Technology – The Making of Indian Engineers

Talk : From Local Technologies to New Forms of Global Governance

Balaji Parthasarathy, Reversing the flows of ideas? From local technologies for the marginalised to new forms of global governance. Tiffin Talk, Australia India Institute, 28 March 2013.

“For decades, largely agrarian, previously colonial, developing countries were the recipients of technologies, in domains ranging from medicine to transportation. The technologies also came embedded in specific ideas about social organisation and governance mechanisms, such as bureaucratic or market rationality. Lately, there is evidence of changes to the direction of flow as developing countries have become adept late-industrialisers who produce technology. There are also “emerging markets” that are significant consumers, even if an estimated 4 billion people in these markets are socio-economically underprivileged. This talk focuses on how and why serving this population demands insights into the development of novel technologies, especially contemporary information and communication technologies, and their relevance even for developed markets. It touched on the implications of the efforts to incorporate the underprivileged, into the technological and economic mainstream, for new norms and forms of governance by drawing on research in India.”

Soundcloud : Reversing the flow of ideas?

More information and soundcloud available on the Australia India Institute website.

Bérénice Girard

Book: The Social Construction of Technology

Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, Trevor Pinch (eds). The Social Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press: Cambridge (Massachusetts), London (England). 1999.

“The impact of technology on society is clear and unmistakable. The influence of society on technology is more subtle. The 13 essays in this book draw on a wide array of case studies from cooking stoves to missile systems, from 15thÂcentury Portugal to today’s AI labs – to outline an original research program based on a synthesis of ideas from the social studies of science and the history of technology. Together they affirm the need for a study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions.”

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker.The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other

2. Thomas P. Hughes. The Evolution of Large Technological Systems

3. Michel Callon. Society in the Making The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis

4. John Law. Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering The Case of Portuguese Expansion

5. Henk van den Belt and Arie Rip. The Nelson-Winter-Dosi Model and Synthetic Dye Chemistry

6. Wiebe E. Bijker. The Social Construction of Bakelite Toward a Theory of Invention

7. Donald MacKenzie. Missile AccuracyA Case of Study in the Social Processes of Technological Change

8. Edward W. Constant. The Social Locus of Technological Practice Community, System, or Organization, III

9. Henk J.H.W. Bodewitz, Henk Buurma and Gerard H. de Vries. Regulatory Science and the Social Management of Trust in Medicine

10. Ruth Schwartz Cowan. The Consumption Junction. A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology

11. Edward Yoxen. Seeing with SoundA Study of the Development of Medical Images

12. Steve Woolgar. Reconstructing Man and MachineA Note on Sociological Critiques of Cognitivism.

13. Harry M. Collins. Expert Systems and the Science of Knowledge

About the Editors

Wiebe E. Bijker is Professor of Technology & Society at the University of Maastricht.

Thomas P. Hughes is Professor of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. He is the coeditor of How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (MIT Press, 2003) and the coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer and other books.

Roland Lardinois

Book: Knowledge Swaraj

C. Shambu Prasad (ed.), Piloting Knowledge Swaraj: A handbook on Indian Science and Technology, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar, Orissa, March 2011. For: Knowledge In Civil Society (KICS)-Centre for World Solidarity,

http://kicsforum.net/kics/setdev/Piloting_Knowledge_Swaraj.pdf

Contents

PILOTING KNOWLEDGE SWARAJ IN INDIA: A HANDBOOK ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Methodology of the Pilots

1.2 Piloting Knowledge Swaraj

2. MEDICAL ETHICS: A CASE STUDY OF HYSTERECTOMY IN ANDHRA PRADESH

2.1 THE ISSUE

2.2 HYSTERECTOMY-THE CLINICAL PICTURE

2.3. HYSTERECTOMY-SOCIAL FACTORS AND CONSEQUENCES

2. 4 HYSTERECTOMY-ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

2.5 CONCLUSIONS

3. SUSTAINABILITY AND PLURALITY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: A CASE STUDY OF

RECONSTRUCTION

3.1 The Case-Study and its methodology

3.1.1 Methodology adopted

3.2 Introduction: Built Environment and Reconstruction

3.3 Approaches in Reconstruction

3.3.1 Comparison of Reconstruction Approaches

3.4. Overview of three disasters: The Context

3.4.1 The Gujarat Earthquake

3.4.2 The Tsunami in Tamil Nadu

3.4.3 Bihar Kosi Floods

3.5. Policy environment & Regulatory mechanisms

3.5.1 Institutional arrangements and reconstruction approaches

3.5.2 Guidelines, Building Codes and Norms

3.5.3 Where ‘guidelines’ fail and/or are inadequate

3.6. “Whose space is it anyway?”

3.6.1 The ‘Client’ and the Commission

3.6.2 Site allocation: Relocation vs. In-situ Reconstruction

3.6.3 Habitat Planning / Settlement Design

3.6.4 Building: design, materials and technologies

3.6.5. “Fusion” approaches

3.7. People’s Initiatives: Plurality, Sustainability and Justice

3.8. Conclusions & Recommendations

Recommendations

References

4. ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY –EXPERIMENTS IN DEMOCRATIZING

WATER SECTOR

4.1. Rationale for a Case Study on Water

4.2. Narrative of the three themes

4.2.1 River Valley Development – Understanding Tungabhadra from a Common Citizen’s Point of View

4.2.2 Ground Water Management – Social Regulation experiences of CWS and WASSAN

4.2.3 Lessons from Collaborative Advocacy Efforts by CSOs: Watershed development projects in Andhra Pradesh

4.3 Actors, roles and Knowledge Swaraj

4.3.1 Identifying actors

4.3.2 Sustainability

4.3.3 Plurality

4.4. Lessons and Conclusions

5. SOCIALISING SCIENCE IN INDIAN: SOME LESSONS FROM INDIAN EXPERIENCE

APPENDIX: SOCIALISING SCIENCE – BEYOND PROJECT TIME FRAMES