“Cultural Bonds” in High Technology: Collaborations between Chinese Researchers in Nanotechnology R. Leung * and J. Li * * Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, rleung@ssc.wisc.edu , jli2@ssc.wisc.edu ABSTRACT Socio-cultural issues have attracted increasing attention from policy makers in high technology. For example, a certain “culture” of high-tech fear, exemplified by Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel Prey, seems to have emerged in U.S. In this paper, we examine the cultural dimension of nanotechnology in an alternative way. Specifically, we look at how “cultural bonds” enter into scientific collaborations between ethnic Chinese researchers residing in U.S. and China. In U.S., ethnic Chinese researchers have constituted a large and important workforce. Although collaborations with researchers in China are not geographically convenient, professional journals have published a high number of collaborative studies that involve ethnic Chinese scientists residing in U.S. and China. We analyze the motivations behind such “culturally-based” collaborations. Among other things, new economic benefits are significant incentives for Chinese researchers in the two countries to collaborate with each other. We also discuss the implications of such collaborations in the context of China’s modernization and US-China relations. Keywords: scientific collaboration, modernization, globalization, US-China relations 1 INTRODUCTION In recent years, nanotechnology has entered into less industrialized countries such as China, India and those in Latin America. As the national governments of these countries have provided an enormous amount of funding in nanotechnology research, scientists and venture capitalists now have great interests to understand nanotechnology development in these countries. Although more and more high-quality scientific research now comes from research groups in the less industrialized worlds [1, 2, 3], the scientific infrastructures of these countries are still underdeveloped. Science commentators and analysts remain skeptical if high-tech research can be conducted in the same capacity as it is in the more industrialized worlds [3]. Nanotechnology development in China has attracted widespread attention for two reasons. First, Chinese research groups have published ground-breaking results in such prestigious journals as Science and Nature [1, 2]. Moreover, China offers a huge potential market for future nano-products. Taken together, Chinese scientists do seem to possess the capacity to conduct nanotechnology research, while the huge population in that country carries promising potentials to capitalize nanotechnology findings and products. For scientists, social scientists, analysts and skeptics, a major question to ask is: What enables scientists to develop high-tech research even though the infrastructures in those countries are far from developed? To approach this question, we look at a particular form of academic collaborations - those between Chinese scientists resided in U.S. and China. On the surface, these collaborations appear to be “culturally-based”. By interviewing scientists in both countries, we attempt to reveal the economic and scientific motivations behind such “cultural bonds”. Through collaborative activities, our respondents also develop perceptions about the pros and cons of doing nanotechnology in China vis-à-vis U.S. Because of space limitations, we can only report selected findings in this paper. 2 METHODS Our primary aim is to generate new social theories and perspectives, and we follow the grounded theory tradition [4]. Grounded theory is an ethnographic method, which emphasizes careful comparisons between contexts and actors. It is quite suitable for understanding scientists from two different socio-economic entities. In terms of theoretical orientations, we follow an emerging group of researchers from social studies of science, whose interests lie primarily on theorizing “scientific practice” [5, 6]. To serve our empirical and theoretical purposes, we conduct in-depth interviews with Chinese scientists in both U.S. and China. Covering both countries should allow us to obtain a “two-sided” perspective. This perspective enables us to more easily detect scientific and economic considerations that may, or may not, be country-specific. For all interviews, we make use of an interview protocol. We follow standard procedures in social science to handle in situ contingencies in interview research and allow for ad hoc changes that arise during the interviews [4]. For example, a respondent might provide an answer that is relevant to later questions. In all interviews, we attempt to cover a set of basic questions. 2.1 Ethnography and Guiding Assumptions Ethnographic research pays attention to the emergent qualities and findings that arise and evolve during the actual 584 NSTI-Nanotech 2006, www.nsti.org, ISBN 0-9767985-6-5 Vol. 1, 2006