“瓶子里的国家、科技与社会：从可口可乐到盐汽水，1949-1980”

时间：2018年11月9日（周五）上午15：00-17：00

地点：科学史系系厅（蒙民伟科技大楼212）

主讲人：姚靓（清华大学）

内容简介：Coca-Cola as an exotic commodity was introduced to China in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it became very popular in urban China. However, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Coca-Cola was criticized as a symbol of “capitalism in a bottle” and driven out of the country. Facing challenging food shortages in the Mao years, the communist state appropriated Coca-Cola’s legacy by mass producing of a communist version of the soda called yanqishui, also known as salty soda, although the Chinese counterpart was extremely simple and coarse. Yanqishui was designated as a summertime healthcare product, a form of socialist welfare, exclusively distributed and rationed among factory workers to prevent heatstroke. By showing how Coca-Cola and yanqishui were treated differently in Maoist China, this article demonstrates the core observation of science and technology studies that material artifacts are intrinsically political. Yanqishui, the politicized and “modern” drink, was a first attempt to solve the issue of public health in factories in China. It was also a creative and “scientific” response to China’s century-long call for modernity in a challenging food situation, and thus produced a variation of what might be called a “domesticated modernity” to actualize the communist ideas.

讲座语言：汉语

姚靓，清华大学科技与社会研究所博士后。（美国）技术史学会国际学者（SHOT International Scholars, 2019-2020）。2006年获南开大学世界历史和材料物理双学士学位。2008年获南开大学世界历史硕士学位。2016年获美国佐治亚理工学院科学技术与社会博士学位。曾担任佐治亚理工学院兼职讲师。2014-2016年任教于美国杨·哈里斯学院（Young Harris College）。2017年度“博士后国际交流计划”引进项目获得者。研究兴趣包括中国近现代科技史、近现代西方科技史、科学技术与社会、社会文化史等。研究成果发表在Modern Asian Studies, Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, China Currents, 自然辩证法通讯等杂志。