News and Events

EASTS Participates in the Annual 4S Meeting

The EASTS International Editorial Board Meeting was held in conjunction with the 4S meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 10 November, 2023. We had 25 editors and associates in attendance in person, with two more joining online (Figure 1). The meeting’s agenda was as follows:

• Welcome and overview by Editor-in-Chief Wen-Ling Tu and Managing Editor Ryoko Nishijima

• Report on open access publishing by Professor Hsin-Hsing Chen

• Book review report by Professor Yu-Ling Huang

• Publishing/Marketing report by Professor Jia-shin Chen

• Report from the STS community in Japan by Professor Yuko Fujigaki and Professor Koichi Mikami

• Report from the STS community in Korea by Professor Chihyung Jeon

• Reports on other on-going projects and board-initiated thematic issues

• Discussions

During the open-floor discussions, we deliberated on the possibilities for placing more emphasis on comparative work, aiming to extend our reach to a broader audience. Addressing issues with a global nature, a single article focused solely on the Asian case has its limitations. Engaging in comparative and collaborative efforts within a more extensive umbrella study allows us to observe the ripples that spread out across the world. While panels and special issues are more traditional ways to present comparative works, one new idea for collaboration is the dialogical one currently underway between EASTS and our sister journal Tapuya. During 2023 we received many articles from Southeast Asia, something which continues to fuel our discussions on the boundaries and the pluralities of EAST(S). We concluded our discussions with a remark that we can explore and experiment with different formats in the coming year.

Figure 1 EASTS International Editorial Board Meeting.

Continuing the tradition, our reception event, EASTS-Tapuya Night, was jointly hosted with our sister journal, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, on 9 November, 2023, at Genius Lounge in Waikiki (Figure 2). We were thrilled to welcome over 120 guests, making it a great success. It was a delightful evening, providing a platform for reconnecting with old friends, forming new connections, and engaging in conversations that lasted well into the night. We extend our gratitude to all those in attendance, and we hope that you had the opportunity to participate in stimulating discussions and establish new friendships with scholars from diverse regions and across the generations.

Figure 2 Former Tapuya’s Editor-in-Chief Leandro Rodriguez Medina with EASTS’s Editor-in-Chief Wen-Ling Tu at EASTS-Tapuya Night.

Korean Translations of Professor Warwick Anderson’s Works to be Published

As reported in our previous issue, EASTS’s editors Professor Warwick Anderson and Professor Joan Fujimura have been honored as winners of the 2023 John Desmond Bernal Prize. We had the privilege of congratulating them in person at the award ceremony, recognizing that their contributions and achievements serve as a cornerstone for EASTS (Figure 3).

In tandem with this recognition, we are excited to share the news that selected works by Professor Anderson are scheduled to be translated into Korean and published by ITTA. Three articles from EASTS will be featured: “Asia as Method in Science and Technology Studies,” (Volume 6, Issue 4, 2012: 445–451), “Thickening Transregionalism: Historical Formations of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia,” (Volume 12 Issue 4, 2018: 503–518), and “STS with East Asian Characteristics?” (Volume 14, Issue 1, 2020: 163--168). The target publication date is set for mid-April 2024. Additionally, the Korean translation of “Thickening Transregionalism” will be published in Sogang University’s journal East Asian Studies, scheduled for the August 2024 issue.

Figure 3 From the left, Professor Hans Pols, Professor Yu-Yueh Tsai, Professor Warwick Anderson, Professor Joan Fujimura, and Editor-in-Chief Professor Wen-Ling Tu.

Associate Meet-up at Kyung Hee University, Seoul

With the publication of the special issue “Science, Law and Industrial Toxic Exposure” in EASTS’s issue 17.4, associate editor Professor Hsin-Hsing Chen, who is also the organizer of the special issue, visited the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Kyung Hee University’s Seoul Campus on 27 November, 2023 (Figure 4). Many members of the South Korean STS community have also been active participant/researchers in campaigns for victims of industrial toxic exposure such as that in the Samsung Leukemia Case since 2007. Throughout the years, they have also been crucial intellectual partners for discussion on this topic in East Asia and elsewhere.

Professor Chen gave a brown-bag luncheon talk titled “The Taiwan RCA Lawsuit: Final Stage and Community Building of a 25-year-long Struggle,” briefing Korean colleagues and students about what has been happening in the RCA lawsuit for the past few years. Afterward, he met with EASTS’s associate editor Professor Hee-Je Bak, as well as fellow STSers Professor Jongyoung Kim and Professor Eun-Sung Kim for an update on the editorial issues, as well as the developments of the Taiwan and Korean STS communities. They were all thrilled to meet each other especially after the long pandemic years.

