Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard (Hybrid)
Date and Time
Location
"Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola"
Speaker:
Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society Emerita, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.
Moderator:
Nicole West Bassoff, PhD Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Contact:
Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu
Cosponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Attendance Information:
- Please register online to attend this event in person at CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Thomas Chan-Soo Kang Room (S050). A light lunch is provided for those that register by 1:00pm on the Thursday before the event.
- Please sign up to attend this event via Zoom
Abstract:
The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages—and threaten the revenues of the giant soda companies. In her new book, Soda Science, Greenhalgh tells the story of how, during 1995-2015, industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. Anthropologist and science studies specialist Susan Greenhalgh discovers a hidden world of science-making—with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims—dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. Coke’s research isn’t fake science, she argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and effects of this global science project as it spread in two sites – the U.S. and China – Soda Science reveals the cunning ways giant corporations come to shape our diets, lifestyles, and health to their own needs.
Bio:
Susan Greenhalgh is an author, anthropologist, and specialist on contemporary China. Her interests lie in the entanglements of state, corporation, science, and society, and their consequences for human health and social justice writ large. Across her various projects, Greenhalgh’s overarching goal is to use the concepts and methods of two fields — anthropology and science studies — as well as access to unique data sources, to provide the in-depth insights of a humanistic scholar into critical issues of the day.
Over the last few decades, as the world and its worries have turned over and over again, her research focus has shifted dramatically. Among her concerns are the corporate distortion of science, the hidden politics of the obesity epidemic, and medicine’s tendency to err. In China, she has dug deeply into the making and effects of the one-child policy, as well as the role of science and technology in the nation’s global rise. At the heart of these various research projects is a concern about the operations and effects of institutionalized power – how it works, what effects it has, especially in the lives of ordinary people, and how it masks itself, with the goal of holding power accountable for what it does in the world.
Greenhalgh has authored six books and edited or co-edited four collections. Her essays have appeared in journals and edited books in anthropology, China studies, foreign affairs, science and technology studies, women and gender studies, population studies, and medicine and public health. She is the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society emerita in the Anthropology Department at Harvard University. Before joining Harvard in 2011, she was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Irvine and, before that, Senior Research Associate of the Population Council in New York City. She earned her doctorate and master’s degrees in anthropology from Columbia University and her undergraduate degree in psychology from Wellesley College. She also received a Certificate of East Asian/China Studies from Columbia’s School of International Affairs.