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- Convenors:
-
Hsiu-Yun Wang
(National Cheng Kung University)
Joel Stocker (National Cheng Kung University)
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- Discussant:
-
Wen-Hua Kuo
(National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel explores professional sites of medical and scientific development and practice in East Asia where gender/technology relations have troubled boundaries. We focus on situated historical and contemporary cases of health care, scientific research technologies, and global assemblages.
Long Abstract:
Depending on the context, the politics of gender in science, technology and care work takes various forms. In certain fields, it’s the marginalization and exclusion of women by the masculinization of knowledge and practice that shapes the discipline; women’s work has been invisible or obscure at best. In others, it is the emphasis on women’s work and femininities that have helped establish the profession. In still others, differences in the social order of knowledge production sites may shape various gendered practices. This panel explores professional sites of medical and scientific development and practice in East Asia where gender/technology relations have troubled boundaries. We focus on situated historical and contemporary cases in which health care, scientific research technologies, and global assemblages have been bound up with and reconfigured or reinforced gender relations in the areas of nursing, social work, science labs, nuclear science, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) within, and in circuits of exchange with, East Asia.
How might differences in the social order of science labs shape the various gendered practices in East Asian contexts? How might certain national or transnational agendas work with or against gender politics? This panel contributes to STS by bringing together cases of gender and technology, medicine, and care work from East Asia and by showing the various ways in which gender politics intertwine with knowledge production, discipline formation, and the boundary work of professions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Wen-Hua Kuo (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
Short abstract:
Grounded in recent literature on gender and science as well as science diplomacy in the Cold War period, this paper aims to situate Lu Gwei-djen (1904-1991), the closest collaborator with Joseph Needham and later his wife, with the revival of Chinese medicine in the Cold War context.
Long abstract:
Grounded in recent scholarly attention on gender and science as well as science diplomacy in the Cold War period, this paper aims to situate Lu Gwei-djen (1904-1991), the closest collaborator in the Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) project with Joseph Needham and later his wife. Born in China and holding a PhD degree in biochemistry, Lu has been considered one among the early SCC collaborators whose contribution is hard to identity. Departing of an impression that portrays Lu merely an assistant to Needham's enterprise, this paper will situate Lu by clarifying her role as a biomedical graduate, a Chinese scientist who chose to stay overseas during the Civil War, and, last but not least, a female intellectual who had affinity to Chinese medicine. Based on primary sources in the Needham Research Institute (NRI) and materials related to Celestial Lancets (1980), the only book Lu authored with Needham, I argue that Lu’s interest in medicine should be considered together with a wider one in Post-war Europe of seeking the scientific foundation of non-biomedical alternatives. Although Lu seldom addressed herself in public, via the SCC project she was able to tackle Chinese medicine through the history of science in China and benefited from this peculiar approach. When China was about to open to the world, Lu played a more active role in facilitating Needham’s visits to Chinese communities, which were in a sense the continuation of their diplomatic work and to some extent helped the NRI and an expanding SCC project.
Joel Stocker (National Cheng Kung University)
Long abstract:
Drawing on the results of my anthropological research comparing medical and engineering labs in Taiwan, I explore how human/nonhuman and human relations in labs are structured in ways that affect the gendered interactions between researchers and between researchers and their technologies. I have found that differences in lab social orders shape the various gendered uses of a popular snack-food talisman (green-bagged, coconut-flavored Kuai Kuai-brand snacks) prepared and offered by lab workers to lab co-workers and lab machines. The social symbolic uses of the snack food are more diverse and dynamic in medical labs, where women are commonly hired as research assistants. They tend to give the good-luck-boosting packaged snack food to individual lab workers as well as to lab humans, animals, and machines as a unit; to animal spirits in memorial services; and to individual machines. In contrast, in engineering labs in Taiwan, the snack bags are only given to individual machines, with, for instance, a focus on magically or spiritually influencing software-hardware interfaces. I argue that the material and symbolic production of social relations in labs shapes and is shaped by the production of scientific knowledge as it is mediated through the giving of a magical commercial snack food to humans and nonhumans. I conclude that this offering- and gift-giving reflects the different ways in which labs are organized and run, and that the practice helps to build, maintain, and repair lab social relations and mediate the scientific production of knowledge.
