Tenth Anniversary of the March 11 Disaster in Japan: STS Reflections
Coinciding with the day on which EASTS published its first issue with Routledge, March 11 marke,d the tenth anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The event was unquestionably catastrophic in both scale and nature, but what was unexpected was the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and the spread of radioactive contamination that followed. This turned the disaster into the complex, challenging task it has proved to be ever since. It afflicted terribly the Japanese people, and it also had an impact upon those STS scholars who concern themselves with energy policy and development, and with the immense socio-technical system that is nuclear power. EASTS has been paying close attention to this field of STS and has published a number of articles over the past few years, including a panel discussion shortly after the disaster (vol. 5, nos. 3 and 4) and a review of two documentary films (vol. 13, no. 2). We are delighted that our editor, Kohta Juraku, an expert on the topic who has been deeply involved in it ever since the disaster, has been able to write for us the reflective literature review which appears in this issue. We want to stress that this is no time to consign the disaster to history; to say nothing of the toll it has taken on countless people’s lives and happiness, it has taught us important STS lessons, and we are committed to valuing those lessons in preventing future failures of technology.
The tenth anniversary of the 2011 earthquake, its subsequent tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11 proved to be of a soberer atmosphere than I had expected, perhaps partly because of the various practical restrictions and socio-psychological effects caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Individual Japanese STSers and the Japanese STS community as a whole have struggled with the contradictions that center on the question of what precisely should be their role and their behavior during this emergency, this very uncertain situation? Many people, including myself, have tried to set out in some organized way our reflections on our experiences of the past decade. Anticipating the upcoming tenth anniversary, a number of titles have been published over the past couple of years by Japanese STSers.
The book series The Challenge of STS (科学技術社会論の挑戦, University of Tokyo Press, 2020) was published as an organized compilation of Japanese STSers’ work. It consists of three books and was edited by EASTS associate editor Yuko Fujigaki (also the editor-in-chief of this series), Tadashi Kobayashi, Shuichi Tsukahara, Koji Hirata, and EASTS senior editor Hideto Nakajima. All of them have been the successive chair of the Japan Society for Science and Technology Studies (JSSTS), the major STS academic society in Japan. Its 29 chapters cover the extent and depth of a contemporary Japanese STS that has experienced such an instinctive opening up under the impact of the disaster.
It seems to me that the series’ editors and its many authors share some sense that Japanese STS has been unable to make a substantial contribution to society in the wake of the disaster, even though it had once differentiated itself from the other humanities and social sciences by its “usefulness” for society in general, for citizens, and for public administration, especially in the sub-field of “science communication.” This notion had a positive impact in the start-up period of Japanese STS in the 2000s. Yet, when push came to shove, not a few policy-makers, public practitioners, scientists, and engineers were disappointed at the ineffectuality of STS and left the JSSTS and other STS-related interdisciplinary arenas. The phrase “sleeping together but dreaming different dreams” might best sum up the relationship between what STS had set out to achieve and the reality of 2011.
And not just the trauma of the 2011 disaster but also consecutive (and perhaps more frequent and devastating) major natural disasters and technological failures in the 2010s inevitably forced STS scholarship to be more self-reflective. Ryuma Shineha’s Responsible Governance on Science and Technology (責任ある科学技術ガバナンス概論, Nakanishiya Shuppan, 2020) is the first Japanese handbook of science and technology governance studies, an important pillar of contemporary STS scholarship. It covers topics from the history of science and technology policy through to science communication, from research evaluation to ELSI/RRI initiatives. The author also co-edited Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Context: Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) with sociologist Kyle Cleveland and historian Scott G. Knowles. It is one of this decade’s best examples of interdisciplinary and international collaboration. He further edited For the Memories and Narratives of Disasters in the Society (災禍をめぐる「記憶」と「語り」, Nakanishiya Shuppan, 2021) which critically examines the standpoints and impacts of humanities and social scientific research on “disaster” from the perspective of “memorialization” and “narratives.”
Another long-awaited Japanese textbook in this field is Sociology of Science (科学社会学, University of Tokyo Press, 2020) edited by EASTS senior editor Miwao Matsumoto. This is his first university-level textbook of the sociology of science and technology, though he has already authored a series of important works in the field. It is noteworthy that Japanese STS-affiliated sociologists and historians from the Sociology of Science Society of Japan (one of the major STS-related academic communities there) contributed chapters to the book. It is expected to be a catalyst for further academic exchange between communities, as well as a good introduction for junior students.
Simulation, Prediction, and Society: The Politics of Forecasting (予測がつくる社会, University of Tokyo Press, 2019), which was reviewed by EASTS (vol. 15, no. 1) and edited by EASTS editors Tomiko Yamaguchi and Masato Fukushima, is another example of the reflective evolution of STS scholarship in Japan. It is written by sociologists and anthropologists in the broader sense of STS, in collaboration with interdisciplinary experts. I would just like here to remind readers about the existence of this book as it will hold a great deal of importance for us in describing, analyzing, and understanding the post-COVID-19 world.
