Joy Yueyue Zhang

Scientific institutions and effective governance: a case study of Chinese stem cell research

In terms of stem cell research, China appears both as a “powerhouse” armed with state-of-the-art facilities, internationally trained personnel and permissive regulation and as a “bit player,” with its capability for conducting high quality research still in question. The gap between Chinas assiduous endeavors and the observed outcome is due to a number of factors. Based on interviews with 48 key stakeholders active in Chinese stem cell research, this article examines how the structure of scientific institutions has affected effective governance in China. It is demonstrated that despite Chinas recent efforts to attract highly competent researchers and to launch new regulatory initiatives, the effects of these attempts have been diminished by an absence of middle-layer positions within research teams and by the uncoordinated administrative structures among regulatory bodies.

The art of trans-boundary governance: the case of synthetic biology

Synthetic biology raises few, if any, social concerns that are distinctively new. Similar to many other convergent technologies, synthetic biology’s interface across various scientific communities and interests groups presents an incessant challenge to political and conceptual boundaries. However, the scale and intensity of these interfaces seem to necessitate a reflection over how corresponding governance capacities can be developed. This paper argues that, in addition to existing regulatory approaches, such capacities may be gained through the art of trans-boundary governance, which is not only attentive to the crossing and erosion of particular boundaries but also adept in keeping up with the dynamics among evolving networks of actors.

The 'National' and the 'Cosmos' The emergence of synthetic biology in China

How can grass-roots movements evolve into a national research strategy? The bottom-up emergence of synthetic biology in China could give some pointers.

Recasting subjectivity through the lenses: new forms of environmental mobilisation in China

Visual imagery in environmental politics can be an effective way to engage the public. However, research based on 21 interviewees with activists from nine environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) in China suggests that the value of images in promoting environmental initiatives is not limited to the exhibition of them, but is also seen in the making of them. Increasingly in China, ENGOs are offering free natural photographic tutoring to the public. Camera lenses are seen as conduits to recast self-nature relations, which has the potential to raise environmental awareness and promote ENGO membership. Drawing on both theories of social movements and contemporary Chinese subaltern political sociology, this paper provides new insights into grass-roots environmental mobilisation in China.

Cosmopolitan risk community and China’s climate governance

Ulrich Beck asserts that global risks, such as climate change, generate a form of ‘compulsory cosmopolitanism’, which ‘glues’ various actors into collective action. Through an analysis of emerging ‘cosmopolitan risk communities’ in Chinese climate governance, this article points out a ‘blind spot’ in the theorization of cosmopolitan belonging and an associated inadequacy in explaining shifting power relations. The article addresses this problem by engaging with the intersectionality of the cosmopolitan space. It is argued that cosmopolitan belonging is a form of performative identity. Its key characteristic lies in a ‘liberating prerogative’, which enables individuals to participate in the solution of common problems creatively. It is this liberating prerogative that forces the state from a position of political monopoly and marks the cosmopolitan moment.

Cosmopolitan risk community in a bowl: a case study of China’s good food movement

Abstract Ulrich Beck fundamentally transformed our way of thinking about human interdependence through his three core theses on risk, individualisation and cosmopolitanisation. However, two commonly observed deficiencies in Beck’s grand theory were its Eurocentric orientation and a lack of empirical grounding. Based on 5 focus groups and 14 interviews with participants of the emerging Clean Food Movement in China, this paper extends the Beckian discussion outside Europe. Through examining how individuals understand both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ risks associated with contemporary food consumption, this paper demonstrates that in the face of unpredictable and incalculable harms, risks are not seen as a ‘thing’, but are translated into ‘causal relations’. Subsequently, for Chinese stakeholders, the best way to safeguard food risks is to enact more visible and functioning interdependent relations in the food system. This in turn has given rise to new forms of communities which cut across conventional geographic, socio-economic and political boundaries. The paper deepens a Beckian theorisation in two ways. First, it demonstrates that the ‘enabling’ effect of risk towards a cosmopolitan society is not limited to obvious global crises, such as climate catastrophes and financial meltdown. In fact, the mundane yet intimate concern of putting ‘good’ food in one’s dinner bowl already presses actors to form new social solidarities that are cosmopolitan in nature. Second, it goes beyond Beck’s assertion that the risk society has culminated in a cosmopolitan moment, and explores how a performative cosmopolitan community reshapes the ‘relations of definition’ to mitigate risks on the ground.

How to Be Modern? The Social Negotiation of ‘Good Food’ in Contemporary China:

Developing safe and sustainable food production for its population has been central to China’s ‘Modernisation Project’. Yet recent fieldwork in three Chinese cities suggests that there are two conflicting views on what a ‘modern’ agriculture should look like. For the government, modernisation implies a rational calculation of scale and a mirroring of global trends. But an alternative interpretation of modernity, promoted by civil society, has been gaining ground. For this camp, good food production is then established through a ‘rhizomic’ spread of new practices, which are inspired by world possibilities but are deeply rooted in the local context. Based on 14 interviews and five focus groups, this article investigates the ongoing social negotiation of ‘good food’ in China. It demonstrates how a non-western society responds to the twin processes of modernisation and globalisation and provides insights on the varieties of modernity in the making.

The transformative power of commoning and alternative food networks

ABSTRACT A commoning framework offers a critical lens to fully appreciate the scope and impact of alternative food networks (AFNs). Fieldwork from an AFN in southern China is drawn upon to show how commoning enacts changes in how members contextualise and anchor their social relations to one another with regards to sourcing food as a commons. A commoning framework gives a fuller picture of how the constitutive effects of AFNs reside not in their introduction of a new uniformity but in their navigation of the multiplicity of the social through its proposition and co-construction of a new ‘cognitive praxis’.

The dual reality of the Chinese knowledge economy.

This paper draws on stem cell research and financial derivatives as two case studies to analyse the role of scientific knowledge and technology in the development of the Chinese knowledge economy. The findings suggest that, despite Chinas recent commitments in acquiring international expertise, there is a decoupling between knowledge acquisitions and applications in the institutionalisation of knowledge within these sectors. Scientific-based knowledge and professional know-how are on the one hand perceived as prime drivers of Chinas development, yet they on the other hand remain subordinate to existing administrative infrastructures. The paper further elucidates the causes and implications of this by describing the dual reality of knowledge in relation to an isomorphic process of rationalisation outlined by new institutional organisational theory.