Scientific patriotism: Medical science and national self-fashioning in Southeast Asia

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 54, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 93-113

  Anderson, Warwick ^a   Pols, Hans ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; COLONIZATION; CULTURAL TRADITION; DECOLONIZATION; MEDICINE; NATIONALISM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SYMBOLISM; TRAINING; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

INDIA; PHILIPPINES; TAIWAN;

EID: 84855697864     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417511000600     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Edward A. Shils, "The Intellectual in the Political Development of New States," World Politics 12 (1960): 329-68;
2. Harry J. Benda, "Non-Western Intelligentsias as Political Elites," in J. H. Kautsky, ed., Political Change in Under-Developed Countries: Nationalism and Communism (New York: Wiley, 1963), 235-52; and J. D. Legge, Intellectuals and Nationalism in Indonesia: A Study of the Following Recruited by Sutan Sjahrir in Occupied Jakarta (Jakarta: Equinox Publishing, 2010 [1988]).
3. Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Phoenix, 1998), 74. See also his Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983). In the early twentieth century, Max Weber observed intellectuals "are to a specific degree predestined to propagate the 'national idea,' just as those who wield power in the polity provoke the idea of the state." From "Structures of Power: The Nation," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
4. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 171-79, 176.
5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991, rev. ed.), 118, 119 (his emphasis), 126. See also his Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London: Verso, 2005). Prasenjit Duara notes, "Anti-imperialist nationalism emerged historically from the urban, coastal sector where modern, capitalist forms of knowledge, technology, capital and organization had spread more widely." Prasenjit Duara, "Introduction: The Decolonization of Asia and Africa in the Twentieth Century," in P. Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (London: Routledge, 2004), 4.
6. For a criticism of the claim that nationalist elites may simply have chosen modular forms of nationalism from Europe, see Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
7. Gellner, Nationalism, 74. On the importance of evolutionary discourses in nationalism, see Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). On cognate psychological ideas and nationalism, see Glenda Sluga, The Nation, Psychology and International Politics, 1870-1919 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
8. Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 6, 2.
9. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Footsteps [Jejak Langkah], Buru Quartet, vol. 3, Max Lane, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1990 [1985]), 128.
10. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3, 6. Jawaharlal Nehru's plea to lessen religiosity and turn to science is a salient example-see his The Discovery of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985 [1946]), ch. 10. See also Subrata Dasgupta, Jagadis Chandra Bose and the Indian Response to Western Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). The historical literature on the relations of science, medicine, and the colonial state in India and elsewhere is extensive, though a little tangential to our argument; for a review, see Warwick Anderson, "Postcolonial Histories of Medicine," in John HarleyWarner and Frank Huisman, eds., Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 285-307.
11. Warwick Anderson explains how science in the Philippines also "functioned as both index and generator of civic responsibility" ("Science in the Philippines," Philippine Studies 55 [2007]: 285- 316, 309). A recent issue of Osiris explores this conjunction, though referring to it ambiguously as a "close relationship" or "affiliation": see Carol E. Harrison and Ann Johnson, "Introduction: Science and National Identity," Osiris 24 (2009): 1-14, 2, 4. The diversity of contributions to this issue may account for the editors' explanatory vagueness. The more relevant essays-though both focus on the material contributions of science and technology to nation building-are Pratik Chakrabarty, "'Signs of the Times': Medicine and Nationhood in British India," Osiris 24 (2009): 188-211; and Suzanne Moon, "Justice, Geography, and Steel: Technology and National Identity in Indonesian Industrialization," Osiris 24 (2009): 253-77. Prasenjit Duara, in Rescuing History, has connected " scientism" to the nationalism of the Chines intelligentsia in the early twentieth century. The scientific shaping of national self-consciousness is not unrelated to medicalized postcolonial critique. For examples of the latter, see Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, Charles Lam Markmann, trans. (New York: Grove Press, 1967); and Jalal Al-i Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, R. Campbell, trans. (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1984).
12. This challenges the conventional sociological claim that professions tend to withdraw from the public sphere. See Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, eds., Ephraim Fischoff et al., trans. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968); and J'rgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989 [1962]).
13. Clearly we are more interested here in sociological comparison-in trying to discern common patterns in different settings-than in genealogical inquiries. For the justification of this analytic framework, seeWarwick Anderson, "Racial Hygiene and the Making of Citizens in the Philippines and Australia," in Ann L. Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 94-115.