Finally, let me humbly introduce my own Learning from Technological Failures: Toward the Era of Risk and Resilience (科学技術の失敗から学ぶということ:リスクとレジリエンスの時代に向けて, Ohmsha, 2020). An introductory book for the undergraduate course Interdisciplinary Studies of Technological Failure, it is to date the latest STS book to tackle the disaster. It tries to connect the STS perspective with engineering wisdom, by examining cases of technological disaster with a multi-dimensional analysis.
Fully aware that the above review of books may be considered selective–for example, I do not include in this report the English-language Lessons from Fukushima (edited by Yuko Fujigaki and previously reviewed in EASTS)–I simply wanted to highlight the pedagogical efforts Japanese STSers have made in responding to the 2011 disaster. Michael Fischer rightly indicates this aspect of STS discussion in his film review (vol. 13, no. 2). Based on these few examples given here, I do hope we are able to broaden and deepen our scholarship further in the coming decades, so that, with our international readership, we might succeed in making society that bit better.
Keep Disseminating and Robust: STS at Tsinghua University
EASTS first reported the decision to dissolve the STS Institute at Tsinghua University, China, in our issue that covered fresh scholarship about science in the Mao era (vol. 13, no. 3). Its editor’s note ran: “We believe that our current issue demonstrates the importance of history in doing East Asian STS; we also want to use this issue to support our colleagues at Tsinghua University. Just as with China studies, a clear disciplinary line cannot be drawn for STS. May they keep their research spirits high after their relocation, making this an opportunity for STS to be done well and to shine brightly.” Three years on, we believe this is a good time to review STS in China via Tsinghua University’s STS Institute and the changes made to relocate its faculty since dissolution. Our editor Wei Hong, also a member of the STS program at Tsinghua University, has kindly written a report for us. With it we wish our Chinese STS colleagues well, and may they remain as productive and innovative as ever.
Established in 1985, The Institute of Science, Technology and Society at Tsinghua University was the first of its kind in China. Its history can be traced back to 1978, when it began as a teaching and research division of Dialectics of Nature (自然辩证法). The institute was closed in the summer of 2018, after celebrating its fortieth anniversary. Sudden as the decision sounded to our colleagues worldwide, it was in fact the second of two blows to the institute.
The crisis started in 2011, when Dialectics of Nature was downgraded from a required course for all Master’s students to a selective one. In addition, the teaching load of the course was reduced from 48 hours to 18 hours. With its origins in Friedrich Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, the course was devised to offer philosophical training on science and technology to graduate students majoring in science, engineering, agriculture, or medicine. It provided guaranteed teaching posts across China for those philosophers and historians of science and technology who in due course would be most likely to be attracted to STS. Based on the previous teaching load, the STS Institute at Tsinghua University had required at least 12 faculty members, and even demanded 16 at its peak. When the course lost its status in graduate education, the legitimacy of maintaining an independent institute was weakened.
STS is, besides, not a formal discipline approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Since 2016, national resources related to teaching and research have been distributed according to rankings in disciplines rather than universities. In response to that reform, many universities canceled their weaker disciplines or inter-disciplinary units to strengthen their stronger disciplines. Against this backdrop, dividing the STS Institute and merging its faculty members into the formal discipline to which they belonged became the rational choice.
Two faculty members (Li Liu 刘立 and Guangling Xiao 肖广岭) left for the School of Marxism, where the course of Dialectics of Nature is administered, before the Institute was closed. The other thirteen were each invited to choose the department to which they wanted to transfer. Eight of them (Tong Wu 吴彤, Jian Yang 杨舰, Bing Liu 刘兵, Wei Wang 王巍, Ou Bao 鲍鸥, Yi Lei 雷毅, Jingsong Jiang 蒋劲松, and Chengwei Wang 王程韡) chose to go to the Department of the History of Science in the School of Humanities, which gained approval on 16 May 2017, and was established on 30 June 2017. Five stayed in the School of Social Sciences, of whom four (Zhengfeng Li 李正风, Chenggang Zhang 张成岗, Lianghua Gao 高亮华, and Wei Hong 洪伟) went to the Department of Sociology, and one, Jinxi Wu 吴金希, went to the Institute of Economics. The Center of Science, Technology and Society was retained, to maintain a virtual STS community on campus. Our students were also allowed to transfer to the school of their choice. Most of them preferred to stay affiliated with the School of Social Sciences. In the case of students registered in 2019 and before, we meet regularly to deal with their qualifying exams, proposal defenses, and thesis defenses as originally planned.
