We have written the introduction to this special issue on responsible research and innovation (RRI) in the UK and Japan as a visitor's guide to an imaginary island holiday park to emphasize how we have centered the situatedness of practices that contribute to responsibility in science and technology. Our overarching argument is that RRI cannot be discussed as a program without foregrounding its location, and that RRI therefore needs "alternative practices"-heuristics that inspire adaptation in context-above "best practices" that might be exported from historic centers of investment to historically marginalized peripheries. We have also gravitated to experiment and play as strategies to find more space for intellectually rich, personally satisfying, and collectively enjoyable work amid pressures for STS researchers to take on rote service work under RRI mandates. We welcome you to the place-(sic)(sic)(sic)topia-that our collaboration has built and invite you to travel with us through the alternative practices we have sketched out here.
Cross-cultural comparisons generate valuable insights about how the social sciences can shape technoscientific domains and trajectories. In this Special Issue Commentary, we reflect on the rich insights contained in the articles exploring social scientific experiences with responsible research and innovation (RRI) in Japan and the UK, and organize our reflections around three types of opening for thinking about and approaching RRI going forward. First, we affirm the importance of exploring informal spaces for cultivating RRI, especially for consolidating connections and opening up opportunities. Secondly, and relatedly, we argue that possibilities for informality are intertwined with the institutional (e.g. projects, practices, norms), and much can be learned from comparing different experiences at this nexus. Finally, we draw attention to the productive potential of investigating interdependencies for enabling novel ways of approaching RRI, with respect to both forging collaborations between social and biophysical researchers, and in framing and undertaking public engagement initiatives.
This paper examines the SARS outbreak at Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong, focusing on the co-produced nature of epidemic knowledge. In March 2003, the outbreak at Amoy Gardens, a residential complex, became a superspreading event, where the virus spread through a combination of droplet transmission and environmental factors, particularly a malfunctioning sewage system. The investigation into this outbreak involved multiple disciplines, including virology, environmental science, and engineering, revealing the interplay between different methods and perspectives. Through this case, the paper explores how epidemic knowledge is not simply discovered but is actively produced through an iterative process, where tools and methods shape and redefine the understanding of disease transmission. The Amoy Gardens investigation also exemplifies the limitations of the lab-field binary and demonstrates how knowledge is co-produced in situated environments. The study demonstrates the enduring impact of colonial legacies on Hong Kong's public health infrastructure, which set the stage for both the outbreak and its investigation. The paper argues that epidemic knowledge should be viewed as a situated assemblage, where scientific practices, ecological factors, and historical contexts converge to shape the realities of disease outbreaks.
This paper considers an unusual programme of medical education organized through the Lyon Sino-French Institute, which sponsored the postgraduate studies of over four hundred Chinese youths in France between 1921 and 1951. Forty of these students studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon and affiliated organizations. An examination of the students' correspondence, publications, and medical theses provides an opportunity to learn what kinds of knowledge they valued, and why, in a context of epistemological uncertainty. I suggest that despite claims of political disinterest as a means of professionalization, students at Lyon became socially and politically engaged advocates for the integration of Chinese and Western medical traditions. Although the Institute's founders cited idealistic aims in fostering intellectual life, its members chose to study medicine and selected medical specialties on grounds of social and political utility. As students combined clinical experience with laboratory research and textbook learning, they sought to apply knowledge acquired in France to Chinese environments. Subsequent efforts to implement pharmaceutical and biochemical methods in the analysis of Chinese herbal medicines had political ramifications, involving the students in debates over the relationships between Chinese and Western medicine - and, by extension, the relationships between Chinese intellectual tradition and global modernity.
We argue that dataveillance in Japan is fueled by techno-nationalist imaginaries that promise socio-economic renaissance by strengthening digital capitalism. Japanese nationalism is based on a techno-optimist imaginary which feeds enthusiasm for digitalization. We develop this argument by observing four discursive layers of dataveillance: (1) Society 5.0 - the governmental AI and ICT blueprint, (2) mass media, (3) AI vendors, and (4) the ethical, scientific, and legal areas. We distinguish four types of promises that legitimate dataveillance: personalization, automation, cloud convenience, and security. While we note critical voices in media and, especially, academia and jurisprudence, overwhelmingly, technology companies and the retail industry contribute to a technological infrastructure of dataveillance that reflects the underpinning imaginaries of the Government's plan. Japan's technopolitical discourse entangles production and consumption as based on an ideology of limitless resource exploitation through the newfound resource of data. Human lives are understood as biometric data in a dialectic of production and consumption. We agree with recent surveillance studies that an emerging economy based on digital platforms entrenches the disparities of capitalism. This digital rendition of capitalism reenforces the imaginary of the Japanese nation-state through data colonialism: it concretizes a top-down vision of the nation into a dataset.
This paper juxtaposes major historical developments in public engagement in Japan and the UK to unsettle the idea that the UK experience of how "publics" have been accounted for in science policy might be taken as a common or representative story. In comparison to the UK and European moves "from deficit to dialogue," recent events in Japan are much less well-known internationally, and do not follow the same pattern. Rather than being either "ahead" or "behind," Japan's experience has connected similar concepts or approaches in different ways. We highlight these contrasts to challenge and open up dominant Western narratives, to create space for considering how movements for public engagement with science-or what has been called "the participatory turn"-may unfold in different ways across different contexts. Simultaneously, we point to idiosyncrasies in the UK experience that may not always be observed as such. In so doing, we demonstrate that connections-or, as it may be, the absence of connections-between public engagement, science policy, and social responsibility cannot be taken for granted and must be addressed in specific contexts.
