“Connecting with the past? A commentary”

Over its relatively brief history STS has developed into an interdisciplinary project spanning issues as diverse as Welsh sheep-farmers’ contributions to nuclear science or the dress codes of Chicago stock-brokers. Generally speaking, STS deals with the modern world or its immediate colonial forebears, worlds in which the terms ‘science’ and ‘technology’ are and were common currency. Indeed the greater part of STS research and reflection bears on the relations between technocracy and democracy in contemporary societies that have institutionalized science and technology as indispensable tools for solving society’s problems. Within this journal, discussions concerning what might distinguish a specifically East Asian STS have variously proposed as a common substratum either a characteristically high level of scholarly commitment to critical, policy oriented analysis, or a shared post-colonial legacy of late admission into the magic circle of modern, international science.