Presenting the Collaborative Research Project 'Making Modernity in East Asia: Technologies of Everyday Life, 19th-21st Centuries'

Abstract

This panel presents the main objectives, the structure, and the mid-term findings of the collaborative research project, Making Modernity in East Asia: Technologies of Everyday Life, 19th to 21st Centuries, based at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This project, first of its kind in the region, proposes a bold new way of understanding East Asian modernity through the lens of technological processes between the 19th century and the present. It reframes Euro-centric “failure/success” narratives of the region’s modern development by focusing on the manifold forms of making and using, adopting and creating technological innovations. Making Modernity in East Asia focuses on technological processes that engage the average East Asian in his/her everyday life, and on how these processes become integral parts of multi-level infrastructures – “built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space” (Larkin 2013) – that are emblematic of modern lifestyle in the region. The choice of everyday technology is a strategy for highlighting forms of human agency, motivation and expectation, tensions and synergies, desires and aversion specific to East Asia, to counterbalance the conventional bias towards privileging the non-humanist materialist approaches in studies of science and technology. In emphasizing inter- and intra- regional flows and developments, this East Asia-centered program will be a significant contribution to the global history of technology. The project currently has a team of 15 scholars with eight subprojects. Three sub-projects will be presented in this panel: food technologies, transport infrastructures, and environmental technologies.