Call for Papers for symposium at ICHST 2017 -- Science and Empire: New localities - New circulations
Call for Papers for symposium at ICHST 2017 -- Science and Empire: New localities - New circulations.
Venue:
25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23-29 July 2017.
Symposium organizers:
Dr. Niklas Thode Jensen, Danish National Archives, Copenhagen (vice-president of SCIEMP)
Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey, The India Institute, King’s College London (president of SCIEMP)
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 June 2016.
The Science and Empire Commission (SCIEMP) of the Division of History of
Science and Technology (DHST) hereby issue a Call for Papers for a
symposium at the ICHST 2017 in Rio. The symposium will consist of two
sessions with connected themes but different formats:
1. The first session will be a thematic panel of 3 papers focusing
on localities and circulations of scientific knowledge in the colonial
world, c. 1450-1950 (see description below).
2. The second session will be an open plenary session that revisits
the history of SCIEMP in order to identify new ways to study Science
and Empire such that it now includes Empires beyond Europe and to
consider histories of the American, Chinese, Japanese and Soviet Empires
as well.
Full abstract of the first session:
The main objective of the session is to use the connected concepts of
locality and circulation to address the general theme of the congress:
“Science, Technology and Medicine between the Global and the Local”.
Recent research in the history of science has changed its focus from
local practices within a narrowly defined and usually western community –
such as a lab, a natural history collection or a hospital – to a global
scope that investigates both local practices of science anywhere on the
planet and the circulation of scientific knowledge, individuals and
objects between global localities. Central to these investigations is
the view that science is neither a uniquely European phenomenon, nor
diffused exclusively from Europe to the rest of the world. On the
contrary, science is locally created through complex social processes of
accommodation and negotiation, and the dissemination of science to
other localities in order to render it universal is only possible
through processes of the same kind and complexity. This perspective is
particularly interesting to SCIEMP, which brings together researchers
interested in the ways that science, technology and medicine has
intersected with colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonialism.
On this basis, this session will investigate the concepts of
locality and circulation of scientific knowledge in the colonial world
c. 1450-1950 through two sets of connected questions starting either
with locality and moving towards circulation or with circulation and
moving towards locality:
• Locality: How were knowledge, practices and objects of science
constructed in colonial localities c. 1450-1950 in the encounter between
different localities and communities? How were they negotiated and
reconfigured in the face of resistance and asymmetric power relations?
How were this local knowledge, practices and objects of science
transformed in order to facilitate circulation to other localities?
•Circulation: How did knowledge, practices and objects of science
travel in the colonial world c. 1450-1950? How were they transformed as
they encountered knowledge, practices and objects of colonial
localities and communities? How were they negotiated and reconfigured in
the face of resistance and asymmetric power relations?
If you are interested in participating in the first session, please
submit an abstract in English of no more than 3000 characters, including
the title of the paper, and a one page CV including name, department
and university affiliation (if appropriate), mailing address, phone
number(s) and current email address. Please submit to Dr. Niklas Thode
Jensen at ntjensen@gmail.com . Deadline for submission is: 30 June 2016.
If you are interested in participating in the second session, please send a note of interest to ntjensen@gmail.com
. As this is a plenary session no abstract or CV is needed, but it
would be useful to us if you could include full name, department and
university affiliation, and contact information.