Power in Scientific Working Relationships
Lead Convenor: Elise Burton
In this session, we will explore how science emerges through human relationships. In particular, we will analyze how certain kinds of relationships have come to be called “scientific collaboration,” and why collaboration became an imperative in many scientific fields by the late 20th century. To explore this historical phenomenon within Asia, we will discuss three case studies, which focus on Japanese scientific collaborations involving three different temporal and geographic contexts: Japanese botanical research in colonial Korea during the early 20th century; the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission established during the US occupation of Japan after World War II; and Japanese experimental stem cell therapies deployed in contemporary India.
Juxtaposing these cases raises many provocative questions, both at a broad conceptual level (i.e., what “collaboration” really is) and at the specific level of how scientific relationships function within and between Asian political formations. Here are some questions to consider as you read:
1) What, if anything, sets these relationships of “collaboration” apart from those of premodern and early modern “go-betweens” or “knowledge brokers”? Who gets to be a “collaborator” as opposed to an assistant, collector, informant, translator, etc and when/why does it matter? Are human research subjects collaborators? As historians, should we analyze collaboration only as an actors’ category, or (also) use it to describe all contributors to scientific activities (cf. Maienschein, p.171)?
2) Is the language of scientific collaboration and technical cooperation primarily a rhetorical shift related to international diplomacy, or a reflection of changing material infrastructures and scientific practices? How should we think about the rise of “scientific collaboration” in the Asian postwar and postcolonial geographies where political “collaborationism” has quite negative connotations? (If not familiar with this topic, cf. the included methodological readings by Shrum and Robinson.)
3) Critiques of historical and contemporary transnational scientific collaboration have highlighted the asymmetrical power relationships between the “West and the rest” or “Global North and Global South” (for examples, see the optional comparative readings by Manias and Okwaro & Geissler). The Japanese case studies describe the asymmetric nature of scientific collaboration in contexts of settler-colonial dominance; US military subjugation; and representing the upper tier of a geopolitical “biohierarchy.” How can a focus on collaborative relationships shed new light on our conversations throughout this year related to Asian imperial histories and the recognition of indigenous knowledge?
Case Studies:
Jung Lee, “Mutual Transformation of Colonial and Imperial Botanizing? The Intimate yet Remote Collaboration in Colonial Korea,” Science in Context 29, no. 2 (June 2016): 179–211, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889715000423.
John Beatty, “Scientific Collaboration, Internationalism, and Diplomacy: The Case of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission,” Journal of the History of Biology 26, no. 2 (1993): 205–31.
Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner and Prasanna Kumar Patra, “Experimental Stem Cell Therapy: Biohierarchies and Bionetworking in Japan and India,” Social Studies of Science 41, no. 5 (October 2011): 645–66, https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711409792.
Optional Methodological Readings:
Jane Maienschein, “Why Collaborate?,” Journal of the History of Biology 26, no. 2 (1993): 167–83.
Wesley Shrum, “Collaborationism,” in Collaboration in the New Life Sciences, ed. John N. Parker, Niki Vermeulen, and Bart Penders (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 247–58. (focus on pages 247-8 and 256-8)
Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (London: Longman, 1972), 117–40.
Optional Comparative Readings:
Comparative Case: Republican-era China
Chris Manias, “Jesuit Scientists and Mongolian Fossils: The French Paleontological Missions in China, 1923–1928,” Isis 108, no. 2 (June 2017): 307–32, https://doi.org/10.1086/692677.
Comparative Case: Contemporary East Africa
Ferdinand Moyi Okwaro and P. W. Geissler, “In/Dependent Collaborations: Perceptions and Experiences of African Scientists in Transnational HIV Research,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 29, no. 4 (December 2015): 492–511, https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12206.
Date
-