14. On the "late-colonial," see John Darwin, "What Was the Late-Colonial State?" Itinerario 23 (1999): 73-82.
15. José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere, Jovita Ventura Cruz, trans. (Manila: Nalandangan, 1990 [1886]), 318. See also Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and theWorld (London: Verso, 1998); Reynaldo C. Ileto, "Outlines of a Non-Linear Emplotment of Philippines History," in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, eds., The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 98-131; Vicente L. Rafael, White Love and other Events in Filipino History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); and John Nery, Revolutionary Spirit: José Rizal in Southeast Asia (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2011).
16. José Rizal, El Filibusterismo, Jovita Ventura Cruz, trans. (Manila: ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information, 1991 [1891]), 141.
17. Ibid,.
18. John N. Schumacher, "Rizal and Blumentritt," Philippine Studies 2 (1954): 85-101. Rizal regarded Germany as his "scientific homeland" and in the Philippines he was known as a "German doctor": see Caroline Hau, Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980 (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000), 58-61.
19. Rudolf Virchow quoted in Henry E. Sigerist, Medicine and HumanWelfare (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 93. See also George Rosen, From Medical Police to Social Medicine: Essays on the History of Healthcare (New York: Science History Publications, 1974); and Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter, "What Was Social Medicine? An Historiographical Essay," Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1988): 90-106.
20. On Rizal's "pathological vision," see Raquel A. G. Reyes, Love, Passion and Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882-1892 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), ch. 5. According to Benedict Anderson, Rizal was "a novelist and a moralist, not a political thinker" (Under Three Flags, 108). But might politics have inhered in his social medicine?
21. José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere, Ma. Soledad Lacsin-Locsin, trans. (Honolulu: University of Hawa'i Press, 1997), 325.
22. Rudolf Virchow, "Don José Rizal," Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft f'r Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (1897). 21 Ponce figures in Benedict Anderson's Under Three Flags. He was apparently in contact with other medical nationalists including Sun Yat-Sen and Ramón Betances.
23. John N. Schumacher, The Propaganda Movement, 1880-1895 (Manila: Solidaridad, 1973); "Philippine Higher Education and the Origins of Nationalism," Philippine Studies 23 (1975): 53-65; and The Making of a Nation: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Filipino Nationalism (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1991).
24. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); and "Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology," in Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (London: Routledge, 2004), 78-100.
25. Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
26. Ibid., esp. ch. 7.
27. Ruby R. Paredes, "The Ilustrado Legacy: The Pardo de Taveras of Manila," in Alfred W. McCoy, ed., An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994)
28. Barbara S. Gaerlan, "The Pursuit of Modernity: Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera and the Educational Legacy of the Philippine Revolution," Amerasia Journal 24 (1998): 87-108; and Resil Mojares, Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Isobelo de los Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledg (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006).
29. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, "Filipino Views of American Rule," North American Review 174 (Jan. 1902): 73-84, 74
30. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, El Legado del ignorantismo (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1921), 33,
31. 36, 4, 41. This is the text of an address to a teachers' assembly at Baguio.
32. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, "The Conservation of the National Type," Eleventh Annual Commencement Address, University of the Philippines, 4 Apr. 1921, 19-20, 13, 21, Pardo de Tavera collection, B2 E16, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila.
33. Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities) and others have claimed narratives of national belonging produced this transformation-we would argue they did not do so alone. See also W. Anderson, Colonial Pathologies, 191-92; and Julian Go, "Colonial Reception and Cultural Reproduction: Filipino Elites and United States Tutelary Rule," Journal of Historical Sociology 12 (1999): 337-68. On "biopolitics" and "governmentality," see Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Graham Burchell et al., eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87-104, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-75, Graham Burchell, trans. (New York: Picador, 203); and "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, David Macey, trans. (New York: Picador, 2003). Unfortunately, Foucault showed little interest in nationalism.
34. Juan Fuentes, "The First Filipino PGH Director," in Enrique T. Ona, ed., The Hospital: The First 75 Years of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital Medical Center (1910-1985) (Manila: n.p., 1986), xxiv-vi; and Warwick Anderson, "Modern Sentinel and Colonial Microcosm: Science, Discipline and Distress at the Philippine General Hospital," Philippine Studies 57 (2009): 3-48.
35. Fernando Calderón in 1908, quoted in John E. Snodgrass, Source History and Description of the Philippine General Hospital (1900-1911) (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1912), 25.
