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Science in Movements: Knowledge Control and Social Contestation in China's Hydropower, GMO and Nuclear Controversies
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... Unfortunately, the candle has not ignited fire across the nation. The open debates on GM organisms (GMOs; Yuan, 2010), potentially polluting chemicals (Jia, 2014), trash incineration (Huang, 2015), and hydropower projects (Jia, 2021) organized by civil society organizations in the 2000s and early-2010s nearly disappeared in around the mid-2010s. ...
... The suspension of the super collider project is one example. In my book, Science in Movements (Jia, 2021), I have traced the social, political, communication, and knowledge control factors (Hilgartner, 2017) that have jointly suspended or delayed the Chinese government's decisions to commercialize GM crops, build more dams and develop inland nuclear power plants. ...
This essay critically traces the development of public engagement with science in China in the past decade and relevant scholarly studies. While confirming the country’s tremendous progress in the field achieved either by official efforts or by social media empowerment, it argues that science communication advances have not realized the public engagement with science ideal of enabling the public to participate in constructive dialogue for policymaking. However, citing recent studies on the specifics of China’s science communication, ranging from scientists’ reliance on their organization, to the consequences of attitudinal polarization, this article appeals to an alternative research agenda to broaden our understanding of the dynamic science communication process in the world’s most populous nation.
... The diversity has resulted from the "domestic politics through the mobilization of domestic interests both within and outside the core state -to shape GMO policy, without either side gaining control over the regulatory process" [Falkner & Gupta, 2009, p. 128]. The democratization of GMO risk governance, especially the ideas of demanding for accountability, media reportage, political opportunity structures, have made the NGO community critical in galvanizing alliances, nurturing and sustaining the debate in various countries [Jia, 2022;Seay Fleming, 2022;Falkner & Gupta, 2009]. Besides, many political parties are likely to engage in the GMO debate during peaks of political mobilization [Schwörer, Vidal & Vallejo, 2022]. ...
The paper highlights the feedback loop between media, politics, foreign influence and science in relation to the adoption of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in food production in Uganda to demonstrate that socio-cultural considerations are important in the GMO science and technology debates. Based on the science-in-society model, the findings from a content analysis of newspaper articles over a four-year period, supplemented by interviews with scientists, activists from non-governmental organisations, journalists, and Members of Parliament's Science and Technology Committee, the study found that food is a politically thick issue. Both activists and scientists opportunistically use the media, the platforms where the public access and contribute content, to appeal to the politicians to legislate GMOs in their favour, arguing that the activists or the scientists' position is in the `public interest'. Often, such coverage produces a paradox for the public by accelerating uncertainty regarding the science and the products of genetic modification, especially when politicians fail to decide for fear of the political implications of their action as is the case in Uganda.
... Defined by their personal characteristics, social skills, innovative goals, and creative actions, entrepreneurs craft strategies to organize others to participate in action. They are key agents in framing an issue, identifying opportunities, mobilizing resources (social and material), and creatively linking previously unconnected networks (Brinkerhoff, 2016;Hess, 2007;Jia, 2021;Koinova, 2021;Mintrom, 2019). In contrast to policy or social entrepreneurs, political entrepreneurs seek to influence the broader political landscape. ...
The nexus between transnational mobilization and Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers a productive platform for studying the formation of scientific activism, the influence of mobilization on scientific developments, and the ways science is used to achieve government goals. Integrating concepts from both sets of literature – particularly national sociotechnical imaginaries and socio-spatial positionality – this article explores how Dr Chaim Weizmann, a prominent chemist and a Zionist leader, attempted to construct and mobilize a ‘scientific diaspora’. Empirically, the article draws on new archival evidence, revealing the hitherto unknown early efforts of the Zionist movement to acquire nuclear reactor and utilize the Jewish involvement in the American nuclear project for political leverage abroad. Theoretically, rather than beginning the analysis with a scientific-diasporic network that was ready to be mobilized, we trace the selective and tailored practices employed by Weizmann to animate the Jewish connection among nuclear scientists and professionals.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been highly controversial in China and beyond. The burgeoning of social media has created an online activist field where participants utilize networked framing practices to engage in connective actions related to GMO risks. However, a dynamic perspective on the co-production of GMO risk discourses has yet to be fully explored, and it is still under debate whether such a collective interpretation is fragmented. To address this gap, this study investigates the risk-invoked GMO controversy by longitudinally exploring the structural characteristics and discursive power structures in the networked framing of GMO risks on social media. This study examines 356,227 GMO risk posts from 2010 to 2020 on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. A longitudinal social network analysis and computational text-mining approach are used to construct representation networks among participants based on their joint sponsorship framing practices of GMO risks. The findings suggest that there is a multipolar discussion fragmentation in the networked framing of GMO risks. However, the temporal evidence shows that the risk discussion has become increasingly interconnected and less structurally fragmented over time. In addition, this study highlights the unequal distribution of discursive power among participants; nevertheless, the analysis reveals that this inequality has shown signs of easing over the study period. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the GMO controversy from a risk perspective and sheds light on the dynamics of networked framing practices and discursive power structures on social media.
