Welcome to South-South dialogues: an introduction to a collaborative project between East Asian Science, Technology and Society, and Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

Where Is East Asia in STS?Wen-yuan Lin; John Law ABSTRACT The international spread of STS has reshaped the discipline in many ways, pushing it from its original core focus on technoscience in Euro-America to embrace new and wider agendas in other locations. For the practitioners of STS in East Asia, the complex relations between geographical region and forms of knowledge in technoscience are firmly on the agenda, and they have conceptualized these in a range of different and sometimes contradictory ways. The multiplicity of East Asian STS is also reflexively refracted in different assumptions about the character and location of the discipline in relation to other regional versions of STS. In what follows we simplify the complexities of a large and sophisticated body of writing by exploring a double question. On the one hand, we ask how scholars conceptualize the location of East Asian technoscience in the world. And on the other, a related question, we consider how they imagine the location of East Asian STS in relation to other forms of STS. We suggest that it is possible to identify at least six distinct spatially related strategies for understanding knowledge and technoscience in the East Asian literatures. In this article, we characterize these as diffusion, distortion, circulation, localizing, translation, and mistranslation and argue that East Asian STS may be understood as distinctive in the way it collaborates with other forms of STS not only because it identifies and characterizes other and different East Asian empirical contexts, but also because it makes possible the exploration of alternative and situated methodological approaches.


INTRODUCTION
Welcome to South-South dialogues: an introduction to a collaborative project between East Asian Science, Technology and Society, and Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society For journals, to become "global" seems to be an imperative. First, since knowledge is (or should be) global, the reach of any journal should match such an assumption by moving knowledge to all corners of the world. Second, since potential readers can be found everywhere, journals should aim to guarantee an appeal to readers around the world. Third, since journals are often funded by commercial institutions, they must think in terms of markets and profits, which for many leads to thinking internationally. Yet, global, in the current situation, is not only a fashionable adjective. It should be politicized and problematized, as De Sousa Santos argued.
Hegemonic globalization can be defined as the process by which a given local phenomenonbe it the English language, Hollywood, fast food, and so onsucceeds in extending its reach over the globe and, by doing so, develops the capacity to designate a rival social phenomenon as local. The communication and complicity allowed for by hegemonic globalization are based on an unequal exchange that cannibalizes differences instead of facilitating the dialogue among them. They are trapped in silences, manipulations, and exclusions. (2015,91) Inequalities and asymmetries are defining features of the landscape of scientific communication. Those who deny this are being either too optimistic or favored by the rules of the game. They are not intentionally dominatingalthough a time for a critical geopolitical gaze seems to have arrived.
East Asian Science Technology and Society (EASTS) is now a well-established journal. It has been rightly recognized by STS with the 2018 4S Infrastructure Award. It is also a part of a new landscape of scientific publications in which Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society has recently appeared. Both are committed to publishing high quality research, to give visibility to our regions' scholarship, to encourage cross-cultural dialogues, and to problematize claims to the universality of Northern knowledge. As more-or-less peripheral publications within STS, these journals have also found an opportunity to engage in a different kind of relationship. Instead of competing for a higher impact factor or more citations in some database, we decided to open the door to collaborations to encourage much-needed South-South dialogue(s). We begin today with a simple, yet thought-provoking, project. One article just published in EASTS, "Where is East Asia in STS?", by Wen-yuan Lin and John Law (2019), 1 is replied to by Latin American scholars Hebe Vessuri (Argentina), Antonio Arellano (Mexico), and Jorge Gibert (Chile).
In this experiment, they focus not only on the last article by Lin and Law, but on the entire body of works through which Lin and Law and their respondents have shed light on the circulation of knowledge, the postcolonial dimension of it, and the need for metropolitan STS to take seriously the categories and analytical frameworks produced elsewhere. These works appeared as a forum 2 through EASTS in which Law and Lin's (2017a) original paper, "Provincializing STS: Postcoloniality, Symmetry, and Method" was published and discussants invited to respond (Anderson 2017;Farquhar 2017;Morita 2017;Chen 2017; also Law and Lin 2017b). The main reason for such a forum was to answer puzzling questions that emerged when listening to Law's 4S talk after he received the 2016 Bernal Prize: "Why were EASTS and other non-English STS works seldom mentioned? Why was EASTS presented only as sharing the problem rather than offering solutions?" (Wu 2017, 2). If, as it was pointed out, the forum broadened the scale of the 4S award speech and raised further developments and challenges, then this joint project with Tapuya wants to take the discussion to another level: inter-journal, interregional, inter-cultural, and inter-peripheral. To do so, we need to broaden even more the scope of EASTS' inquiry and question, how can we provincialize STS?
