While curating the material for this issue, I found myself unable to avoid one particularly tough situation that goes to the heart of East Asia and STS. As a journal dedicated to analyzing the dynamics of science and society in society and to calling for action on it, what can EASTS do during a pandemic that came into the academic spotlight—first in the life sciences and later in the social sciences—in January 2020? Will EASTS join other journals and offer professional arguments, or will it hold fire until the situation becomes clearer?
Take the American Sociological Association’s Contexts as an example. It was among the social science journals that provided information when COVID-19 was considered to be an epidemic mainly affecting East Asia. As the disease has spread to other continents, so has the call for papers studying COVID-19’s global impacts. On the one hand, as academics we understand the necessity of fulfilling our public responsibility by offering timely scholarly interventions, especially given that EASTS is even closer—geographically and intellectually—to the emerging disease and to the science and technology surrounding it. On the other hand, however, we share concerns that such responses can be considered offensive and opportunistic given the traumatic fact that this virus has infected more than two million people around the world and has caused more than one hundred and fifty thousand deaths (and counting).