Those colleagues who moved to the Department of the History of Science were made very welcome by its students. The broad scope of their research and their engagement with contemporary social issues continue to attract young scholars to the field of STS. In 2019, Jian Yang had two papers published in international journals: “Compatible Humanists: Yuen Ren Chao Meets George Sarton” in Isis, and “When overseas education meets a changing local context: the role of Tokyo Higher Technical School in the industrial modernization of China in the early twentieth century” in History of Education. Two of our colleagues retired recently–Tong Wu in 2019 and Ou Bao in 2020. Their lifelong achievements in philosophy and history of science and technology won high appreciation from their colleagues and students.
Mainly comprising philosophers and historians, the Chinese STS community has long been striving to understand and apply the sociological approach to conducting research. To this end, the Tsinghua STS Institute initiated a collaboration with the Department of Sociology in 2014, offering Master’s degrees and PhDs in sociology. In our sociological concentration, we incorporated a number of relevant courses into the teaching curriculum. By encouraging our students to carry out empirical research, we anticipated that we would foster indigenous STS research in China. We also started a regular panel on Sociology of Science at the Annual Sociological Meeting in 2013 and turned it into a formal committee in 2015, with Zhengfeng Li as founding chair and Wei Hong as chief secretary. Based on this groundwork, our colleagues who went to the Department of Sociology made a smooth transition. We maintain an STS concentration under the discipline of sociology to continue our work. Our new colleagues have also warmly invited us to collaborate in building research consortia on STS, Social Network Analysis, and Computational Social Sciences.
During the 2021 Chinese New Year, Zhengfeng Li was invited to give a talk entitled “Development of STS: Historical Retrospect and Future Prospects” to a gathering of prominent northern sociologists, calling for recognition of the significance of STS. At the invitation of the Tsinghua Sociological Review, Wei Hong served as guest editor for a recent special issue on STS, with topics including artificial intelligence, sound studies, lay epidemiology, a review of “Talking STS,” and a reflection on co-production theory. Persevering in our efforts, we are introducing STS perspectives to the sociology community, and integrating sociological methodology into our STS research.
For generations, the Tsinghua STS Institute was committed to promoting STS as a formal discipline in China. With the closure of the Institute, that ambition has faded. However, after blending into the disciplines we have chosen, new opportunities are emerging as well as challenges. Almost three years after the closure, we are looking forward to continuing our adventure and to exploring a new route for STS that is adapted to Chinese academia. Collaborating with Science Press since 2010, our previous director Guoping Zen 曾国屏 initiated a book series entitled “Understanding Science” (理解科学文丛). A dozen books have now been published. Continuing that initiative, we have further books coming out this year, including a collection of publications representative of our faculty members as a memorial to our beloved STS Institute. Oh and by the way, we still gather together every New Year to celebrate the occasion, just as we always did!
Annual Meetings of the History of Science Society of Japan and the Taiwan STS Association
Despite Covid not yet being fully under control, East Asian STS scholars have gradually resumed their regular activities–in both conventional and innovative ways–in the wake of the first wave of the pandemic and have actively engaged in responding to it.
After the cancellation of its annual meeting in 2020 due to the pandemic, the History of Science Society of Japan, one of the oldest STS organizations in East Asia, resumed the meeting on 22 and 23 May 2021. Hosted by Kobe University, with EASTS editors Togo Tsukahara and Akihisa Setoguchi as local committee members, the meeting was conducted virtually. In addition to regular presentations and symposia/roundtables, it included two special symposia–one in memory of the historian of technology in Japan and former EASTS editor Aaron Moore (1972–2019) and his intellectual legacy, and the other on Covid from a history of science perspective (a memorial essay on Aaron Moore appeared in vol. 14, no. 1). Other STS-related sessions included symposia on the tenth anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake disaster and on the history of personal hygiene in the era of the pandemic. For a full program of the meeting, see https://sites.google.com/view/kagakusi2021/.
Last year Taiwan was lucky to survive the onslaught of Covid, and its academic activities were not much hindered. However, perhaps for the same reason, the Taiwan STS Association did not specifically address collective opinions on Covid and its social impact except for a plenary panel held at its annual meeting in Hsinchu in July 2020. This year the annual meeting of the Taiwan STS Association was arranged to be held at National Dong Hwa University on 26 and 27 June 2021, which would mark its first time of meeting in Eastern Taiwan. EASTS editor Emma Kowal, an authority in this field and current president of the TransAsiaSTS network, was invited to deliver a keynote speech on indigenous and scientific knowledges in epigenetic science. It would have been the first time that EASTS and its publishing partner Routledge had formally attended such an occasion together. Unfortunately, due to a sudden local outbreak of Covid that started on 15 May, the meeting was regrettably postponed and the new meeting dates and format have not been determined. For a full program of the meeting as it was originally planned, see
http://sts.org.tw/%e5%b9%b4%e6%9c%83/2021%e5%b9%b4%e5%b9%b4%e6%9c%83/2021-%e8%ad%b0%e7%a8%8b.