This is a collection of articles published in East Asian Science, Technology, and Society in 2009 and 2010, edited by Togo Tsukahara. The contributors provide overview the state of social studies of science and technology in Japan, especially from the perspectives of sociology and history.
The articles discuss the science-society nexus in Japan, assessing the place and character of the Public Understanding of Science and Science Communication. They also refer to the influence of industrial ecological and health disasters, such as Minamata disease, on STS, foreshadowing the impact of the triple disasters of 3.11 on the field. Finally, they address the question of the universality of STS concepts and frameworks, and how Japanese and East Asian STS may draw and be differentiated from Euro-American STS.
Cite as: Otsuki, Grant Jun. 2018. “Japanese STS in Global, East Asian, and Local Contexts.” In Anthropologies of Science and Technology in Japan, created by Yoko Taguchi, Miki Namba, Grant Jun Otsuki, Gergely Mohacsi, Shuhei Kimura, and Miho Ishii. In STS Across Borders Digital Exhibit, curated by Aalok Khandekar and Kim Fortun. Society for Social Studies of Science. August.
In this article, Akihisa Setoguchi discusses the history of biology in Japan in terms of three generations of historians defined by their relationship to Darwinism from 1909 to 2009. Specifically, he focuses on their respective assessments of the influence of Edward Sylvester Morse, who...Read more
Low provides a brief overview of the state of the field of history of science in Japan, and of the history of Japan abroad. Focusing on key figures and institutional resources, Low concludes that though there are promising developments in the history of science, there "less positive signs" for...Read more
Resisting the conventional framing of "Western" versus "non-Western" frameworks, Matsumoto discusses challenges facing the sociology of science and technology, with a special emphasis on "theoretical challenges from the viewpoint of a scholar who is embedded in the East Asian locality." (130) ...Read more
Historian Gregory Clancey reflects on the institutionalization of the discipline of the history of technology in Japan and East Asia, in relation to the history of science, STS, and developments in the West. Read more
This 2009 article by Yuko Fujigaki describes the development of Japanese STS from the 1980s up to the planning processes for the 2010 4S Meeting in Tokyo. The article also focuses on analyzing historical case studies (Minamata disease, itai-itai disease, the Monju nuclear power plant incidents)...Read more
This article introduces the second set of papers on the state of the social studies of science in Japan that emerged from a March 2009 workshop on Asian STS held at the National University of Singapore. Read more
This article proposes a qualitative/quantative analysis of articles published in the Journal of Science and Technology Studies, a Japanese language STS journal, and East Asian Science, Technology, and Society to gain a grasp on what might constitute "East Asian Science...Read more
This article by Togo Tsukahara introduces a set of articles published in East Asian Science, Technology and Society in 2009, and asks what constitutes "Asian STS" broadly and Japanese STS specifically. These articles are products of the workshop "Toward a Trans-Asian...Read more