How does science and policy mutually influence each other? How do policy priorities, for example, shape scientific research? In turn, how are scientific findings used to justify particular policies and laws? These are central questions for social and behavioral scientists who study policy as well as for policy makers and the public. This project grapples with these questions by exploring how scientific knowledge is created and what scientific policy-making means in a critical new domain of population science and policy. This area is particularly important since it creates incentives for the formation and constitution of families.
Since the introduction of the one-child policy, China's ratio of males to females at birth has been growing ever more masculine. The disappearance of girls has led to what has been framed as a growing crisis for men who are unable to find wives. Since 2005, a new field of population science and policy has been emerging around this problem. Deeply worried about social stability, the national government and its expert advisors are now framing the bachelors as potentially violent menaces to the party's goal of creating a harmonious society. Policy framings such as these are critically important: once embedded in public policy, they can remake scientific research agendas, laws, and individuals' perceptions of themselves and others.
Building on the Principle Investigator's long-term research on policies that impact the constitution of families, this project involves 14 months of research during 2011-13 aimed at understanding this emerging field of scientific governance. Using Science and Technology Studies theories and ethnographic and documentary research methods, the project has two parts, ethnographies of science-making and policy-making. The Principle Investigator will investigate the stakeholders involved in both scientific research and policy making. By studying the micro-practices of both scientists and policy-makers, this project investigates how science policy is made at the national level.
The project's broader impact illuminates the nature of scientific policy-making and the mutual constitution of science and law. How expert knowledge informs policy dynamics has substantial effects on what policies are created and how a nation is governed. The focus on population science and policy provides insight into policies that impact family formation more generally. Finally, this project contributes to the creation of networks between the United States and China, and adds to the social and behavioral scientific study of science and technology policy.
Intellectual Merit One of the most compelling insights of science and technology studies (STS) is the central role of science in constituting the social order. Much is known about how science shapes public policy and social life in Western democracies, but our understanding of the role of science in non-Western and non-democratic societies remains limited. Of particular interest is the rapidly rising nation of China, whose plans to become a global power in science and technology by 2030 appear on track to be achieved. This project examined the making and effects of science in China, taking as its focus the emerging field of scientific governance centered on China’s growing "obesity epidemic." Using STS concepts, and ethnographic and documentary research methods, it traced the historical rise of obesity science in China over the 15 years 1999 to 2014, examining which actors created that science, by what means, and with what effects on public policy and Chinese society. The field research, conducted mostly in Beijing, yielded some striking findings. First, very few actors were involved in creating that science. The central actor was a novel kind of hybrid organization, a China branch of the Washington DC-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a corporate-funded nonprofit whose aim, according to its website, is to bring together science, industry, and government to improve human health. Second, because of the personal networks linking researchers and government officials, the science of obesity was created, stabilized, and mobilized to create public policy in a very short period of time: roughly the decade 1999-2008. Third, the making of obesity science was driven and shaped less by developments within China than by global forces. A prime mover was the corporate sector. Through their involvement with ILSI, as well as a transnational NGO created to encourage obesity reduction worldwide, pharmaceutical, food, beverage, and restaurant companies stimulated interest in obesity as a public health problem, helped shape the logics and techniques by which the science developed, and played a role in framing the policy and programmatic response. Another important transnational force was the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose epidemiological research and public health campaign methods were taken as a model for China. In an environment starved of support for public health work, it could hardly have been otherwise – indeed, around the world public health is managed by "private-public partnerships" – but among Chinese researchers there was little questioning of the ethics of relying on corporate resources. Thus, corporate interests have put obesity on the public agenda, but the question of for whose benefit – the bottom line or the health of the Chinese people – remains largely unasked and unexamined. Broader Impact The obesity question is of particular interest because of the rise in obesity rates worldwide, a trend that prompted the World Health Organization to declare a "global pandemic of obesity." In the U.S. obesity has long been framed as an "epidemic" whose only solution is a nationwide, multi-sectoral "war on obesity." What framings of the problem and its optimal solution have been adopted in the world’s most populous nation? In China, where obesity levels are rising, obesity reduction is a public health goal, yet the concern is relatively muted. Researchers acknowledge the existence of an "epidemic" in interviews, but crisis-type language is rarely if ever used in governmental publications or public statements. This more muted response can be traced in part to the culture of weight in China, where heaviness is considered a sign of cuteness or prosperity, rather than evidence of immorality or personal irresponsibility. It is also rooted in the reality that China faces many, much more urgent public health problems that demand immediate attention (food safety, or the health effects of air, soil, and water pollution, for example). In this context, obesity is a secondary concern that is unlikely to ever gain the "nation-in-crisis" framing deployed in the U.S. Rather than a stand-alone issue, obesity has been integrated into a general concern with non-communicable diseases – the chronic diseases of modern life -- and addressed primarily through public health campaigns focused on fostering a "healthy lifestyle for all." Will this solve the problem? A growing body of research in the West is showing that today’s high levels of overweight and obesity are rooted primarily in genetic and environmental factors, and that the long-dominant strategy of responsibilizing individuals to shed pounds through diet and exercise does not work. In China, this is the approach that is being taken. With the government’s attention focused on other, more politically urgent problems, official efforts to modify the obesogenic environment (by regulating food and beverage companies, for example) are unlikely to materialize, and obesity will probably continue to rise, with health effects that should cause concern.
