Victor Seow
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eastasiascitech.bsky.social
Victor Seow
@eastasiascitech.bsky.social
Historian of technology, science, and industry @ Harvard. Author of CARBON TECHNOCRACY. Currently writing a history of industrial psychology in China. More about my work here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/seow
Pinned
CARBON TECHNOCRACY explores the origins and challenges of our unfolding climate crisis by focusing on how modern states became embroiled in projects of intensive energy extraction. It does this through the history of the Fushun colliery in southern Manchuria, ...

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Reposted by Victor Seow
How did socialist projects of making antibiotics and building atom bombs amount to the primitive accumulation of "scientific capital" in the People's Republic?

🗓️ Tuesday, November 11
🕥 10:30–11:45 am Eastern Time
📍 Over Zoom

Register: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histsci #sts 🧪
November 5, 2025 at 1:19 PM
How did socialist projects of making antibiotics and building atom bombs amount to the primitive accumulation of "scientific capital" in the People's Republic?

🗓️ Tuesday, November 11
🕥 10:30–11:45 am Eastern Time
📍 Over Zoom

Register: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histsci #sts 🧪
November 5, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
Why did Western firms move manufacturing to East Asia? Who are the workers behind the region's industrial rise, and what are the social costs? For our podcast, @yangyangcheng.bsky.social spoke with Anru Lee and Ya-Wen Lei on gender, labour, and (de)industrialisation in China and Taiwan.
Episode 5 | Labour and (De)Industrialisation in East Asia | Made in China Journal
Over the past few years, industrial policy and manufacturing capacity, especially in the high-tech sector, have been at the centre of great power rivalry between the United States and China. The White...
madeinchinajournal.com
October 30, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Victor Seow
How did U.S.-led aid transform Taiwan's forests from a site of natural riches to a problem to be solved? 🌳

Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia seminar series for this upcoming talk by historian and geographer Kuang-chi Hung!

Zoom: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histsci #envhist 🧪
October 27, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
So very looking forward to teaching this virtual workshop on writing across and beyond borders! Ticket sales go towards supporting @nuvoices.bsky.social, of which I'm a longtime reader and listener, and big fan😍
Details and sign-up:
nuvoices.com/2025/10/27/v...
🚨How can we write about China-US relations without a Cold-War binary or Orientalist rhetoric? Check out our upcoming virtual writing workshop with @yangyangcheng.bsky.social!

📅6 December 2025, 12 – 1:45 PM
💲$40 USD ($20 for students/members/grads)

For more details: nuvoices.com/2025/10/27/v...
October 29, 2025 at 5:20 PM
How did U.S.-led aid transform Taiwan's forests from a site of natural riches to a problem to be solved? 🌳

Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia seminar series for this upcoming talk by historian and geographer Kuang-chi Hung!

Zoom: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histsci #envhist 🧪
October 27, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of hearing @yunnia.bsky.social's terrific Harvard S&T in Asia talk on how AI-inflected emotions circulate as instruments of power through which both Chinese and American states shape subjects. 🇨🇳 🇺🇸

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

Thanks, Silvia!

#histstm
October 26, 2025 at 10:40 PM
In an hour 🕙

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia
How might rethinking AI as an “emotional technology” transform our understanding of control, resistance, and the politics of feeling? 🤖 ❤️

Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia series for this talk by the remarkable Silvia Lindtner @yunnia.bsky.social!

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts
October 21, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reminder 📢

Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia seminar series tomorrow for this online talk by Silvia Lindtner on affect and AI between China and the US!

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech #sts 🧪
October 20, 2025 at 9:08 PM
So glad to have hosted @jdimoia.bsky.social in the Harvard S&T in Asia seminar series yesterday! His account of Korean containerization into and through the Vietnam War offered a compelling preview of his ongoing research on KODCO 🚢

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech
October 16, 2025 at 2:30 AM
Reposted by Victor Seow
Reminder 📢

Come join the Harvard Science and Technology in Asia online seminar series tomorrow for this talk by John DiMoia of Seoul National University! 🚢

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia
How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢

John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech 🧪
October 13, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reminder 📢

