2020 Taipei Biennial│Theater of Negotiations
The “Theater of Negotiations” is a practical implementation of the “political and diplomatic tactics” that inform the Taipei Biennial 2020. The program content is a collaboration among researchers from the Taiwan STS Association (Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association) and students from five universities to engage in role-playing while addressing several social controversies that exist in Taiwan today. These range from climate emergency to nuclear waste, food safety, renewable energy, and assisted conception. The role-playing takes the form of debates about these controversies, with participants representing the various stakeholders (lobbyists, judges, NGOs, local politicians, residents, and non-human actors etc.), engaging in realistic exercises in negotiation and public governance of the issue in question.
Ecologists have tried to promote an ideal of “unification,” based on the understanding that we are all united by “Mother Nature,” and have invited “us” to become citizens of the world. But this ideal is destabilized by a realistic approach as each controversy sparks a multitude of contradictory agendas. What the “Theater of Negotiations” attempts to do is create pedagogical formats that make it possible to bring people who disagree together into the same room so that they can negotiate.
Partner: Taiwan STS Association
Associate partners: International College of Innovation, National Chengchi University; Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance, National Chengchi University
Participating schools: National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology; National Chengchi University; National Taiwan University; Shih Hsin University; National Yang-Ming University (listed in chronological order of participating event)
Topic 1: Offshore Wind Power in Progress (Work in Progress)
Date: Nov. 20 (Fri.)
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Gallery D, Basement Level
Host and Co-Host: Hong Wen-Ling, Chih-Yuan Yang
※ This program requires an invitation for admission.
To achieve the goal of energy transition, while also ameliorating the urgent problems of air pollution, carbon emissions, and nuclear power decommissioning, the construction of offshore wind farms is now in full swing in the waters west of Taiwan. Its development involves surveys of the marine environment and conservation of biodiversity, and it affects fishing industries and local development. How this industry founded on foreign technology takes root in Taiwan has become a major, pressing concern. This exercise is based on a fictitious case of a new offshore wind farm project off Changhua’s coast. The scenario is a meeting of an environmental impact assessment task force of the Environmental Protection Administration. Government representatives, Environmental Impact Assessment Committee members, developers, technical experts, stakeholders, and representatives of non-human actors (such as humpback dolphins, commercial fish, migratory birds, and coastal ecosystems) come together to voice their perspectives and negotiate, addressing such controversies as the impact of wind farms on the marine environment, offshore and coastal fisheries; the impact of noise and seabed disturbance on dolphins and fish; the impact of wind turbine operation on migratory birds and coastal ecosystems; and the economic benefits of the wind power industry for the local area. The discussion will pursue a possible consensus and practice placing equal emphasis on ecology, environment, engineering and society. Finally, a public press conference will be held, revealing the conclusions of the negotiation and inviting actual wind power developers, fishing group representatives, environmental reporters and NGOs to ask questions.
Special Event: You and I and Our Climate Footprint
Date: Nov. 28 (Sat.)
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Gallery D, Basement Level
Host and Co-Host: Paul Jobin, Shih-Hao Jheng
Although the Earth’s natural resources can be regenerated, humans are consuming resources far too quickly. Research by the international Global Footprint Network (GFN) reveals that the rate of human consumption of the earth’s resources is about 1.6 times the rate of resource regeneration. In other words, every year humankind is spending more ecological resources than the Earth can provide. GFN has thus introduced the idea of the Earth Overshoot Day (EOD), marking the day when humans exhaust their global resource budget for each year. In this special event, visitors to the Taipei Biennial are invited to answer a questionnaire about their housing, food consumption and transport, the results of which will calculate their ecological footprint, or in other words, how many Earths they consume. The discussion that follows aims to find specific solutions to reduce this ecological footprint and its impact on global climate. Since the footprint is partly the result of individual choices and partly the result of collective national ones (such as infrastructure and public policy), the discussion entails a negotiation between oneself and the whole society, and it might initiate a reset of our lifestyles.
Topic 2: Anticipating Reproduction
Date: Dec. 05 (Sat.)
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Gallery D, Basement Level
Host: Chia-Ling Wu
Assisted reproductive technology (ART) separates reproduction from sexuality, creating the possibility of conception without heterosexual intercourse. However, in Taiwan the access to ART is legally restricted to infertile heterosexual married couples. Addressing reproductive justice, some civic groups have advocated extending the access of ART to singles and gay/lesbian couples. However, some are concerned that given the detrimental effects of population growth, we should not support the making of yet more babies. How should the Assisted Reproduction Act be amended to incorporate the reproductive rights of sexual minorities? In what ways can we re-design the use of assisted reproductive technology? Ultimately, what are the values we should promote when we re-configure the use of ART? We will explore these issues in a public hearing of the Congress regarding the amendment of the Assisted Reproduction Act. After the public hearing, some participants will propose founding a non-profit sperm bank in Taiwan, to meet the new needs for those who anticipate building a brave new family through ART.
