":"We all live on the same planet and are part of the same biosphere. We have come to recognize that we are in a situation of increasing interdependence, and that our future is intrinsically linked to the preservation of the global life-support systems and to the survival of all forms of life. The nations and the scientists of the world are called upon to acknowledge the urgency of using knowledge from all fi elds of science in a responsible manner to address human needs and aspirations without misusing this knowledge …","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"49 40","pages":"280 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72390526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-16DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2180869
Siyi Chen, Yimeng Wei, Wei Hong
Abstract A number of medical experts have become famous overnight in China since the outbreak of COVID-19. This research investigates four representative Chinese scientists by employing search analytics of the Baidu index (from December 2019 to May 2020) and content analysis of answers and commentaries on the Zhihu website (from January 2020 to May 2020). We find that the four scientists present different images and spark unprecedented publicity. In particular, the key to the transformation from scientists into public intellectuals is to demonstrate moral responsibility in public images, or to realize humorous and effective communication with the public. The birth of celebrity scientists has not only reshaped the public's traditional perception of scientists but also played a crucial role in the governance of pandemic risks by guiding the public's behavior and offering scientific ways to cope with risks.
{"title":"COVID-19 Making “Idols”: The Birth of Celebrity Scientists in China","authors":"Siyi Chen, Yimeng Wei, Wei Hong","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2180869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2180869","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A number of medical experts have become famous overnight in China since the outbreak of COVID-19. This research investigates four representative Chinese scientists by employing search analytics of the Baidu index (from December 2019 to May 2020) and content analysis of answers and commentaries on the Zhihu website (from January 2020 to May 2020). We find that the four scientists present different images and spark unprecedented publicity. In particular, the key to the transformation from scientists into public intellectuals is to demonstrate moral responsibility in public images, or to realize humorous and effective communication with the public. The birth of celebrity scientists has not only reshaped the public's traditional perception of scientists but also played a crucial role in the governance of pandemic risks by guiding the public's behavior and offering scientific ways to cope with risks.","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"13 1","pages":"239 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79104133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-06DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2177405
Eun-Sung Kim
{"title":"The Birth of Digital Epidemiology in South Korea","authors":"Eun-Sung Kim","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2177405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2177405","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83866642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-16DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2022.2148329
Mengyuan Fu, Kunhao Yang, Y. Fujigaki
Abstract Microplastics, an increasingly widespread environmental problem, have built a high profile on different communication platforms in Japan. Inspired by Davies and Horst’s understanding that science communication is constitutive and material, this article empirically analyzed the general situation of microplastics communication in the Japanese context. We examined the development in the meaning of microplastics as the exemplification of the constitutive dimension, as well as its communication stages, authorship, and readership with different interests as the representation of the material dimension. We chose the database National Diet Library Online as representative of Japanese literature. We extracted 190 microplastic-relevant journal articles published in different journal types from 2016 to 2020 and collected 162 online news articles as supplementary material. We found that even though the constitutive meaning of microplastics grew up fast, especially around 2018 and 2019, material factors varied that showed inclinations in practical communications. Despite the similar scale of communication in the specialist and the popular stages, the influences of scientists and interests from scientific fields on microplastics topics were overwhelmingly over the public fields, the divergences of which suggested several difficulties in solving such a complicated environmental problem.
{"title":"Constitutive and Material: An Empirical Analysis of the Two Dimensions of the Communication on Microplastics in Japanese Journals","authors":"Mengyuan Fu, Kunhao Yang, Y. Fujigaki","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2022.2148329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2022.2148329","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Microplastics, an increasingly widespread environmental problem, have built a high profile on different communication platforms in Japan. Inspired by Davies and Horst’s understanding that science communication is constitutive and material, this article empirically analyzed the general situation of microplastics communication in the Japanese context. We examined the development in the meaning of microplastics as the exemplification of the constitutive dimension, as well as its communication stages, authorship, and readership with different interests as the representation of the material dimension. We chose the database National Diet Library Online as representative of Japanese literature. We extracted 190 microplastic-relevant journal articles published in different journal types from 2016 to 2020 and collected 162 online news articles as supplementary material. We found that even though the constitutive meaning of microplastics grew up fast, especially around 2018 and 2019, material factors varied that showed inclinations in practical communications. Despite the similar scale of communication in the specialist and the popular stages, the influences of scientists and interests from scientific fields on microplastics topics were overwhelmingly over the public fields, the divergences of which suggested several difficulties in solving such a complicated environmental problem.","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"24 1","pages":"352 - 373"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84050520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2167486
C. Lee
Abstract Radioactive waste management in Malaysia remains a wicked problem, the result of extracting technoscientific knowledge for techno-economic and industrial science purposes. Early policies were not cognizant of the full extent of these risks. Moreover, wicked problems are complex problems that emerged out of interactions as a result of particular ecological conditions. Postnormal science (PNS) becomes the framework for the negotiation of these complexities. Science-based problem-solving is broadened to include non-science epistemologies, which enables the legitimation of participatory epistemic interventions from lay experts. The problems encountered in radioactive waste management resulted from the high-stake uncertainties involved in measuring and evaluating risks and their causes. Wicked problems arise when there are disagreements over the governance of risk; incomplete information received as a result of obtuseness in the decision-making process, or in the blackboxing of the risks occurrences and mechanisms of predictions; and contextual interpretations of data provided by different expert stakeholders that could culminate into misinformation. Wicked problems in the two cases to be discussed will be considered through these lenses: ambivalence over technoscientific authorities and the structures of (dis)trust, the over-reducibility of complex technoscientific problems, and the difficulties in enacting extended peer review when participatory practices were traditionally excluded from policy-making.
{"title":"Managing ‘Wicked’ Technoscientific Problems: The Postnormal Science of Risk Narratives","authors":"C. Lee","doi":"10.1080/18752160.2023.2167486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2023.2167486","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Radioactive waste management in Malaysia remains a wicked problem, the result of extracting technoscientific knowledge for techno-economic and industrial science purposes. Early policies were not cognizant of the full extent of these risks. Moreover, wicked problems are complex problems that emerged out of interactions as a result of particular ecological conditions. Postnormal science (PNS) becomes the framework for the negotiation of these complexities. Science-based problem-solving is broadened to include non-science epistemologies, which enables the legitimation of participatory epistemic interventions from lay experts. The problems encountered in radioactive waste management resulted from the high-stake uncertainties involved in measuring and evaluating risks and their causes. Wicked problems arise when there are disagreements over the governance of risk; incomplete information received as a result of obtuseness in the decision-making process, or in the blackboxing of the risks occurrences and mechanisms of predictions; and contextual interpretations of data provided by different expert stakeholders that could culminate into misinformation. Wicked problems in the two cases to be discussed will be considered through these lenses: ambivalence over technoscientific authorities and the structures of (dis)trust, the over-reducibility of complex technoscientific problems, and the difficulties in enacting extended peer review when participatory practices were traditionally excluded from policy-making.","PeriodicalId":45255,"journal":{"name":"East Asian Science Technology and Society-An International Journal","volume":"114 1","pages":"6 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75972315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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