This special issue was first conceived with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) campaign in Taiwan as its main inspiration. Starting in 1998 and still ongoing, the struggle of former employees of the RCA seeking justice for toxic exposure they were subjected to when the company operated in Taiwan between 1968 and 1992 is by now one of the longest social-movement campaigns, and certainly the longest and largest lawsuit in history. Hundreds of volunteers have worked together with the victims to contribute to the campaign over the decades, bringing expertise in law, public health, STS, organizing, filmmaking, and other fields, to not only sustain the campaign and lawsuit but also to widen its influence on and inspiration of various scholarly fields such as public health and STS (Chen Citation2011). Throughout its long struggle, the RCA campaign has found sister campaigns and allies in many other countries, and STSers working with the campaign have found mutually inspiring colleagues. Hence the idea for an EASTS special issue connecting these experiences and analyses.
When people organize collective responses to industrial toxic exposure that is damaging to the human body and the environment, the struggle often proceeds via the entangled institutional knowledge-making (or lack thereof) in science and law—the two institutionalized epistemic authorities in modern society. Although similar struggles have been going on since late eighteenth-century England, wherever and whenever industrialization is to be found, those situated in or with close connections to industries in East Asia deserve special attention. The articles and field report in this special issue, together with Kim et al.’s Citation2020 EASTS article on the Samsung Leukemia case in South Korea, attempt to explore various facets through cases that have transcended time and space—often on multiple scales. (Kim et al. Citation2020).
