Article ID: CBB001213611

Traveling Engineers, Machines, and Comparisons: Intersecting Imaginations and Journeys in the Thai Local Engineering Industry (2013)

unapi

Morita, Atsuro (Author)


East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Volume: 7, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 221-241


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Traveling Comparisons: Ethnographic Reflections on Science and Technology”
Language: English

Recent studies in STS and anthropology have elucidated that the travel of science has been entangled with various forms of travel, including indigenous modes. While the Western style of travel often entails comparative imaginations about the difference between places and people focusing on culture, some anthropologists argue that the indigenous conceptualization of difference and travel can be radically different from Western notions. This article explores the intricate relationship between travel of technology and imaginations about difference by focusing on two modes of comparisons found in engineering practices in two significantly different contexts in Thailand: in a technology-transfer project sponsored by the Japanese government and in small factories in the informal sector, which is the supposed target of the project. In both contexts, comparisons between engineering practices are almost inevitable as the Japanese engineers and Thai mechanics make sense of the relationships between the two countries as iterated in their practices. Embedded in the structure of the Japanese transfer project is an interest in the social contexts of technology; following that impulse, this article juxtaposes two largely different modes of travel and comparative imaginations and sheds light on the unnoticed presumptions of the modern comparative imagination.

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Article Mohácsi, Gergely; Morita, Atsuro (2013) Traveling Comparisons: Ethnographic Reflections on Science and Technology. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 175-183). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001213611/

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Authors & Contributors
Kazuo Tanishita
Oka, Masi
Juul, Annegrete
Patra, Prasanna Kumar
Langstrup, Henriette
Chih-Yuan Yang
Concepts
Technology transfer
Technology
Cross-national interaction
Engineers
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Industry
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
Meiji period (Japan, 1868-1910)
Places
Japan
United States
China
Thailand
India
Great Britain
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