From Politics to Academics: Political Activism and the Emergence of Science and Technology Studies in South Korea

Abstract

International audienceScience and technology studies (STS) is now a mature field in many countries, and it is important to understand its historical and political roots in a wide variety of national contexts. The present contribution to such a vast project links a number of South Korean activist groups involved in a critical reflection upon science and technology in the 1970s and the 1980s to the academic developments of the STS field in the 1990s. A focus on the activist roots of South Korea’s STS counterbalances more institutional and less politicized histories of the field; it also enlightens the specificity of critical approaches to science in the context of an emerging power that was a military dictatorship. The authors describe how a group of students and professors, most of whom had been trained as scientists and engineers, created a discussion circle to foster a critical and political discourse on science. They then trace the emergence of the new field through the dissemination of texts and their reception. The academic aspects of Korean STS are then compared, over three periods, with similar currents in Europe and the United States. The conclusion shows that the critique of science that emerged in South Korea took a form substantially different from critiques elsewhere, linking this difference to political and institutional causes

Where Is East Asia in STS?

“…(Ku 2006: 181-82) In this second picture, technoscience also operates within a single global space, but now this is exploitative because it distorts the lives of those who live and work on the periphery (Harding 2008). 1 The companies are looking for cheap but capable workforces and lax environmental and health regulations (Smith, Sonnenfeld, and Pellow 2006), and they collude with governments that may be technocratic and are sometimes corrupt because those governments want to take advantage of compressed modernization (Abraham 2006;Greene 2008;Amir 2013;Bak 2014;Chang 2014;Quet and Noel 2014). The result of this interweaving of global and local power is exploitation, suffering, and a division of labor in which innovation and design come from Euro-America, manufacture and assembling are done in Latin America and East Asia, and e-Waste goes to Africa (Smith, Sonnenfeld, and Pellow 2006;BASEL Convention 2015).…”

Les STS ont-elles un Sud ?

“…C'est le cas du groupe LOST (Law, Organisation, Science and Technology) en Allemagne dirigé par l'anthropologue Richard Rottenburg ou du groupe Anthropology of African Biosciences créé à la London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, qui ont tous deux appliqué à des terrains africains l'approche STS et consacré des projets de recherche à ce type d'analyse. Ensuite, ce déplacement géographique de l'enquête a contribué à des discussions voire des rapprochements avec les approches postcoloniales, au sein des institutions centrales de la discipline, comme permettent de le constater les derniers congrès de la 4S ou de l'EASTS et un certain nombre 9 Par exemple en Corée du Sud (Quet & Noël, 2014). d'articles et de numéros de synthèse (Social Studies of Science, 2002 ;Science as Culture, 2005 ;Anderson & Adams, 2008 ;Postcolonial Studies, 2009 ;Harding, 2011 ;Human Values, 2014, 2016).…”

From Radical Science to STS

“…Or to make sense of ways that subsequent STS academics have been influenced by that earlier generation and by the 'proliferation' since 'of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization' (Moore et al, 2011, p. 505). These biographies of technoscience in this social context reveal the relationships, instruments and outcomes of power struggles as the scholars and writers have contributed the field of STS.We hope that making these biographies public may reveal previously hidden connections, similar to other work that seeks to reveal the interaction between the academic discipline and activism (Quet and Noel, 2014;Sang-yong, 2017). The essays in the forum are primarily social biographies, describing the social context of academic labor.…”

“…We hope that making these biographies public may reveal previously hidden connections, similar to other work that seeks to reveal the interaction between the academic discipline and activism (Quet and Noel, 2014;Sang-yong, 2017). The essays in the forum are primarily social biographies, describing the social context of academic labor.…”