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The mutability of melamine: A transductive account of a scandal (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate )
Author(s) -
Tracy Megan
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2010.00768.x
Subject(s) - melamine , politics , china , sociology , law , political science , chemistry , organic chemistry
This article focuses on the 2008 global dairy scandal sparked by the distribution of milk adulterated with the industrial chemical melamine in the People's Republic of China. In China, roughly 300,000 children were suspected of having melamine‐related illnesses and six children died. Subsequent court proceedings showed that the addition of melamine to the nation's milk supply was an open secret in the industry. Just months before, Western media had applauded China for relatively open access during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the Olympic Games. The scandal called into question this apparent rise of transparency in China. How is it that a common household substance like melamine ‘jumped’ from everyday object to a substance with severe effects on hundreds of thousands of bodies? This ‘jump’ offers an opportunity to consider melamine transductively – to examine these leaps across scales of experience and between particular modes of knowledge. Transduction refers to the conversion of one type of signal into another (e.g. sound into electrical energy). A transductive account of the melamine scandal focuses attention on melamine's materiality, its circulation through various media and experiences, and its transformation through and on these media. This transformative potential, melamine's mutability, is what allows it to hold social and political resonances.