Global soap, local desires: Transnational circuits of science and commerce in modern China

In early twentieth-century China, soap was an object of public fascination that appeared in missionary translations of science writing, articles on how to produce cosmetics at home, and columns on health and beauty. Soap even emerged at the center of international disputes over trademark infringement. Drawing from the history of science, consumer culture studies, and postcolonialism, this work traces soap's transition from object of colonial science to mass commodity to examine how the rise of a transnational commercial culture helped create desire for, as well as anxiety about, the modernity associated with modern science. It sheds light on the colonial transfer of technology, modern China's consumer culture, and China's role in shaping global law and commerce.