Elephant and the Dragon in Contemporary Life Sciences

Joy Y. Zhang is Professor of Sociology at the University of KentSaheli Datta Burton is a Research Fellow at University College London

'Through an illuminating series of vignettes and cases, Zhang and Datta Burton reassert the agency of China and India’s research communities, and recast their ‘epistemic disobedience’ as essential to the urgent task of decolonising the global governance of science. This is an important and timely book, packed with insights and provocations that deserve to be widely read by scientific leaders, policymakers, and by scientists themselves. Its conclusions should challenge, destabilise – yet also strengthen and renew – the frameworks and assumptions that govern science in China, India and worldwide.'James Wilsdon, Digital Science Professor of Research Policy, University of Sheffield'The rise of China and India as science powerhouses challenges Western assumptions about the "universality" of science and its global governance. Using vivid examples, the authors argue that Asian life scientists are involved in the constitution of contemporary science that in actuality is a diverse, multi-sited, transnational, and evolving mode of global knowledge.'Aihwa Ong, author of Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life'This is the most refreshing, well-informed, and theoretically incisive survey to date of the evolution of Chinese and Indian science-and-technology strategies on the global stage. Using key case studies to ground their argument about how India and China are gradually challenging the hegemonic control of Western science through epistemic disobedience and strategic science diplomacy, physician-STS scholar Zhang and public policy economist Datta-Burton provide a new bench-mark text for future STS (science, technology and society), geopolitical, and national development studies. They prove the value of multi-locale and comparative or juxtapositional methods of analysis which are fundamental to understanding emergent forms of the future.'Michael M.J. Fischer, author of Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice and Anthropology in the Meantime'This compellingly written book reflects on the history and contemporary development of the life sciences in these two countries, and presents an urgent case to rethink global science so that it lives up to its name.'Larry Au, The Journal of Development Studies

• Preface1 The global science race and the decolonial imperative for governance2 Unpacking the subaltern anxiety through modernisation and globalisation3 Chinese life sciences’ ‘struggle for recognition’4 India: self-sufficiency in a globalised world5 The dragon-elephant tango: making sense of the rise of China and India6 What global science will have beenBibliography