Researchers in science and technology studies (STS) are increasingly being called upon to contribute to research programs in the natural sciences and engineering, often under the heading of ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI), or more recently, responsible research and innovation (RRI). There has been little work to date that compares these experiences across countries and contexts. In this paper, we present two accounts of STS involvement-in artificial intelligence in Japan and synthetic biology in the UK. Although we work in two different technoscientific fields in two different countries, similarities emerge. Our accounts both show the importance of long-term, low-stakes collaborations, built up organically over time-collaborations that trouble the distinction between being either an "insider" or an "outsider" to a technoscientific field. We argue that RRI is more likely to be expansive and imaginative if it is done in the context of such collaborations, and that it is important for research funders to cultivate the conditions that make them possible. We end by calling for more tales from STS researchers of their experiences of RRI and ELSI across countries and contexts, to provide tools and resources for future collaborative work.
We historicize talk of social responsibility in relation to science and technology. By charting the multiple and contested notions of responsibility that scientists have espoused from the early twentieth century to the present, we show how scientists have used the word strategically, at different times and in different contexts, to project their preferred views of how science should relate to wider society. Comparing Japan and the UK enables us to highlight both the context-specific meanings that scientists have associated with responsibility, and the way that such meanings have come into conversation with one another. By so doing, it also helps us think about the purpose and implications of current and emerging configurations of "responsible" research and innovation-including how those configurations may shield scientists from certain kinds of responsibility while embracing others.
This paper examines how knowledge circulated since 1945, merging Cold War history with the transnational history of knowledge. While existing studies have focused on U.S. influence in transforming knowledge circulation within the Cold War's global order, postcolonial states present different dynamics. Countries such as South Korea and Taiwan transitioned from Japan's imperial network to a U.S.-centered system after the war, raising critical questions: What happened to knowledge networks that operated under the Japanese Empire when American hegemony emerged? Did these networks dissolve or persist? Such issues are specific to postcolonial contexts and cannot be fully addressed within Western frameworks. Through case studies of aviation medicine and industrial medicine in post-liberation Korea, this paper explores the dynamics of discontinuity and continuity in knowledge networks. It demonstrates that the circulation of knowledge was shaped not only by American influence as the new imperial power but also by continuing interactions between postcolonial Korea and its former empire, Japan. The findings reveal that different academic disciplines experienced varying patterns of knowledge transfer, highlighting the complex interplay between new and former imperial powers in shaping postcolonial knowledge production.
This paper explores how the interplay of public remembrance and state-managed knowledge shapes China's collective memory of epidemics, using the largely forgotten 1966 meningococcal meningitis outbreak-a deadly consequence of mass mobilization and interprovincial "Great Networking" on the eve of the Cultural Revolution-as a focal case. Drawing on archival materials, provincial gazetteers, social media discourse during COVID-19, and semi-structured interviews, we trace how censorship and public silence fostered a complex, nonlinear pattern of forgetting. While official media minimized the actual crisis, the 1982 introduction of the serogroup A polysaccharide vaccine (MPV-A) was repeatedly framed as a technocratic triumph, embedding epidemic memory in bodies and privileging rationalized public health knowledge over affective remembrance. This depoliticization shifted collective memory toward a scientific framework increasingly detached from lived experience. The COVID-19 pandemic briefly reopened archives and public debate, surfacing grassroots critiques of past incompetence and revealing how politically driven forgetting continually recalibrates the balance between knowledge and remembrance. Together, these dynamics foreshadow a similar trajectory for COVID-19 memory in China-a pattern already echoed in responses to the 2025 Chikungunya outbreak-as society remains caught in a prolonged process of memory formation that wavers between affective remembrance and depoliticized knowledge.
Trustworthiness in pandemic intervention technologies is not universal; it varies depending on how the threat of a pandemic and appropriate responses are framed. This paper introduces the concept of "pandemic visions" to explore how diverse normative commitments shape differing conceptions of pandemic threats and preferred mitigation strategies, thereby influencing trust-building and the adoption of specific countermeasures. Through a case study of the contested implementation of on-site COVID-19 rapid molecular diagnostic testing at Seoul National University, the paper examines how the testing's clinical validity and legitimacy were evaluated differently among faculty members, reflecting their contrasting pandemic visions. It further investigates how a particular vision gained traction within the university, ultimately leading to the adoption of the contentious initiative. This study demonstrates the contingent and negotiated nature of trustworthiness in public health intervention measures during a pandemic and highlights the importance of uncovering the divergent normative visions that underlie seemingly coherent pandemic responses.
In China, professional engineering societies gradually emerged during the Republican period (1912-1949). The associations served as a means to enhance the reputation of the engineering profession, bestow legitimization, establish networks, and promulgate knowledge. They constituted an autonomous arena outside the direct control of companies and state institutions. As the by-laws of departmentalized societies show, members assumed discursive leadership over the engineering sub-disciplines - such as civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering - and developed criteria to certify expertise in each domain. The article argues that engineering societies constituted nation-spanning voluntary organizations operating inside the "third realm," a space outside direct state control. The societies served science and technology needs and followed international professionalization patterns. Concurrently, college-level engineering associations attracted those who had not yet attained the status of professionals. Through campus activities, students displayed their enthusiasm for engineering and the participative nature of professional societies. They operated their clubs through codified structures informed by those of their seniors. Consequently, internally, professional and on-campus engineering societies practiced meritocratic and democratic ideals that the fragmented Chinese Republic largely failed to maintain.
