This paper will sketch what the author regards as theoretical challenges for the current sociology of science and technology (abbreviated to SOS hereafter) against the background of the development trajectory of the field, examine their sociological implications, and chart a path to approach these challenges. The paper will not confine its perspective to East Asian SOS and/or SOS in East Asia. Admittedly, an overview of a field properly located in a local context such as East Asia is significant in its own right, particularly for this journal. On the other hand, there is a particular pitfall involved in contextualising scholarly work by a locality such as East Asia, as the topic tends to get coupled with a critique of a post-coloniality: “Western STS has argued so-and-so universally, but the reality is different when the East Asian context is analysed”. This is a typical approach employed by the critique, which tends nevertheless to be based on Western frameworks. The situation seems to precisely represent the post-colonial way of doing something because there is a classical division of labour between the Western developed countries that provide a general framework and the non-Western countries that borrow the framework to analyse their own local context. That is to say, the contextualisation by locality alone can reinforce and reproduce the post-colonial way of thinking, which I hope intellectual intercourse initiated by this journal will change.