36. W. Anderson, Colonial Pathologies, ch. 7.
37. Agerico B. M. Sison, "Educating Our Educators," Bulletin of the San Juan de Dios Hospital 1 (1927): 123-24, 123, 124.
38. Jacobo Fajardo, "Commencement Address," Bulletin of the San Juan de Dios Hospital 5 (1931): 173-75, 174, 175.
39. Camilo Osias, "Utilizing Science for Human Needs," in Zoilo M. Galang, ed., Encyclopedia of the Philippines: The Library of Philippine Literature, Art and Science (Manila: P. Vera and Sons, 1936), vol. 7, 624-27, 624-25, 625-26.
40. Leopoldo B. Uichanco, "The Philippines in the World of Science," in Zoilo M. Galang, ed., Encyclopedia of the Philippines, vol. 7, 178-93, 190.
41. Eulogio B. Rodriguez, "Brief Observations on Science in the Philippines in the Pre-American Era," in Zoilo M. Galang, ed., Encyclopedia of the Philippines, vol. 7, 52-101, 91, 92.
42. Angel S. Arguelles, "Progress of Research in the Philippines," in Zoilo M. Galang, ed., Encyclopedia of the Philippines, vol. 7, 17-30, 29, 28.
43. Article XIII, section 4. This may actually be a unique commitment to science.
44. Pramoedya, Footsteps, 15-16.
45. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind [Bumi Manusia], Buru Quartet, vol. 1, Max Lane, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1996), 16, 16, 19. Pramoedya undertook extensive historical research for his novels and even wrote the biography of the medical student on whom Minke was modeled: De Pionier: Biografie van Tirto Adhisoerjo (Amsterdam: Manus Amici-Novib, 1988).
46. "Sizaru Veralina," "Mijn Nood," in Dj. Siregar, Soeharsa, and C. Schreuder, eds., NIAS Almanak: Lustrumnummer 1933-1934 (Surabaya: NIAS, 1934), 209.
47. Abdoel Moeis, Never the Twain (Jakarta: Lontar, 2010 [1928]).
48. Keith Foulcher called Muis a Minke-like character, in "Biography, History and the Indonesian Novel: Reading Salah Asuhan," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 161 (2005): 247-68.
49. A. de Waart, ed., Ontwikkeling van het Geneeskundig Onderwijs te Weltevreden, 1851-1926 (Uitgave ter Herdenking van het 75-Jarig Bestaan van de School tot Opleiding van Indische Artsen [Stovia]) (Weltevreden: Kolff, 1926); M. A. Hanafia SM, Bahder Djohan, and Surono, 125 Tahun Pendidikan Dokter di Indonesia 1851-1976 (Jakarta: FKUI, 1976); Ahmad Sujudi, H. Ali Sulaiman, and H. Sofyan Ismael, eds., 150 Tahun Pendidikan Dokter di Indonesia: Menuju Persaingan Global (Jakarta: ILUNI FKUI, 2002). For the early development of the Batavia medical school, see Liesbeth Hesselink, Genezers op de Koloniale Markt: Inheemse Dokters en Vroedvrouwen in Nederlandsch Oost-Indië, 1850-1915 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009).
50. Widohariadi and Bambang Permono, Peringatan 70 Tahun Pendidikan Dokter di Surabaya, 15 Sept. 1983 (Surabaya: Gideon, 1983); and, Peringatan 90 Tahun Pendidikan Dokter di Surabaya (Surabaya: Fakultas Kedoktoran Universitas Airlingga, 2003).
51. Pramoedya, De Pionier. Tirto spent four years at medical school in the 1890s, dropping out before the last year.
52. The literature on the Indonesian nationalist movement is copious. An overview can be found in R. E. Elson, The Idea of Indonesia: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
53. Harry Poeze, "Early Indonesian Emancipation; Abdul Rivai, Van Heutsz and the Bintang Hindia," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 145 (1989): 87-106.
54. Cipto Mangunkusomo, "Rede, Algemene Beschouwingen," in Handelingen van Den Volksraad, Tweede Gewone Zitting (Batavia: Volksraad van Nederlandsch-Indië, 1918), 159-70, 168.
55. [O. Deggeler and J. J. van Lonkhuyzen], "Het Indisch Ontwerp 1913," Bond van Geneesheeren in N.-I. 52-53 (1912): 1-29, 26, 27.
