Introduction (1): Japanese STS in Global, East Asian, and Local Contexts

Introduction (1): Japanese STS in Global, East Asian, and Local Contexts Togo Tsukahara Received: 18 October 2009 /Accepted: 18 October 2009 /Published online: 15 November 2009 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2009 In March 2009, I had the opportunity to participate in the workshop “Toward a Trans-Asian Science & Technology Studies” (STS),1 jointly organized by the Asia Research Institute and STS Cluster, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. The chief organizer was Gregory Clancey, who is in charge of, and responsible for, the institutionalization of STS in Singapore. It was a stimulating experience, and allowed me to reflect on STS in Japan in a wider Asian/ global context.2 The March workshop also led to a round-table session on Japanese STS in an East Asian context held in June 2009 in Taiwan. It goes without saying that STS is a multi-disciplinary practice and academic movement originating in Europe and the USA. It is primarily concerned with science and technology in society, and is said to have grown out of the ivory tower of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) and the Sociology of Science. Essentially, most of the theoretical frameworks have been presented in and shared in Western languages, the basic assumptions and models having been taken from techno-science studies in US–European (Western) society. The question arose in the Singapore Workshop as to whether STS can be global, and whether it is possible to analyze socalled globalized techno-science in different societies, particularly in Asia. The reality of techno-scientific development in Asia is both a struggle for and against techno-science; local innovation and technological development have been successEast Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (2009) 3:505–509 DOI 10.1007/s12280-009-9112-7 1 STS can also be Science, Technology and Society. 2 Togo Tsukahara, “Identity Problem?: On Japanese STS, framed in the Three-axis model”, in Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal Devoted to Developing World (Sage) to be published. T. Tsukahara (*) Kobe University, Kobe, Japan e-mail: byz06433@nifty.com e-mail: leiden93@gmail.com fully achieved by some, and there have been strong calls for more techno-scientific progress to be made. We also recognize the tragic aspect of the fact that while some are eager to adapt and adjust to it, some suffer from it and have to deal with problems such as environmental destruction, the side-effects of medicine, and the alienation of humanity by technology. We need to understand how to deal with science and technology in our social settings, and not only seek to advance technoscience but also to control and regulate it through social/epistemological insights and democratic consensus. It was an exciting experience to discuss with other Asian colleagues how Asian STS should respond to techno-science in different Asian contexts, and to ask questions and discuss the topic from a wider perspective. In the Singapore Workshop, we reconfirmed that there were early Indian initiatives to deal systematically with STS in Asia, as can be seen in the emergence of Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal Devoted to the Developing World (Sage) in 1995. We noted that the establishment of the East Asian STS journal, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (Springer) followed initiatives by Indian scholars in 2006. In these journals, we see a growing “scientific (journal) community of STS” in Asian academia. Local societies emerged in research communities in Asia, such as the Japanese STS Society in 2001, and the institutionalization of STS took place within various local settings and universities. There has also been an emerging trend for scholars to network with each other at international STS conferences such as the Tokyo–Kyoto–Hiroshima conference in 1998, and a series of East Asian STS network conferences which have been held nine times in East Asia since 2000.3 One such opportunity for further networking will be the 4S annual meeting to be hosted in Tokyo in August 2010. The 4S conference in Tokyo will surely be a milestone for STS, globally, regionally, and locally. Having briefly considered the development of STS, Fu Daiwie, the Editor of the EASTS Journal...