In May 2008, I had the pleasure and privilege of giving a talk at National Taiwan University on the occasion of the first anniversary of EASTS, the East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal. I have been following the journal since its inception, so in my talk, I presented a number of cases from my recent research considered in the light of how EASTS provides resources for analyzing the kind of material with which I have been grappling. In particular, I situated my talk in relation to the exciting position paper by Daiwie Fu in the first issue, “How Far Can East Asian STS Go?” that takes up the question of regional identity, postcoloniality, and deterritorialization. It is also in conversation with the important introduction by Dung-Shen Chen and Chia-Ling Wu on the links between democracy, public participation (including dissent), civil society, and technoscience throughout the East Asian region and beyond. In this comment, I will summarize the main points of my talk: what the journal offers me as a US-based STS scholar working on topics that refuse neat regional or national bounding, and how that might be applied to make sense of some actual examples.
