The People’s War against Earthquakes: Cultures of Mass Science in Mao’s China

This chapter examines the ideology, organization, and practice of the program of earthquake monitoring, prediction, and defense during China's Cultural Revolution, with a focus on the culture of mass science. By a strange coincidence, there were about ten major earthquakes in China during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. The Chinese political and scientific leaders tried to organize a general program that involved the masses in the effort to monitor and predict earthquakes. The chapter examines the culture of mass science on three levels: the culture of mass science itself as scientific knowledge and practice; the political and cultural context in which mass science took place; and the general question of what this case study may tell us about the opportunities and pitfalls in studying science in a non-Western society.