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Kanjian bujie zhi wu: Gongye shehui zhong zhishi quanwei de wenhua shizuo 看見不潔之物︰工業社會中知識權威的文化實作 [Bad Stuff in Your Food and Other Pressing Matters: Cultural Practices in Institutionalized Epistemic Authorities in the Industrial Society]

With the growing number of food safety scandals and toxic tort litigations, Chen HsinHsing’s book Bad Stuff is an important and timely contribution to the Chinese STS literature. The scope ofBad Stuff is ambitious, covering “pressingmatters” in industrial society from adulterated food and environmental toxins to occupational hazards, which he sees as three aspects of one single issue. Published soon after a district court in Taiwan ruled against the company RCA in a collective toxic tort case brought by former employees, Bad Stuff is a pioneer in the Chinese language STS literature that takes on science and law as two institutionalized epistemic authorities. Having taken part in an initiative led by members of the Taiwanese STS community to assist RCA’s former workers in their lawsuit, Chen also offers his observations on this court case. Chen has dedicated a major part of Bad Stuff to examining how science and law— two fact-finding institutions—deal with uncertainties and with the unknown impacts of chemical substances. He compares common-law (US) and civil-law (Taiwan) traditions and finds these two systems to be different mixtures of transparency and opaqueness.While the public generally dislikes “black boxes,” they are often willing to leave a sterile—or untainted—space for “experts” when scientific and juridical decisions are made. Chen emphasizes the importance of visibility in political culture since the seventeenth century. Based on the seminal work of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, he uses the metaphors of theater and machine to discuss cultural practices in common-law and civil-law systems, observing the theatrical attributes of common-law courts that give more weight to the perceptions of the viewing public (the jury). He finds civil-law courts formalistic and machine-like, assuming judges to exercise fine judgment based