Come join the Harvard Science and Technology in Asia online seminar series tomorrow for this talk by John DiMoia of Seoul National University! 🚢

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia
How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢

John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech 🧪
October 13, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
Who becomes a scientist, what kind of work does she do, and why? Generations of women in China have explored these questions. For @madeinchinajournal.com, I trace their stories and the different answers their struggles and achievements reveal—on the purpose of science and the meaning of womanhood.
Beyond Representation: On Being a Woman in Science in China | Made in China Journal
In the autumn of 1995, Ye Shuhua made a speech. During the NGO Forum at the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, the 68-year-old astronomer took to the microphone and cal...
madeinchinajournal.com
October 8, 2025 at 1:46 PM
How might rethinking AI as an “emotional technology” transform our understanding of control, resistance, and the politics of feeling? 🤖 ❤️

Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia series for this talk by the remarkable Silvia Lindtner @yunnia.bsky.social!

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts
October 11, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
We have a fantastic new essay on China’s new climate pledge by @jeremywallace.bsky.social at @heatmap.news this morning. He argues the country’s indecision about its green future is more than just an environmental disappointment — it is a serious governing mistake.

heatmap.news/ideas/china-...
China Can’t Decide if It Wants to Be the World’s First “Electrostate”
The country’s underwhelming new climate pledge is more than just bad news for the world — it reveals a serious governing mistake.
heatmap.news
October 9, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢

John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech 🧪
October 4, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
So much gold to be mined from the diary of Harada Ryōji 原田良次, a maintenance tech in a Chiba-based aerial interception unit tasked with defending Tokyo's skies

His entries are scribbled in the margins of a book 👇 - in part due to paper shortages, in part to keep record on the sly

A few stand-outs:
October 8, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
For @npr.org, I review Lou Ye's acclaimed Covid movie "An Unfinished Film," its courage in venturing into the forbidden, and limitations in what it seems unable or unwilling to confront. The Chinese people deserve better, more honest stories. The work remains unfinished.
www.npr.org/2025/10/04/g...
October 4, 2025 at 1:56 PM
How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢

John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech 🧪
October 4, 2025 at 11:56 PM
From wartime packaging to microbial foodways, Aya Kimura's Harvard S&T in Asia talk on tsukemono earlier this week was a delight. Don't miss her forthcoming book, "Fermenting for the Future" (UC Press, spring 2026)!

seow.scholar.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts #envhum 🧪
October 4, 2025 at 7:05 PM
How might Japanese pickles help us critically reflect on modern antibiotic relations?

Please join the Harvard S&T in Asia online seminar series for this talk by Aya Kimura!

📅 Tue, Sep 30
🕥 10:30–11:45 am EST

Registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts #histsci #envhum 🧪
September 24, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Kicked off our fall 2025 Harvard #STinAsia online seminar series yesterday w/ Jiraporn Laochaoroenwong. Learned lots about the ways that animal value is reworked at the Myanmar–Thailand border. 🐄 Thanks, Jiraporn!

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts #envhum #envhist
September 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Victor Seow
🚨Don't miss our workshop "Political Economies of Mining in the Early Modern World" @univie.ac.at organised by @eclaaire.bsky.social and @gbba.bsky.social.
📅 25–26 September 2025
!Please register!
📃 Program & info: bit.ly/4pslQfs
#Scarce #histsci #histeco #mining
Political Economies of Mining in the Early Modern World
Workshop Organizers: Claire Sabel and Gabriele Marcon University of Vienna September 25-26, 2025
bit.ly
September 23, 2025 at 7:46 AM
Reminder 📢

Please join the Harvard S&T in Asia online seminar series in a few hours (10:30 am ET) for Jiraporn Laochaoroenwong's talk on making "square oxen" across the Myanmar–Thailand border.

Zoom registration here: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #sts #envhum #envhist #histsci
September 23, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Victor Seow
How might border bureaucracies, animal care, and chemical interventions transform worn-out drought cattle into export-ready "square oxen"?

Find out at this upcoming Harvard S&T in Asia online seminar series talk

📅 Tue, Sep 23
🕥 10:30–11:45 EST
📌 Zoom

seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm 🧪
September 19, 2025 at 8:42 AM