Topic 3: Revisiting Plasticizer Food
Date: Dec. 12 (Sat.)
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Gallery D, Basement Level
Host and Co-hosts: Hsin-Hsing Chen, Yi-Ping Lin, Tsung-Yen Tsou
In 2011, a shocking news story unraveled. Chemicals normally used as plasticizer to make plastic soft were found to have been used for years as food additives and added to a wide array of food and drinks, including those sold by many famous brand names. Nobody is sure who had consumed how much of these, or what health effects they would have. This was but one of several huge food safety crises about to break out in the subsequent years. Public fury over food safety issues, and a widely shared anger over government and big corporations, would come to define a great part of Taiwan’s political discontent in the 2010s. All lawsuits about the plasticizer food crisis concluded in 2018. Several small-business owners selling plasticizer as food additive were given long prison sentences and fined heavily. Big corporations whose products contained such chemicals, on the other hand, were only ordered to give meager amounts to consumers in compensation. This was obviously not a satisfactory outcome for the public. The Food Safety and Sanitation Act was amended more than ten times since the 2011 controversy in response to one after crisis another. At this time, we revisit this historical controversy, taking it out of the courtroom context and into a negotiation theater. Human and non-human actors such as the chemicals and the body will talk to each other in a non-hierarchical setting, and see what will come out of this re-imagining of the historical incident nine years ago.
Topic 4: The Pending Future of Nuclear Waste
Date: Dec. 26 (Sat.)
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Gallery D, Basement Level
Convener: Wen-Ling Tu
Host and Co-host: Kai-ling Luo, Chih-Yuan Yang
The disposal of nuclear waste is a long-term issue which requires multiple disciplines, involving not only technical knowledge, but also a dimension of public understanding in society. In Taiwan, the disputes over the use of nuclear energy and the disposal of nuclear waste occupy a pivotal position in the democratization process which has unfolded since the 1980s. At present, the focus of nuclear waste treatment has shifted to the decommissioning of nuclear power plants on the northern coast and arrangements for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Facing uncertainty in the scheduling and initiation of the decommissioning phases of the Nuclear Plant No. 1 and the commencement of operationalizing the storage facilities for radioactive waste, the central and local governments have hugely different priorities and therefore have created the current impasse. Following these latest developments, this simulation is set up based on the Executive Yuan’s “Nuclear-Free Homeland Task Force Committee” and simulates the meetings and informal exchanges after meeting, demonstrating the policy-making participation and negotiation agency of the diversified communities of stakeholders. Finally, with the participation of nonhuman actors such as the Northern Coastal Land and Spent Nuclear Fuel, this simulation hopes to bring aspirations to the current impasse, by inviting reflections on the entanglement between technological artefacts and societal negotiations in attempting the settlement of the storage facility and, thus, to imagine a possible future of place-remaking and revitalization.
Hong Wen-Ling: Ph.D. in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, University of Michigan, USA; Associate Professor, Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology; Chairperson, Taiwan STS Association; Underwater Cultural Heritage Committee member, Ministry of Culture. She researches and promotes connections between the public and engineering, with special attention to citizen science, science communication, and engineering knowledge construction. Previous research includes analyzing perceptions and responses regarding pollution emissions between petrochemical plants and fence-line communities; the public nature of technical governance and forensic scientific evidence argumentation in the Kaohsiung propene explosion. She has participated in the production of “Open the S Files,” winner of the Golden Bell Award for Natural Science Documentary Program.
Jr-Ping Wang (Executive Director): D.Phil from the Department of Engineering Science, Oxford University, UK. Currently Associate Professor in the Department of Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering at National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, and Chief Secretary of the Taiwan STS Association. He has long focused on issues such as citizen science, public awareness of science, and popularization of shipbuilding technology, and has participated in pedagogical programs for higher education reform.
Chih-Yuan Yang: PhD from the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, U.K. Currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. He focuses on the authority of public rationality demonstrated by scientific knowledge in the policy-making process, as well as the cumulative cultural significance conveyed by engineering technological choices. Research projects include electrical engineering dispatching, FITs expert committees, and the localization of photovoltaic installations. Recently, his research interest has turned to the challenges to humanity studies and social sciences brought by Anthropocene science.
Paul Jobin: PhD in Socio-Economics from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS). Currently, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. He has a long-term concentration on public hazards and environmental issues, including Minamata disease in Japan, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the RCA Incident in Taiwan, and the Formosa Plastics No. 6 Naphtha Cracker. Recently, his research has focused on social and political issues of the Anthropocene.
Shih-Hao Jheng: A graduate of the Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University. Currently a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, National Chengchi University. In response to the increasingly complex and severe state of contemporary society, Jheng has turned his attention to the complex, interconnected relationship between technology and society, with a special concern for the issue of air pollution.
Chia-Ling Wu is Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University. Her research specialty includes medical sociology; gender studies; and science, technology and society (STS). Her recent publications include the global-local politics of multiple embryo transfer, innovative public participation methods for newly democratic countries, and risk governance of assisted reproductive technology in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. She co-founded the NGO Birth Empowerment Alliance in Taiwan (BEAT) for bettering the reproductive health care of women and men.
