• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.281-318
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• 2014

This paper aims to examine women's understanding of technoscience by analyzing girls' comics(少女漫畵, Sonyeo Manhwa). The idea that women were not interested in science was a socially accepted. But this paper reveals that women are interested in science in a different way by analyzing Korean SF girls' comics. By examining an image of science in SF girls' comics in comparison to SF boys' comics(少年漫畵, Sonyeon Manhwa), this paper shows that women look technoscience through 'reflexivity' focused on 'human' and that this special character is derived from the feature of women's culture. SF girls comics have two features. First, girls comics reflect on power made by technoscience rather than describe it elaborately. And the reflexivity is expressed through a mental state, an emotion, and relations between human beings focused on a human nature, an ego, and an identity. It is different from boys comics that give weight to the mechanics and that show simple plot such as utopia or distopia, or a battle of good versus evil. Second, girls comics express technoscience as daily practices. In girls comics, some technosciences are linked to our daily lives and cartoonists and readers consider an 'essence of knowledge' together. It is different from men's view that regards knowledge as power or means.