South Korea represents one of the world's most enthusiastic markets for plastic surgery. The growth of this market is particularly fascinating as access to medical care and surgery arose only recently with economic growth since the 1980s. Reconstructing Bodies traces the development of a medical infrastructure in the Republic of Korea (ROK) from 1945 to the present, arguing that the plastic surgery craze and the related development of biotech ambitions is deeply rooted in historic...

Empires and their aftermaths were massive planning institutions; in the past two hundred years, the natural and social sciences emerged—at least in part—as modes of knowledge production for imperial planning. Yet these connections are frequently under-emphasized in the history of science and its corollary fields.The Planning Moment explores the myriad ways plans and planning practices pervade recent global history. The book is built around twenty-seven brief case studies t...

Focusing on East Asia from the nineteenth century to the present, Crafting Everyday Food highlights the role of technology in transforming traditional foods into modern ones and in reinventing industrialized foods as heritage foods. The seven expert researchers adopt a unique technological perspective to trace the transformation of traditional fermented foodstuffs typical of the region—kimchi, soy sauce, kōji, and tea—and the appropriation of new foods of nonloca...

Weaving together chapters on imperial Japan's wartime mobilization, Asia's first wave of postwar decolonization, and Cold War geopolitical conflict in the region, Engineering Asia seeks to demonstrate how Asia's present prosperity did not arise from a so-called 'economic miracle' but from the violent and dynamic events of the 20th century. The book argues that what continued to operate throughout these tumultuous eras were engineering networks of technology. Constructed at first f...