Hsin-Hsing Chen: PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. Currently a professor at the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih-Hsin University; editor-in-chief of Taiwanese Journal for Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine; member of the editorial board of the periodical East Asia Science Technology and Society; board member of the Society for Social Studies of Science (“4S”); and a member of the consultative team for the collective occupational-disease lawsuit of former Taiwanese workers against the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Recently published works include Bad Stuff in Your Food and Other Pressing Matters, an examination of the three interconnected issues of occupational disease, pollution and food safety, and social practices within different political and cultural contexts, arising from his experiences with the RCA Incident.
Yi-Ping Lin: PhD from the Institute of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University. Current Associate Professor and former head of the Institute of Science, Technology, and Society, National Yang Ming University. Her academic specializations include science, technology and society; gender and health; environment and health; risk management and communication; medical anthropology; and social epidemiology. A member of the consultative team for the collective occupational-disease lawsuit of former Taiwanese workers against the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
Tsung-Yen Tsou: MA from the Institute of Science, Technology, and Society, National Yang Ming University. His master’s thesis “Undisciplined Formula: Food Industry, Technology, and Regulation in Taiwan Plasticizer Event” received a 2020 Excellence Award for a Master’s Thesis from the Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association.
Wen-Ling Tu: Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Dean of the International College of Innovation (ICI) at National Chengchi University (NCCU). She received her PhD in Environmental Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She serves as the associate editor-in-chief of the journal East Asian Science, Technology, and Society (EASTS) and the board director of the Environmental Right Foundation. She is the director of the Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance (CDIG), NCCU. Her areas of research include environmental governance; science, technology and society; risk communication; citizen science; and public participation. She has held a long-term interest in environmental democracy, promoting cross-disciplinary research and the implementation of public deliberation. She is the coordinator of the popular science TV program “Open the S-File: When Science meets Social Controversies,” winner of the Golden Bell Award for Natural Science Documentary Program.
Kai-ling Luo: PhD from the Department of Political Science, National Chengchi University (NCCU), PhD candidate at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Currently deputy director of the Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance, College of Social Sciences, NCCU. She focuses on such issues as public participation, cross-boundary governance, policy communication, and democratic governance, and she has long promoted the planning and execution of activities related to participatory governance, public deliberation, and the innovation and development of benchmark cases.
The Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association
Founded in 2008, the Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association (Taiwan STS Association) currently has more than 200 members, mainly professors and scholars from Taiwanese universities and the Academia Sinica, as well as graduate students. STS (Science, Technology and Society) is a research field that emphasizes interdisciplinary integrated thinking, exploring the construction and ethics of technology from various aspects of technology and society, while analyzing and focusing concern upon the complex interactive relationship between technological society and modern systems. The Association concentrates the scholarly energy of Taiwan’s STS academic community, which has been in development for over three decades. The results in STS research present contributions to an array of areas, from bolstering academia, cross-disciplinary exchanges, and advancement and innovation in higher education, to practical action on social issues in Taiwan. It also supports a variety of scholarly activities, the publication of the Taiwanese Journal for Studies of Science Technology and Medicine, and the production of STS content in diverse forms of media.
International College of Innovation, NCCU
The International College of Innovation (ICI) was established in 2018, and the undergraduate class of 2020 is the first recruitment of the College. It is the first college in the Taiwanese higher education sector to focus on the studies of global affairs and foresight strategies. ICI provides a unique way of training that underscores the importance of engaging in problem-solving with cross-disciplinary skills and expertise. Its teaching and modules are designed to realize the core ideas of “integrated learning of multiple disciplines,” “building capabilities in information processing,” and “pursuing sustainability and citizenship” and cover the professional fields of social science, international laws, business analysis and data science. Focusing on the perspectives and practicalities of international and current affairs, the College aims to equip students with the thinking skills for issue-oriented analysis and the techniques of practical problem-solving on cutting-edge global themes such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and global health governance. Furthermore, it provides young talents from all over the world with the opportunity to live, learn and grow together in a multilingual, multicultural environment. ICI welcomes passionate young talents from the around globe who value sustainable development, diversity and cultural inclusion, and it believes that gathering everyone’s creativity and wisdom can inspire innovative solutions for our future.
Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance
The primary objectives of the Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance (CDIG) are to enhance the involvement of citizen participation inside and outside the governance system and to bring a positive impact to public policy. The highlights of its work include cooperation with different policy stakeholders (interest groups, government agencies and the general public) on a range of issues, academic research and international exchange, and education on and empowerment of democracy. CDIG attempts to improve the quality of democracy through practical action, academic research, and education. Its current focus is on technoscience governance and environmental policy. CDIG believes that to improve the quality of democracy requires not only reforming the political system, but also empowering communities and groups in civil society who have different imaginations, to build capacity for mutual understanding, negotiation and making compromises.