These two books each touch on the molecular biology revolution in Asia (Singapore and South Korea in Thompson’s case; Singapore and Shenzhen, China, in Ong’s). Charis Thompson provides an expert account of policy formulation in California and justifies her all-too-brief forays into Asia by reference to Sheila Jasanoff’s comparative work, but she provides only superficial accounts of her Asian cases: in the Singapore case, for a guided tour of buildings and apparently speaking only to three researchers in 2005; and in the Korean case, focusing almost exclusively on the troubled case of Hwang Woo Suk in 2005 and again in 2008, when his bubble burst. In neither Asian case does she do the in-depth analysis of the civic epistemology or assumptions of how regulatory decisions are legitimately made that is the core of Jasanoff’s analyses, falling back on general rubrics...
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1 June 2018
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