Introduction: Public Participation in Science and Technology in East Asia

In the recent history of democracy, East Asian countries have tried vigorously to consolidate their democratic foundation, and to implement new practices of public participations to create strong civil societies. Such efforts extend to the field of science and technology policy-making, which has been dominated by elites and experts, but has now become the touchstone to examine the depth of democratization. This special issue shows how STS scholars from Japan, Taiwan and our Western counterparts approach public participation of science and technology. The three research articles and Brian Wynne’s critical commentary collectively demonstrate the diversity of cases, methods and theoretical perspectives in this important field, and we hope this special issue opens up more room for further intellectual adventure. For the past few years, public participation in science and technology has been a highlight of East Asian STS conferences or workshops, held in Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Kobe or Shenyang. Scholars present various cases, from how communities are involved with environmental controversies in Korea, to how labor workers challenge “bad epidemiology” preventing them from asking for health compensation in Taiwan, to how amateur designers create alternative computer games in Japan. The article by Juraku, Suzuki and Sakura in this special issue adds interesting findings to this group of publications, and demonstrates how specific Japanese local contexts lead to particular ways of mobilization toward techno scientific controversy like the sitting of nuclear power plant. Equally impressively, some formalized participatory methods, like consensus conference, citizen jury and deliberative polls, have often been the focus of STS scrutiny, attracting much discussion and debate. Among them, the consensus conference, innovated by the Danish Board of Technology in the East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (2007) 1:15–18 DOI 10.1007/s12280-007-9005-6