Sci-Tech Asia Webinar
Sci-Tech Asia Book Forum: Dialogue on “Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola” (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2024)
Webinar Description
Soda Science tells the story of how industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. Anthropologist and science studies specialist Susan Greenhalgh discovers a hidden world of science-making—with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims—dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and afterlife of the science they made, Greenhalgh shows how corporate science has managed to gain such a hold over our lives. Spanning twenty years, her investigation takes her from the US, where the science was made, to China, a key market for sugary soda. By following the scientists and their ambitious schemes to make the world safe for Coke, Greenhalgh offers an account that is more global—and yet more human—than the story that dominates public understanding today.
This forum will focus on the part of Greenhalgh’s book that deals with soda science developments in China. Modern science and technology are central to Chinese politics and CCP power, but the concepts now used to study science do not fully illuminate the often hidden ties between science and the state. The book presents a case of the corporate corruption of science and the incorporation of that distorted science into official health policy. The case involves the Coca-Cola Company and its “soda-defense science” of obesity, a science created not to solve a public health problem but to protect profits on sugary drinks. Arguing that science-making in China bears the marks of the nation’s unusual history and socio-political institutions, the book proposes five distinctive features of science-making in China, then uses them to answer key questions about the case of Coca-Cola and its soda science during 1995-2020. This work suggests that the corporate corruption of Chinese science and policy might be more pervasive than we think, and that “scientific policy making,” now mandated for all policies, does not necessarily yield better policy.
Visit the Book’s Official Webpage: Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola
Speaker
Susan Greenhalgh (Harvard University, USA) — Author
Susan Greenhalgh is the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society Emerita at Harvard University. As anthropologist, her interests lie in the entanglements of state, corporation, science, and society, and their consequences for human health and social justice writ large. She is author of Just One-Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China; and Cultivating Global Citizens: Population in the Rise of China; co-author of Governing China’s Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics; and co-editor of Can Science and Technology Save China?, among others titles.
Ayo Wahlberg (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) — Discussant
Ayo Wahlberg is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. Working in the field of social studies of (bio)medicine, his research has focused on the modernization of traditional herbal medicine (in Vietnam and the United Kingdom), reproductive and genetic technologies (in China and Denmark), health metrics (in clinical trials and global health) as well as chronic living (through a multi-country study entitled “The Vitality of Disease – Quality of Life in the Making”). Ayo is the author of the award-winning monograph Good Quality – the Routinization of Sperm Banking in China (University of California Press). He is currently working on a project focused on fertility exhaustion amidst globally declining fertility rates and proliferating pro-natalist responses from governments concerned about national “reproductive crises”.
Loretta Lou (Durham University, UK) — Discussant
Loretta Lou is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Durham University. Her research explores the intersection of ecology, health, spirituality, healing, and activism, with a focus on East and Southeast Asia. She has conducted ethnographic studies on environmental movements and prefigurative activism in Hong Kong, the politics of traditional Chinese medicine in Macau, and toxic pollution in China. Her current work examines the art of healing outside clinical settings in Global Asia. Loretta has been a host for Sci-tech Asia’s webinars, book forums, and podcasts since 2020.
Yichen Rao (Utrecht University, Netherlands) — Moderator
Dr. Yichen Rao is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. His academic journey includes serving as a Postdoc Research Associate in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, a Postdoc Research Fellow in Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, and an Ernst Mach Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Holding a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies from The University of Hong Kong, Rao’s research delves into the unintended impact of digital techno-fetishism in games, fin-tech, and infrastructure on human society. His insights are grounded in extensive ethnographic fieldwork, particularly focusing on treatment camps for youth internet addiction and uncovering digital Ponzi Schemes disguised as fin-tech platforms. From 2024 to 2027, Yichen serves as a council member of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).
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