12 May 2026, 4pm
CHSTM Seminar Room: Simon 2.57 [maps and travel]
Online Access tbc.

Professor Mary Augusta Brazelton, University of Cambridge

Looking up at the ‘Little Moon’: Media and Mass Participation in Astronomy Under Mao

Abstract

Sputnik’s launch represented a turning point for science in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as well as a triumph for the Soviet Union. This piece surveys articles discussing the satellite in fourteen newspapers from different provinces and municipalities across China for the month of October 1957. It argues that newspaper reportage played a crucial role in the emergence of a distinctive Maoist science from Soviet approaches to socialist science by enabling and evidencing a signal feature of the former: popular participation. Following a review of relevant literature in the first section, the second discusses press coverage of Sputnik. Newspapers reported technical details of the satellite’s launch and operation as evidence that Sputnik had proven the superiority of science under socialism. A series of articles defined this ‘socialist science’ as characterized by state planning, extensive investment in education, and organisational coordination in the USSR. The third section explores how articles that encouraged and reported public observation of the satellite across China stressed mass participation, rather than any of the factors identified as key to Soviet science. Throughout October, articles increasingly reported on and announced plans for public observations of Sputnik, indicating the key role that the masses could play in astronomical work. Mass media thus not only communicated, but facilitated and coordinated the consolidation of a Maoist approach to science that directly engaged the population. 

Mary Augusta Brazelton is Professor of Global Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of China in Global Health: Past and Present (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2019). 

Image: Poster, 1958: The East Wind has already prevailed over the West Wind, the East Wind will continue to prevail over the West Wind. PC-1958-002 (chineseposters.net, Private collection). https://chineseposters.net/posters/pc-1958-002

All welcome!

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