Re-orienting STS: Emergent Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia

Anderson, Warwick

doi:10.1007/s12280-009-9100-y

Cited by 2 publications

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“…While the aforementioned disagreement between ANT and multisited ethnography is one such example, the lack of reflection on context has also resulted in uneasiness about comparison in general in STS. For example, scholars in the emergent field of studies of technoscience in non-Western settings occasionally voice an awkward relationship between STS, which has worked mostly in Euro-American settings, and area studies that still presuppose conventional contexts, such as culture and society, as a unit of comparison (Anderson 2009). 4 It therefore seems significant to explore a variety of responses to the crisis of context, so that we may sort out what is at stake when one reconsiders and experiments with context in STS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethnographic Machine

Morita

2013

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Context holds a significant place mediating the conceptual and the empirical in ethnography. This modality of knowledge has also become a significant part of science and technology studies since the rise of laboratory studies. However, conventional modes of contextualization that locate the object of study within a whole—such as within a society or culture—have become a target of suspicion and criticism since the 1980s. This led to the radical alteration of the contextualizing strategies of actor–network theory (ANT) and multisited ethnography. Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern is also responding to this crisis by renovating the practice of ethnography in a way significantly different from both strategies. Since contextualization occupies a significant place in the formation of ethnography as a representation of a larger “out there” reality, her alternative contextualization requires a new characterization of ethnography other than representation. This article tries to expound the complicated, and often perplexing, ethnography of Strathern by making an analogy with objects familiar to most science, technology, and society scholars, namely, machines. By doing so, this article argues that Strathern is opening up a new way of dealing with context that is radically different both from ANT and from multisited ethnography.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethnographic Machine

Morita

2013

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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“…It includes more conventional topics such as the interaction between western medicine and traditional medicine, demography and population, epidemic outbreak, and NGOs and health, and newer ones such as pilgrimage and quarantine, disaster medicine, rural health, the internationalisation of health, the ideas and institutions of the hospital and asylum, nation building, and the tobacco industry. While there has been research on some of these newer topics in Southeast Asia and beyond (Anderson 2009; Anderson and Pols 2012; Ernst 2007; Rogaski 2004), the book invites researchers to dig deeper for health histories at sites seemingly unrelated to health, such as migration prompted by religious practices (Chapter 2), disasters (Chapter 4), nationalist movements (Chapter 11); and to conceptualise histories of health as global studies and international history (Chapters 6 and 9), social history (Chapter 10), and intellectual history (Chapter 11).…”

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Tim Harper and Sunil S. Amrith (eds). Histories of Health in Southeast Asia: Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. 250 pp.

Hong

2016

TRaNS

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The contents of this edited volume are reflected in its title: the many "histories" of health in Southeast Asia and the multiple "perspectives" of looking at the stories of health, the reconstruction of which cannot be accomplished by any single linear narrative. Though the region is not clearly defined but differentially imagined in each chapter, the compilation as a whole captures very well the heterogeneity of the region as well as the multi-linearity of health histories. Another key term in this volume is "transnational" (p. 3). Consisting of the introduction, 13 chapters and three chapter inlets, the book is arranged according to four subthemes: "The Longue Duree", "Health and Crisis", "Uneven Transitions", and "The Politics of Health", with each chapter giving different weightage on transnationality for different health-related topics. Encompassing a wide range of topics, this volume opens up new sites of investigation and complicates our understanding of "health histories". It includes more conventional topics such as the interaction between western medicine and traditional medicine, demography and population, epidemic outbreak, and NGOs and health, and newer ones such as pilgrimage and quarantine, disaster medicine, rural health, the internationalisation of health, the ideas and institutions of the hospital and asylum, nation building, and the tobacco industry. While there has been research on some of these newer topics in Southeast Asia and beyond (Anderson 2009; Anderson and Pols 2012; Ernst 2007; Rogaski 2004), the book invites researchers to dig deeper for health histories at sites seemingly unrelated to health, such as migration prompted by religious practices (Chapter 2), disasters (Chapter 4), nationalist movements (Chapter 11); and to conceptualise histories of health as global studies and international history (Chapters 6 and 9), social history (Chapter 10), and intellectual history (Chapter 11). However, the diverse range of health-related topics also leads to the lack of coherence in the volume. The editors have tried to overcome this problem by encouraging different authors to read and to refer to each other's work. Such mutual reference, however, is limited to chapters on a similar topic or subtheme, such as Chapters 5 and 7, which focus on demographic history and aging respectively. The absence of a shared research focus and conceptual framework among contributors of varied expertise, such as in history, anthropology, policy research, area studies, political science, and medical science, is perhaps another factor that contributed to the lack of mutual reference between the authors. Although transnationality is conceived as an approach by the editors, the term is not methodologically defined and clearly operationalised as a research method. Rather, the editors justify the use of the term on the grounds that "the experience of Southeast Asia has always been transnational" (p. 3). What this approach intends to achieve and how it can add to our understanding of health histories in the region is ...

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Re-orienting STS: Emergent Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia

Abstract: This introduction to a special issue on Emergent Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Southeast Asia describes the scope of the essays, the character of the region, and the potential relations of science and technology studies, area studies, and postcolonial studies.

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

The Ethnographic Machine

The Ethnographic Machine

Tim Harper and Sunil S. Amrith (eds). Histories of Health in Southeast Asia: Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. 250 pp.

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