IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB522079237

Brokering science, blaming culture: The US–South Korea ecological survey in the Demilitarized Zone, 1963–8 (2021)

Hyun, Jaehwan (Author)

History of Science
Volume: 59
Issue: 3
Pages: 315-343

URI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0073275320974209

DOI: 10.1177/0073275320974209

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Cross-national interaction Science and politics Conservationists Science and war; science and the military 20th century, late Korea United States National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)

This paper examines the planning, execution, and closure of the US–Korea Cooperative Ecological Survey project in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the 1960s. In this period, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) initiated bilateral scientific cooperation between the NAS and similar organizations in developing countries along the line of the developmental turn of U.S. foreign assistance. Working closely with the NAS, U.S. conservationists used this scheme to introduce nature conservation practices and the discipline of ecosystem ecology to developing countries. In this context, by way of the NAS’s Pacific Science Board, two countries’ biologists initiated the preliminary cooperative project in the DMZ in 1966. Korean and U.S. scientists soon began to realize that their collaboration was marked by dissonance. The U.S. side attributed the cooperation failure to Korean culture while the Korean side criticized the unequal structure of their cooperation. Joining the global historiography of Cold War scientific collaboration, this paper pays particular attention to the intermediaries of the collaborative project and their rivalry. It argues that political struggles revolving around the position of go-betweens – as what I call knowledge brokers – on the recipient side provoked contestation between American and Korean scientists. The contention between the two sides played out in the collaboration coming to an end, albeit partially. Throughout this analysis, this study suggests paying more serious attention to the politics of scientific exchange among actors on the recipient side as an outset from which to analyze the heterogeneity of the Korean side without losing sight of their active role in the building process of American hegemony.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB522079237/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Krige, John; (2006)
American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (/isis/citation/CBB000772271/)

Essay Review Loughlin, Kelly; (2003)
The Theatre of Scientific Authority (/isis/citation/CBB000340817/)

Article Petersen, Nikolaj; (2013)
The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland in the Early Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001212894/)

Article Heymann, Matthias; Martin-Nielsen, Janet; (2013)
Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States (/isis/citation/CBB001212891/)

Article Roberts, Peder; (2013)
Intelligence and Internationalism: The Cold War Career of Anton Bruun (/isis/citation/CBB001212892/)

Chapter Kunkel, Sönke; (2011)
Amerikanischer Wissenstransfer im Nigeria der frühen 1960er Jahre (/isis/citation/CBB001211844/)

Article Krige, John; (2010)
Building the Arsenal of Knowledge (/isis/citation/CBB001021959/)

Book DeJong-Lambert, William; (2012)
The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair (/isis/citation/CBB001213212/)

Article Brian Simbirski; (2016)
Cybernetic Muse: Hannah Arendt on Automation, 1951–1958 (/isis/citation/CBB311347711/)

Article Oreskes, Naomi; (2010)
Science, Technology and Free Enterprise (/isis/citation/CBB001021960/)

Thesis Plafcan, Daniel John, Jr.; (2007)
Between State and Transnational Community: United States--Japan Technoscientific Diplomacy in Earth Observation (/isis/citation/CBB001560790/)

Article Nierenberg, Nicolas; Tschinkel, Walter R.; Tschinkel, Victoria J.; (2010)
Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate (/isis/citation/CBB001022609/)

Article Ellis, Erik; (2007)
What Is Marine Biology? Defining a Science in the United States in the Mid-20th Century (/isis/citation/CBB000931561/)

Article Volmar, Axel; (2013)
Listening to the Cold War: The Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations, Seismology, and Psychoacoustics, 1958--1963 (/isis/citation/CBB001320384/)

Essay Review Olwell, Russell; (2010)
Two Views of Cassandra: Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter's Tale; John Mueller, Atomic Obsession (/isis/citation/CBB001566396/)

Article Launius, Roger; (2010)
Astronaut Envy? The U.S. Military's Quest for a Human Mission in Space (/isis/citation/CBB001221391/)

Book Melanie Armstrong; (2017)
Germ Wars: The Politics of Microbes and America's Landscape of Fear (/isis/citation/CBB693385819/)

Article Wang, Jessica; (2006)
American Scientists and Cold War Politics: Current and Future Research Directions (/isis/citation/CBB000671294/)

Article Slaney, Patrick David; (2012)
Eugene Rabinowitch, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Nature of Scientific Internationalism in the Early Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001220849/)

Book Moore, Kelly; (2008)
Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945--1975 (/isis/citation/CBB000830500/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}