164 SCIENCE,MODERNITY,AND CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY In China itself,however,the one-child policy is not about a strong state or its coercive practices(although the use of coercion has been hotly debated).It is about the nation's dreams for achieving wealth,modernity, and global power through selective absorption of Western science and tech- nology.Scholarship on the making of modern society highlights the con- nections between population,science,and prosperity,posing fresh ques- tions about the scientific origins of modern projects of population governance.In his seminal essay on Western modernity,History of Sexuality, the French philosopher and social critic Michel Foucault drew attention to the role of population science in constructing population as an object of scientific discourse and in working with institutionalized political power to govern population so as to enhance human welfare,order,and utility,es- pecially for the developing capitalist economy (Foucault 1978:91-108).So- cial studies of science and technology have shown that science is humanly constructed in historically contingent contexts(Latour and Woolgar 1979; Latour 1987:Lynch and Woolgar 1990;Pickering 1992,1995).This work emphasizes the human values and biases that shape the practices labeled "science";the active role of scientists in creating their formulations and ad- vancing them through the use of rhetorical devices;and the role of the larger historical and political context in shaping the science that gets made (Latour and Woolgar 1979;Lynch and Woolgar 1990).Work on governmentality- the combination of governing and political rationality-has shed light on the crucial role of governmental rationalities such as problematizations in the formulating of governmental policies and programs (Foucault 1991; Burchell,Gordon,and Miller 1991;Rose 1999;Dean 1999;Rabinow 2002). This work suggests that problematizations-that is,particular formulations of the population problem at hand,together with its solution-do not sim- ply reflect a preexisting reality.Instead,they actively constitute a new de- mographic and policy reality by shaping what is thinkable in the domain of population.4 These bodies of research allow us to ask new questions about the Chinese case.What was the role of Chinese population science in the making of the one-child policy?Where did the particular problems and so- lutions adopted come from?How and how much did the values of the sci- entists and the specificities of the historical context shape the science and policy that got made? In this article and the book in progress on which it draws,I look closely at the role of population science in the making of China's one-child-per- couple policy.5 Drawing on more than 15 years of interviews with Chinese population specialists and policymakers,documentary research on the his- tory of Chinese population science and policy,and ethnographic insights gathered over many years of working with Chinese specialists as research collaborator,coauthor,co-panelist,and so forth,I wed the ethnographic approach of anthropology to the deconstructive approaches of work in sci-