Just like other academic fields, STS respects language. This is especially so in East Asia, where English has long been the predominant first foreign language for students and academics. But it is not just that. Along with their professional training, STS researchers in East Asia acquire, like their Western colleagues, other European languages, and an increasing number of scholars are learning additional Asian languages to comprehend classical texts or do fieldwork. Against the conventional notion pertaining in the West, STS in East Asia projects a culturally bound network upon which its scholarship evolves. This network has been well represented in the organization of EASTS's editorial board since its inception in 2007, consisting as it does of representative academic communities in this region.
STS has been changing. Statistics is now recognized as a “language” for STS studies. The subject to which it is applied, “big data,” is gaining increasing legitimacy in coping with a more complicated, interrelated world of science and technology and their public presentations. EASTS is witnessing this change and welcomes it. It is not only adding new tools and methods but also providing new ways to reflect the cultural network as East Asia gradually becomes a field for global STS.
Three research articles in this issue address different aspects of a changing Asia. They share concerns over language, data, networks, and the ways in which these deepen our understanding of science and policy. Seiko Ishihara-Shineha's article is a critical review of science and technology policy in postwar Japan. Starting with a reflection on the government's public response to the 2011 earthquake, this article nicely reveals a continual gap between policy claims and ways to achieve them. Using data-mining technology, Ishihara-Shineha examines Japanese white papers on science and technology from 1958 to 2015 to identify trends in the science communication model. This structural assessment also provides information necessary to understanding why the old model of “public understanding of science and technology” still persists, despite policy language having shifted to a model of “public engagement in science and technology.”
Hee Je Bak and Daniel Kleinman's article compares the ways in which the Korean and US media treated bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) during the controversy over the Korean government's decision to resume importing US beef in 2008. At first glance, the article might not surprise anyone familiar with mass media in East Asia. Even so, what is new is the methodology, which analyzes scientific accounts from media coverage archives on “mad cow disease” (aka BSE) in Korea and the United States. Like Ishihara-Shineha's treatment of Japanese white papers, the authors use the database to select critical moments at which BSE was the subject of heated dispute. Furthermore, and using the United States as a reference point, they examine Korean media culture by analyzing the ways in which it reported BSE through its particular political viewpoint. Although the scientific accounts provided by the media were not “made up,” the authors demonstrate that these accounts are selected and interpreted, a process that can never be immune to the political context in which controversies emerge.
Prasanna Kumar Patra and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner's article on clinical stem cell intervention (CSCI) captures the emerging ties between Japan and India. Using “bionetworking,” a concept created by the authors to analyze “social entrepreneurial network activities involving biomedical research and health care institutions,” this article follows the India-Japan Centre for Regenerative Medicine, which offers CSCI in Chennai, India, delineating the social ground on which such experimental treatment continues to thrive after the provision of stem cell therapy regulation. Like organ trafficking and illegal trade in patented drugs, the CSCI case makes obvious the necessity for transnational STS and, in so doing, the need to revise the conventional frame that divides South and East Asia, to manage the complexity of medicine and business.
In the second half of this issue, we proudly present a forum on science and language and a set of essays on gender and science, along with a review of Cultures without Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge, a ground breaking, boundary-crossing new book that deals with science in different cultures. These contributions intend to honor the academic achievement of Evelyn Fox Keller, winner of the 2011 4S John Desmond Bernal Prize and an advisory editor of EASTS since its inception. As the founding editor-in-chief of EASTS, Daiwie Fu, recalls in the introduction to the forum, Keller was invited to the 2008 International Conference of Women Scientists in Taipei and became familiar with the young EASTS and with the newly founded Institute of Science, Technology and Society at National Yang-Ming University, where the conference was held. During that visit, she also visited southern Taiwan, where, as mentioned by one of her hosts, Hsiu-Yun Wang, she was an inspiration to all with whom she met and talked. She was kind but rigorous in her thinking, witty but never pessimistic about things she believes. For scientists, humanities academics, and students looking to move beyond gender boundaries in science, Keller is not just an authority on the topic. As nicely reflected on the cover of this issue, she can be understood as both “a person with a brain” and “a walking brain.” Her career represents a generation of great minds that wander among and struggle against different fields: the history and philosophy of science, science in feminism (to borrow Sandra Harding's words), and, eventually, life and the different ways to interpret it. She is focused; she works on whatever she feels is worth studying, and she lives these out in her daily life.
Keller's visit was brief, but its influence has lasted. Nine years later, EASTS is delighted to be able to publish her article “Globalization, Scientific Lexicons, and the Future of Biology,” followed by five comments by colleagues on the history and philosophy of science in Asia and then her responses to them. As readers can see, this article—or provocation, to use Keller's term—is a stimulating piece. It reveals her peculiar treatment of Asian languages and their potential to provide “alternative ways of framing the world.” With her kind help, EASTS is able to reconstruct Keller's Taiwan tour and its consequences, including her inspiring talk at National Yang-Ming University, essays by colleagues who hosted her visit, and an essay by students who were in the audience and decided to pursue a career in science. Keller might not realize how great her influence is on people doing gender and science. As testified in this set of essays, we demonstrate what STS scholars can achieve beyond their scholarly contribution.
While finalizing this editor's note, I can't help but remember Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Keller used to teach and now resides, and Boston, where this year's 4S annual meeting will be held. It is a great city that has witnessed both the rise of the United States and the changing landscape of STS, and it is a perfect venue for EASTS to formally inaugurate its second decade. EASTS appreciates the scholarly networks that connect us with Keller and other outstanding scholars and communities around the world, and that have established themselves well in the first decade of EASTS and will remain robust under whatever world order President Trump attempts to impose. In an era when indexed journals seem to speak loudly with all their anonymous, archival power, EASTS treasures such networks. We believe that any scholarly piece published in EASTS does not stand alone and will not fade away. In terms of “events” (to borrow the idea of the Annales school's Fernand Braudel), these work will have academic consequences and naturally create a structure, via EASTS, which is not only analyzable but also enjoyable, memorable, and distinct.
And so we invite you to join us in making an event of your own in the living archive that is EASTS!