Figure 4 From the left, Professor Hee-Je Bak, Professor Jongyoung Kim, Professor Eun-Sung Kim, and Professor Hsin-Hsing Chen.

Associate Editor Professor Akihisa Setoguchi’s Visit

EASTS’s Associate Editor, Professor Akihisa Setoguchi from Japan, visited the EASTS editorial office on 23 October, 2023, during EASTS’s seasonal editorial meeting (Figure 5). Professor Setoguchi is presently affiliated with Kyoto University, with a research focus on the history of biological sciences and nature in East Asia, and has assisted us greatly with editing articles related to Japan. We are always grateful for these opportunities for editors to meet, reconnect, and exchange updates on recent STS developments and emerging trends. Thank you for making the trip!

Figure 5 From the left, EASTS’s Project Manager Shih-Ting Wang, Editor Professor Sung-Yueh Perng, Editor-in-Chief Professor Wen-Ling Tu, Associate Editor Professor Akihisa Setoguchi, and Managing Editor Ryoko Nishijima.

Frédéric Keck’s Lecture and Book Publication in Taiwan

On 7 December, 2023, EASTS hosted a lecture titled “Sentinels, between diplomats and whistleblowers: Concepts to integrate animals in human collectives” by Dr. Frédéric Keck, a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (Figure 6). The lecture was organized in collaboration with the Bureau Français de Taipei and the International College of Innovation (ICI) at National Chengchi University (NCCU), and was held in conjunction with Associate Professor Paul Jobin’s course “Gaia Politics, Ecology, and War.” Dr. Keck’s research expertise lies in the sociology of risk and environmental anthropology, and he conducts ethnographic research in zoonotic pathogens. He co-leads the research team “Human/animal relations: contemporary issues” at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale).

In the lecture, Dr. Keck shared his insights into how non-human actors participate in the global war against emerging viruses, reflecting upon contemporary relationships between humans and animals and biopolitical questions raised by avian influenza. He introduced the concept of “sentinels” as a means to understand anthropologically and philosophically the integration of animals in human societies. The term originates from Dr. Keck’s ethnographic research in Hong Kong, where the concept was initially applied to monitor the risk of influenza from China. During the 1997 H5N1 outbreak, the use of “sentinel chickens” (shaobingji, 哨兵雞) as indicators of virus presence highlighted the interconnectedness of human and non-human entities. Dr. Keck suggests that the massive killing of chickens during this outbreak served a dual purpose: sacrificing to protect humans from the flu, and symbolizing Chinese sovereignty amid political tensions.

Dr. Keck extends the concept of sentinels across various scales, from viruses/microbes, organisms, farms, and territories, to intercontinental flyways. He delves into immunology, exploring the idea of “sentinel cells” as gatekeepers of health that, when overwhelmed, can lead to detrimental consequences. As for sentinel territories, territories such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are public health sentinels for disease. Instead of sacrificing themselves, these territories fight against viruses coming from a modernizing China. Keck distinguishes sentinels from ideas such as “diplomats”, as theorized by Bruno Latour and Baptiste Morizot, and “whistleblowers” as used by scholars like Luc Boltanski, Francis Chateauraynaud, and Didier Torny, positioning them as a unique concept that operates on a different level — a totemic operator that mediates contradictions in the lived world. Ultimately, Dr. Keck emphasizes the role of sentinels as techniques of hunting societies, employing logic of vigilance in contrast to the benevolent nature of diplomats and whistleblowers.

The lecture was followed by a lively discussion session with active engagement from a diverse audience comprising both local and international scholars and students. We are confident that this discussion not only enriched the participants’ comprehension but also spurred critical reflection on the concepts elucidated during the lecture.

Figure 6 Speaker Dr. Frédéric Keck (front row, third from right), EASTS’s Editor-in-Chief and ICI Dean, Prof. Wen-Ling Tu (second from right), Associate Research Fellow of the Academia Sinica and Adjunct Associate Professor at NCCU, Dr. Paul Jobin (rightmost), representatives from the Bureau Français de Taipei (leftmost and second from left), and attendees.

You can find more details about Dr. Keck’s ethnographic research on avian influenza preparedness techniques in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore and related concepts of “sentinels” in his book Avian Reservoirs: Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts (Keck 2020). In December 2023, this book was also translated into Traditional Mandarin by Rongtai Chen and published in Taiwan as 禽流感的哨兵:中國邊界上的病毒獵人和賞鳥者如何預備傳染病大流行 (Keck 2023).

Acknowledgments

EASTS Editorial Office would like to give a special thanks to Pin-Syue Huang, Research Assistant at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, whose notes greatly assisted us in our coverage of Dr. Keck’s lecture in News and Events.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).