56. E.F.E. Douwes Dekker, "De Indische Partij: Rapport der Propaganda-Deputatie," Het Tijdschrift 2, 4 (1912): 97-146, esp. 100, 114-21, 133-36.
57. Harry A. Poeze, In het Land van de Overheerser I. Indonesiërs in Nederland, 1600-1950 (Dordrecht: FORIS, 1986).
58. Susan Abeyasekere, One Hand Clapping: Indonesian Nationalists and the Dutch, 1939-1942 Melbourne: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1976).
59. Abdul Rasjid, "Beschouwingen over de Positie van den Ind.-Arts," in Het Eerste Congres van de Vereeniging van Indonesische Geneeskundigen Gehouden Op 24, 25, en 26 December 1938 te Semarang (Batavia: Kenanga, 1938); Abdul Rasyid quoted in Medisch Tribune 27 (Mar. 1939): 10.
60. See, for example, R. Mochtar, "Intensief Hygienewerk en Medisch-Hygienische Propaganda," Medisch Tribune 27 (1939): 16-21. Mochtar was employed by the Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s. After independence, he became an official in the Department of Health. For activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in the Indies, see J. L. Hydrick, Intensive Rural Hygiene Work and Public Health Education of the Public Health Service of Netherlands India (Batavia: n.p., 1937).
61. Anon., "Mededeelingen van het hoofdbestuur," Orgaan der Vereenging van Indische Geneeskundigen 16 (Jan. 1927): 17.
62. S. Proehoeman and A. Mochtar, "Letter from the Association of Indonesian Physicians, Netherlands Section, to the Executive," Orgaan der Vereenging van Indische Geneeskundigen 16 (Feb. 1928): 47.
63. Hans Pols, "The Nature of the Native Mind: Contested Views of Dutch Colonial Psychiatrists in the Former Dutch East Indies," in Sloan Mahone and Megan Vaughan, eds., Psychiatry and Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 172-96.
64. Anon., "De Bond van Geneesheeren in Ned. Ind.," Medisch Tribune 27 (Mar. 1939): 4.
65. Anon., "Verslag over het 1e Congres van de Vereeniging van Indonesische Geneeskundigen, 1938," Medisch Tribune 27 (Mar. 1939): 16.
66. See the listing of physicians in Gunseikanbu, Orang Yang Terkemuka di Jawa (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1986 [1944]), 299-382.
67. Benedict R. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972); O. E. Engelen, Aboe Bakar Loebis, Abdullah Ciptoprawiro, Soejono Joedodibroto Oetarjo, and Idris Siregar, Lahirnya Satu Bangsa dan Negara (Jakarta: Penerbit Universitas Indonesia, 1997).
68. Ming-Cheng M. Lo, Doctors within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 5, 6, 7.
69. Ming-Cheng M. Lo, "Between Ethnicity and Modernity: Taiwanese Medical Students and Doctors under Japan's Kominka Campaign, 1937-1945," Positions 10 (2002): 285-332. Other obvious examples include Sun Yat-Sen, MD, in China; Ramón Betances, MD, in the Caribbean, and even Ernesto "Che" Guevara, MD, in Latin America.
70. It may prove worthwhile to compare the role of different forms of science and medicine in the French revolution and in revolutions in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
71. Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation [1918]," in From Max Weber, 129-56. Of course, Weber was also arguing for the separation of science from politics, believing responsible scientists are not equipped to sell a Weltanschauung.
72. Prasenjit Duara points out that nationalism "meant the imposition of a modern Westernized figure of a rational, hygienic, and scientific subject in place of much that was meaningful to the people." But he does not connect explicitly the biopolitical formations of the East Asian modern to biomedicine. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 19. It should be obvious now that our essay tries to negotiate a compromise between Weber and Foucault in relation to science and the nation-state.
73. For a comparison of Southeast Asian nation-states, see Anthony Reid, Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
74. Vincanne Adams concludes Doctors for Democracy: Health Professionals in the Nepal Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) with a discussion of the neocolonial aspects of nationalist "science fetishism."
75. More generally, see Warwick Anderson and Vincanne Adams, "Pramoedya's Chickens: Postcolonial Studies of Technoscience," in Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, eds., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), 181-204; andWarwick Anderson, "From Subjugated Knowledge to Conjugated Subjects: Science and Globalisation, or Postcolonial Studies of Science?" Postcolonial Studies 12 (2009): 389-400.