Постановка проблеми. Процес глобальної еволюції досяг епохи антропоцену. Цей факт практично одночасно породив одразу два кардинальні, нерозривно пов’язані між собою імперативи в ідеолого-світоглядному базисі сучасної цивілізації: по-перше, відчуття того, що нова геологічна епоха вимагає і принципово нових алгоритмів, що спрямовують практичну діяльність та її теоретичне осмислення, обґрунтування у всіх сферах політичної реальності, з неминучим виходом на рівень міжнародних відносин та геополітики; по-друге, зміст категорій АНТРОПОЦЕН і (ГЛОБАЛЬНА) КРИЗА перетинається настільки різноманітно і широко, що утворює практично нероздільну логічно і ментально амальгаму. Метою цієї публікації є виявлення власне політичних аспектів інтеграції нової біополітичної проблематики у життя сучасного соціуму. Зміст терміну біополітика нині не формалізовано остаточно. У нашій концепції біополітика визначається як процеси реалізації біовлади, тобто здатність (пряма чи опосередкована) владних структур соціуму контролювати та маніпулювати відправленням біологічних функцій окремих індивідуумів. На основі поєднання методів концептуального, дискурсивного та еволюційно-антропологічного аналізу (концепцій еволюційної стратегії та культурно-екологічної ніші) виявляються можливі сценарії майбутнього розвитку політичного процесу на внутрішньодержавному та міжнародному рівнях. Досліджено механізм трансбіополітичного переходу – інклюзії цивілізаційної та біологічної еволюції у політичний процес. У підсумку формулюється зміст категорії «трансбіополітика» як основного елемента раціоналізації глобально-еволюційного процесу в світі, що глобалізується. Трансбіополітика у нашому розумінні є міжнародно-політичною проблематикою, пов’язаною з раціоналізацією глобального еволюційного процесу. Технологізація глобального еволюційного процесу, вибір чинних технологічних проектів і форм їхнього інституційного забезпечення визначається, переважно, гео- та біополітичною мотивацією місцевих еліт та наявними в їх розпорядженні гуманітарними та іншими конвергентними технологіями.
During the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of people across Western Europe protested against civil nuclear energy. Nowhere were they more visible than in France and Germany—two countries where environmentalism seems to have diverged greatly since. This volume recovers the shared, transnational history of the early anti-nuclear movement, showing how low-level interactions among diverse activists led to far-reaching changes in both countries.
Protest became so widespread because nuclear technology represented many different issues at once. ‘Concerned citizens’ in communities near planned facilities saw it as an outside intervention that potentially threatened their health, material existence, and way of life. In the decade after 1968, their concerns coalesced with more overtly ‘political’ criticisms of consumer society, the state, and militarism. Farmers, housewives, hippies, anarchists, and many more who defied categorization joined forces to oppose nuclear power, but the movement remained internally contradictory and outwardly unpredictable—not least with regard to violence at demonstrations.
By analyzing the transnational dimensions, diverse outcomes, and internal divisions of anti-nuclear protest, Better Active than Radioactive! provides an encompassing understanding of one of the largest ‘New Social Movements’ in post-war Western Europe and situates it within a decade of upheaval and protest. Drawing extensively on oral history interviews as well as police, media, and activist sources, this volume tells the story of the people behind
the protests, showing how individuals at the grassroots built up a movement that transcended national borders as well as political and social differences.
This collection of essays examines the ways in which disputes and controversies about the application of scientific knowledge are resolved. Four concrete examples of public controversy are considered in detail: the efficacy of Laetrile, the classification of homosexuality as a disease, the setting of safety standards in the workplace, and the utility of nuclear energy as a source of power. The essays in this volume show that debates about these cases are not confined to matters of empirical fact. Rather, as is seen with most scientific and technical controversies, they focus on and are structured by complex ethical, economic, and political interests. Drs. Engelhardt and Caplan have brought together a distinguished group of scholars from the sciences and humanities, who sketch a theory of scientific controversy and attempt to provide recommendations about the ways in which both scientists and the public ought to seek more informed resolutions of highly contentious issues in science and technology. Scientific Controversies is offered as a contribution to the better understanding of the roles of both science and nonscientific interests in disputes and controversies pertaining to science and technology.
This article investigates how activists use science communication to protest the regulation and use of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China. The article reports on a participant observation study of the motivations of the activists as well as the form and content of their activities. The article hereby questions the apparently close links between the systems of state and science in China. It also points to different configurations of the relationship between scientists, activists, science communication and publics than what has been common in analyses of science communication and activism in Western countries.