In Memory of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024), Ever a Loved and Respected Supporter of EASTS

Professor Adele E. Clarke, distinguished scholar and leader in the field of Science, Technology, and Medicine Studies (ST&MS), passed away on January 19, 2024, in San Francisco. Her work in women’s health, biomedicalization, and qualitative methodology inspired a generation of students and acolytes. She served as an editorial board member of EASTS from our inception in 2007 through to 2019, during which time she gave enthusiastically of herself in terms of editorship, scholarship, and life, contributing to this journal enormously. This memorial essay was jointly written by Chia-Ling Wu, Wen-Hua Kuo, and Jia-shin Chen, who represented our editorial teams at different times. Professor Clarke will be remembered for her lasting support for EASTS and her sincere, cheerful, and caring attitude, which left a deep impression upon all around her.

─EASTS Editorial Office

Professor Adele E. Clarke was a long-time participant in the life and work of EASTS. Back during the earliest iteration of our editorial committee, associate editor Warwick Anderson recommended Adele join the board. Although initially hesitant, she eventually accepted the invitation and became deeply committed to the journal's mission.

Adele attended the second EASTS International Conference in Taipei in 2007, themed “Technology, Family and Biomedicalization in East Asia,” where she delivered a keynote speech based on her book Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. As always, she humbly invited all forms of dialogue, whether related to the US situation or not. She actively engaged with presentations and provided insightful comments to enhance upcoming special issues. Even though many of our editors and participants had only first met Adele at this conference, her kindliness and scholarly devotion quickly impressed everyone and fostered many friendships. Taiwanese STS scholar Yi-Ping Lin, for instance, presented a paper titled “Women and Cadmium,” reflecting on the infamous itai-itai disease that was recognized in Japan in the 1960s. Adele appreciated Lin's approach and offered detailed advice for revision, suggesting the clever title “Follow the Cad-mium,” playing on the word “cad” as both the disease-causing metal and an agent of mistreatment toward women. Although Adele’s difficulty in walking long distances due to a previous automobile injury limited her ability to join others during a later trip to the northeastern coast of Taiwan after the intense two-day meeting, her ever-encouraging smile while waiting melted everyone’s hearts.

Together with Azumi Tsuge from Japan and Chia-Ling Wu, our then associate editor, Adele edited a special issue on Gender and Reproductive Technologies in 2008. She dedicated herself to curating valuable resources for this issue, which included four articles, one introduction, and one bibliography of English works. In her single-authored introduction, Adele analyzed major approaches and emerging trends in the study of gender and reproductive technologies. She identified four key issues in East Asia: imperial and colonial roots and contexts, postcolonial and nationalist embeddedness, feminist theories of gender and transnationalism, and biological citizenship and new biosocialities. Many of the insights she shared in this seminal review article remain critical to the field today. As she wrote:

We anticipate that the future scholarship will articulate layered consequences of imperialism, colonialisms and postcolonialisms, and begin to tease these apart. There also exist hybridities of practices of traditional/premodern and high-tech interventions in reproductive processes that the analytical and conceptual tools of ST&MS should be able to grapple with ably. Biological citizenship and emergent forms of biosociality in both their localizing and transnationalizing dimensions will also be linked to reproductive technologies in newly elaborated ways (Clarke 2008: 216).

Adele’s steadfast support for the East Asian STS and feminist community remained unwavering. She made a point of attending every editorial meeting of EASTS held during the annual Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) meetings. Whenever East Asian feminist scholars organized panels on reproductive technologies at the 4S, Adele could reliably be seen walking in, warmly greeting both new and familiar faces, and offering insightful commentary after each presentation. Her active participation in the 2010 4S meeting in Tokyo, where she enthusiastically engaged in discussions organized by Japanese feminist STS scholars, exemplified her dedication to facilitating collaboration and dialogue within the field. Upon receiving the Leo G. Reeder Award for distinguished contributions to medical sociology in the 2015 meeting of the American Sociological Association, Adele graciously integrated photos into her presentation slides, acknowledging the experience as a mutual learning opportunity.

When Chia-Ling Wu stepped down from the EASTS editor-in-chief role in 2015, she expressed her gratitude to Adele in a farewell note, “Editing, Cooking and Transforming”, remembering how Adele had “served not only as an EASTS editor but also as my mentor. Occasionally, when facing some tough cases, I felt like I was inside a pressure cooker. Yet I could reveal my vulnerability and confusion to Adele so freely, and I always got the wisest advice and comfort” (Wu 2016: 226).

When Wen-Hua Kuo assumed the position of upcoming editor-in-chief of EASTS in 2015, Adele immediately sent him her kind regards and encouragement. Wen-Hua received feedback from her on EASTS’ annual reports almost every year and got to know her working style. While discussing journal business in a straightforward (and sometimes even tenacious) manner as a senior scholar, Adele was very warm toward Wen-Hua and other colleagues in Taiwan, caring about their research projects, academic careers, and potential ways to achieve a meaningful STS for the future. Wen-Hua fondly remembers one such occasion. Shortly before the 2017 4S meeting, he sought advice by visiting Adele in San Francisco on the way to Boston. This was the first chance he had had to converse at length with her and to appreciate the scholars of her generation and their commitment—not necessarily just to STS in a disciplinary sense but to any intellectual means that might enable change. Adele and Allan, her soulmate, wonderfully entertained him with good food, wine, and music. Their hospitality made him realize how to balance intellectual and personal life to survive a deteriorating academic environment.

Toward the end of Wen-Hua’s editorship of EASTS in 2022, he visited Adele on the way to Mexico, where the 4S meeting was being held. This was his first visit to the US after the COVID-19 pandemic; on behalf of EASTS he invited her to say a few words at the “STS Journaling Past and Future” conference (held at the University of California Irvine on December 12, 2022, with Adele participating online). He also wanted to check that Adele was doing well. She was still accessible through emails and social media, but had been physically limited for a while. Even so, Adele treated him warmly, as always, and in her basement study room showed him how to join the dots between his latest fieldwork research on end-of-life care and some of the lesser-known works by her mentor, Anselm Strauss. She spent quite a long time discussing some of Strauss’ early works with Wen-Hua, including those on the trajectories of chronic diseases and pain management. They were both so engrossed that there came a moment where she simply exclaimed: “Wen-Hua, you are indeed a good sociologist!” For Wen-Hua, it was so touching to see that Adele was not only an authority in medical sociology or an advisor of EASTS; she presented how we should love people’s lives and the world as human beings.

In the last year of her life, Adele was under treatment and rehabilitation for her long-term pain and other disabling physical conditions. Nevertheless, just as she always had done, she still cared about her former student and advisee Jia-shin Chen, who became an associate editor of EASTS in 2022 under the new editor-in-chief, Wen-Ling Tu. Adele’s ever-present, heart-warming care for others touched many people’s lives and contributed to the journal in many ways. She will be forever remembered.

Disclosure Statement

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