The three replies published in Tapuya aim to explore new paths in this dialogue. First, Hebe Vessuri sets the context in which we should think of provincializing STS. She argues that institutional and political crises, common in many peripheral realms, open and close the doors to discourage or encourage certain forms of international linkages. In those moments, what is at stake is "whether those crises mismatch canons, form new canons, or could enable a science without canon" (Vessuri, this cluster). Based on the cases of scientists in USSR and Venezuela who had to leave because of political turmoil, Vessuri argues for conviviality, which refers to the ability to invoke difference, whilst avoiding communitarian or sectarian identities. Second, Antonio Arellano-Hernández and Laura Maria Morales-Navarro problematize the diffusion of a sociological approach to science if we accept the assumption that sociology was born in industrial societies in order to understand specific phenomena derived from such a context (urbanization, socialization, class). In their critical appraisal of Lin and Law's ideal-types of East Asian technoscience to deal with STS epistemic, institutional and ontological commitments, the authors defend an anthropological perspective focused on the relativization of Euro-American knowledge from both external and internal sources. The former refers to the anthropological appreciation of ancient cultures' sophisticated knowledge systems. The latter points to Northern scholarship that has emphasized the many ways to be modern in Euro-America (Latour 1991), including a reappraisal of traditional lifestyles and anti-technoscientific social movements. Finally, Jorge Gibert Galassi connects the generalized principle of symmetry with a (biased) geopolitics of knowledge. In line with a Mertonian notion of science, the author argues that Lin and Law's main weakness is to conflate social and epistemic levels of analysis. Interestingly, without this distinction, but accepting that there are asymmetries in the global production and circulation of knowledge, the North should be responsible and accountable for the worldwide spread of what he coins fake-science (e.g. widely circulated knowledge without proper scientific evidence to sustain it). Moreover, for Gibert, the most promising way to reconcile the universal nature of scientific claims and the inevitable situatedness of all forms of knowledge that STS has demonstrated is to make explicit the human values and normative systems behind technoscientific knowledge.
Purposely, these works are not only replying to Lin and Law and by so doing starting a conversation; they are also setting a new agenda of South-South epistemic exchanges. If something such as peripheral studies can be conceptualized, an epistemological debate about its foundation is at stake and this exchange could be a solid first step toward it. We, in Tapuya, want to acknowledge Wen-Hua Kuo, Editor-in-Chief of East Asian Science, Technology and Society, its entire editorial team, and Duke University Press, for their commitment with this project. Also, we want to recognize the willingness of Taylor & Francis to facilitate this cooperation. For both publishers, and this is a fantastic sign, this is the first time they had to agree on how to make possible a collaborative project between two journals. And they lived up to the challenge.
As a member of a new generation of scholars who are moved by the imperative of collaboration instead of by the sweetness of competition, I am delighted to introduce this cluster. In this introduction, readers will find below the abstracts of the latest work by Lin and Law in three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese). Then, the cluster is completed with the three replies to their ideas. Although much more dialogue is needed, more discrepancies have to be discussed, and more perspectives require to be bridged, we know that EASTS and Tapuya are the right places to start this endeavor. Readers and colleagues, you are welcome to follow up on this challenge.
Where Is East Asia in STS? Wen-yuan Lin; John Law ABSTRACT The international spread of STS has reshaped the discipline in many ways, pushing it from its original core focus on technoscience in Euro-America to embrace new and wider agendas in other locations. For the practitioners of STS in East Asia, the complex relations between geographical region and forms of knowledge in technoscience are firmly on the agenda, and they have conceptualized these in a range of different and sometimes contradictory ways. The multiplicity of East Asian STS is also reflexively refracted in different assumptions about the character and location of the discipline in relation to other regional versions of STS. In what follows we simplify the complexities of a large and sophisticated body of writing by exploring a double question. On the one hand, we ask how scholars conceptualize the location of East Asian technoscience in the world. And on the other, a related question, we consider how they imagine the location of East Asian STS in relation to other forms of STS. We suggest that it is possible to identify at least six distinct spatially related strategies for understanding knowledge and technoscience in the East Asian literatures. In this article, we characterize these as diffusion, distortion, circulation, localizing, translation, and mistranslation and argue that East Asian STS may be understood as distinctive in the way it collaborates with other forms of STS not only because it identifies and characterizes other and different East Asian empirical contexts, but also because it makes possible the exploration of alternative and situated methodological approaches. ¿Cuál es el lugar de Asia del Este en los ESCT? Wen-yuan Lin; John Law RESUMEN La difusión internacional de los ESCT ha reformulado a la disciplina de diferentes modos. De su enfoque original en la tecnociencia euro-estadounidense, ha ido abordando nuevas y más amplias agendas en otros lugares. En cuanto a la tecnociencia, las relaciones complejas entre la región geográfica y las formas de conocimiento están fuertemente establecidas en la agenda de los practicantes de ESCT en Asia del Este, quienes las han conceptualizado en diferentes modos, en ocasiones contradictorios. Asimismo, la multiplicidad de los ESCT de Asia del Este es refractada reflexivamente en diferentes presupuestos sobre el carácter y el lugar de la disciplina, en relación con otras versiones regionales de ESCT. A través de la exploración de dos preguntas, en este trabajo simplificamos las complejidades del conjunto amplio y sofisticado de trabajos sobre el tema. Por un lado, nos preguntamos cómo es que los académicos conceptualizan en el mundo el lugar de la tecnociencia de Asia del Este. Por otro lado, y en conexión con la pregunta anterior, consideramos cómo estos académicos imaginan el lugar de los ESCT de Asia del Este en relación con otras formas de ESCT. Así, sugerimos que es posible identificar por lo menos seis estrategias distintivas y espacialmente relacionadas para entender el conocimiento y la tecnociencia en la literatura de Asia del Este. En el presente artículo, caracterizamos a dichas estrategias como difusión, distorsión, circulación, localización, traducción y traducción equivocada. Así, nuestro argumento es que los ESCT de Asia del Este pueden entenderse como una disciplina distinta en cuanto a la forma en la que colabora con otras formas de ESCT, no solamente porque identifica y caracteriza diferentes contextos empíricos de Asia del Este, sino porque posibilita la exploración de enfoques metodológicos alternativos y situados.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Leandro Rodriguez Medina holds a PhD in Sociology (University of Cambridge) and is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Universidad de las Américas Puebla (Mexico). He is a member of the Mexican System of Researchers (Level II) and Editor-in-Chief of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. His research interests are international circulation of knowledge, social studies of science and technology, and the relationship between culture and urban transformation.