What do you think?
Rate this book
Enculturing Innovation - Indian engagements with nanotechology - a PhD thesis
Enculturing Innovation: Indian engagements with nanotechnology is the outcome of an effort to understand the ‘Culture(s) of innovation’ in nanoscience and technology (NS&T) research for development in India. Conducted across five NS&T laboratories in three different Indian cities, it tries to understand the character of techno-scientific knowledge practices within the labs and their own location within the broad political, social, cultural and developmental contexts of contemporary India.
The thesis explores four different contexts, locations and realities of NS&T research and development; the four case studies that make up its empirical core are, each, threaded along one particular marker of Indian society – the context of economic and resource constraints; the existence of multiple knowledge systems; the critical shortage of potable drinking water for a large section of people and the disadvantaged status of the girl child in this society.
This empirical material is, in the vast terrain it traverses, an account of the wide repertoire of sources, resources, people, ideas, materials, instruments and knowledge systems that the labs are mobilizing in multifarious ways. It describes and interprets how people, their technical and social institutions and their combined practices influence and negotiate a particular technology in understanding it, and using it to meet the ends they seek to meet. It is an account of a ‘culture of innovation’ that links the macro with the micro, and the inside of the lab with the world outside - a world that is a much bigger influence than is generally believed.
Using the learnings from the empirical material and the diversity it points to, the thesis concludes with a set of six inter-related steps of how and why innovation is encultured. It also notes that diversities within and between laboratories are reflective of the larger socio-political-cultural milieu within which the Indian S&T system and the labs themselves are located, that multiple cultures of innovation exist in parallel, and it is important that we accept and acknowledge this multiplicity and diversity.
Please write to me at psekhsaria@gmail.com and I will be happy to email you a pdf of the thesis
The thesis explores four different contexts, locations and realities of NS&T research and development; the four case studies that make up its empirical core are, each, threaded along one particular marker of Indian society – the context of economic and resource constraints; the existence of multiple knowledge systems; the critical shortage of potable drinking water for a large section of people and the disadvantaged status of the girl child in this society.
This empirical material is, in the vast terrain it traverses, an account of the wide repertoire of sources, resources, people, ideas, materials, instruments and knowledge systems that the labs are mobilizing in multifarious ways. It describes and interprets how people, their technical and social institutions and their combined practices influence and negotiate a particular technology in understanding it, and using it to meet the ends they seek to meet. It is an account of a ‘culture of innovation’ that links the macro with the micro, and the inside of the lab with the world outside - a world that is a much bigger influence than is generally believed.
Using the learnings from the empirical material and the diversity it points to, the thesis concludes with a set of six inter-related steps of how and why innovation is encultured. It also notes that diversities within and between laboratories are reflective of the larger socio-political-cultural milieu within which the Indian S&T system and the labs themselves are located, that multiple cultures of innovation exist in parallel, and it is important that we accept and acknowledge this multiplicity and diversity.
Please write to me at psekhsaria@gmail.com and I will be happy to email you a pdf of the thesis
270 pages, Paperback
Published March 10, 2016
4 people want to read
About the author
Pankaj Sekhsaria
18 books85 followersPankaj Sekhsaria is Associate Professor, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), IIT Bombay. His most recent book is 'Instrumental Lives - an intimate biography of an Indian laboratory (Routledge 2019). The India edition is being released in November 2019.
He has a long-standing association with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI) as a member of the environmental action group, Kalpavriksh. He is the author also of 'Islands in Flux - the Andaman and Nicobar Story' (Harper Collins India 2017), a collection of his journalism based on the islands over the last two decades. His debut novel 'The Last Wave' (HarperCollins India, 2014) was also set in the Andaman islands and he is also co-editor of The Jarawas Reserve Dossier for UNESCO (2010).
He is also author of 'The State of Wildlife in Northeast India 1996-2011: News and Information from the Protected Area Update, published by Foundation for Ecological Security.
He has a long-standing association with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI) as a member of the environmental action group, Kalpavriksh. He is the author also of 'Islands in Flux - the Andaman and Nicobar Story' (Harper Collins India 2017), a collection of his journalism based on the islands over the last two decades. His debut novel 'The Last Wave' (HarperCollins India, 2014) was also set in the Andaman islands and he is also co-editor of The Jarawas Reserve Dossier for UNESCO (2010).
He is also author of 'The State of Wildlife in Northeast India 1996-2011: News and Information from the Protected Area Update, published by Foundation for Ecological Security.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.