Kuan-Hung Lo (University of Maryland College Park)
Long abstract:
This research explores the intricate relationship between roboticists' personal experiences and their approach to designing gendered human-robot interactions. Drawing on the I-methodology framework, initially coined by Ellen van Oost, this study delves into how roboticists' life experiences inform their conception of gender dynamics within human-robot relationships, ultimately embedding their personal values into the robots they create. These values, deeply intertwined with the roboticists' nationality, gender, education, class, and the demographic composition of their laboratories, manifest in the robots as representations of the creators' cultural and personal backgrounds.
Further extending this inquiry, the study examines the process through which personal values are "baked" into robots. It introduces the concept of "sampling," whereby roboticists selectively incorporate societal values into their designs, modifying and adapting these values to align with their experiences and the specific context of their laboratories. This process not only reflects the individual's worldviews but also actively shapes the cultural footprint of the robotics field.
Empirical evidence for this study is drawn from interviews with four directors and one roboticist across five robotics laboratories in Taiwan, Malaysia, and the United States, complemented by field observations in a robotics laboratory in Taiwan. Through this multi-site analysis, the research highlights the significant role of roboticists' subjectivities in shaping the development of robotic technologies, urging a reevaluation of how personal and cultural values are integrated into the fabric of future robotic systems.
Shu-Ching Chang (Chang Gung University)
Long abstract:
Nursing is a highly feminized profession. Performing a cardiac catheterization is a teamwork. In addition to the cardiologist who performs the cardiac catheterization, the nurses and radiologists in the cardiac catheterization room are called technicians.
The nurses who do this job must have at least two years of working experience in an intensive care unit or cardiac ward. They are not only able to interpret electrocardiograms accurately, but also they need to understand the patient's condition, monitor the cardiac catheter image screen, and comfort the patients. When a patient needs first aid, the nurse must immediately assist the physician in providing first aid. In addition, she must remember each cardiologist's "habits" for performing the techniques, such as what kind or brand of catheter or guidewire that cardiologist is accustomed to using. It is also the nurse's responsibility to manage the purchase of various medical equipment in the cardiac catheterization room. They receive on-the-job training at Taiwan Society of Cardiovascular Interventions, where they hold discussions with cardiologists.
Methodologically, this paper will interview nurses who have worked in cardiac catheterization room with more than 5 years’ experience and will analyze data and use text analysis with reference related to literature as well. Meanwhile, this paper will take the perspectives of "apprenticeship learning", "tacit knowledge, and "learning knowledge" to explore how the gender, knowledge constructions, nursing practice and management of the cardiac catheterization room shaping the cardiac catheterization room nurses into technicians and rebuilding their professional identity.
Hsiu-Yun Wang (National Cheng Kung University)
Long abstract:
Marjorie Bly (1919-2008), an American Lutheran missionary nurse who cared for leprosy (Hanson’s disease) patients in Penghu island (Pescadores) for nearly five decades, is remembered for living a life of service. She is recognized as a pioneer and model of community nursing in Taiwan, caring for the patients in their own environment. She and her colleagues' work developing methods of Leprosy care and medical knowledge of Mycobacterium leprae, including technologies for examining the microbe, has received little scholarly attention. In addition, the gendered division of this scientific labor has not been explored. Bly’s team consisted of a local man (Steven Pan), two women (one local, one missionary nurse), and Bly herself. One of Bly’s main tasks was to examine patient specimens under the microscope to determine the needed care or treatment. Her team members carried out home visits to dispense medications, dress the chronic wounds, and collect specimens. This paper examines Marjorie Bly’s team work to understand how science and gender, as well as ethnicity, intersected in the care of leprosy that brought about an unexpected division of labor. By doing so, I hope to shed light on the situatedness of knowledge and practice.