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Discussants:
Jia-shin Chen（Professor / Director, Institute of Science, Technology and Society, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University）

Host:
Hsuan-Wei Lee (Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica)

The development of genetic genealogy in the 21st century has significant implications for ancestral origin, racial/ ethnic, and national construction. In Taiwan, genetic research concerning the origins of Taiwanese has involved racial/ethnic issues but also the dispute over Taiwan’s national identity with the People’s Republic of China, which claims that “we have the same roots” or “blood is thicker than water.” After the end of martial law (1945-1987), scientific research on multi-origins and the genetic makeup of the Taiwanese emerged. These scientific debates pose a radical challenge to the dominant Chinese nationalist ideology of the period of authoritarian rule, which is still lingering now.

This talk, firstly, by taking Sheila Jasanoff’s concept of co-production between science and politics, this article pushes the concept further by addressing how “nationalization of biomedicine” and the “biomedicalization of the nation” coproduced each other in Taiwan. Secondly, my research intends to evoke epistemological and methodological problems inherent in genealogical evidence. Thirdly, I argue that the Taiwan case contributes to changing the theoretical dialogues from European settler colonialism to Asian (or Han) settler colonialism.

Speaker
Yu-Yueh Tsai is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, working in the fields of medical sociology, science, technology and society (STS), and race and ethnicity studies with a special focus on issues related to Taiwan Indigenous genetics, suffering, and identity. Her past academic experiences include Senior Fulbright Research Grants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Research fellow at Harvard Yenching Institute. She published her first book, Mental Disorder of the Tao Indigenous Minority in Taiwan: Modernity, Social Change, and the Origin of Social Suffering (Taipei: Linking Publishing). She co-edited two books, Abnormal People? Psychiatry and the Governance of Modernity in Taiwan (Linking Publishing, 2018) and Post Genomic Taiwan: Shifting Paradigms and Challenges (National Chiao Tung University Press, 2019). Her current published articles appear such as Social Studies of Science, Genetics and Society, BioSocities, and so on.

Note:  Online participation is NOT available.