PUBLICATIONS
History of Technology in Global Perspectives
Co-authored with Jethron Ayumbah Akallah, Nelson Arellano-Escudero, Sławomir Łotysz, Saara Matala, Min Fanxiang, Stefan Poser, Hugh R. Slotten, and Magdalena Zdrodowska
ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 29, no 1 (2024): 9–45; https://doi.org/10.11590/icon.2024.1.01
Through examinations of domestic servants in electrical advertisements and writings this article looks at the imaginations and realities of visions of an “Electrical Calcutta” at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that the diverse conceptions of an “Electrical Calcutta” were intimately linked to not just the technological and mechanical benefits of electrical technologies, but also the centrality of servants to societal notions of morality, class and social hierarchy, and cultures and discourses of human bodies, labour and energy within the domestic sphere. Global developments influence the concepts and content of scholarly research. The article aims to make these influences visible by analysing changes in the ideas and concepts of the history of technology. Thus, the paper presents different approaches to, and topics of, the history of technology, as developed by nine researchers, embedded in their characteristic cultures of scholarship all over the world. In doing so, the paper contributes to a transnational comparison of methodologies and contents of the history of technology. It also reflects on how the history of technology sees itself as an academic discipline and how it contributes to ongoing discourses on broader societal challenges.
‘New wine in new bottles’: class politics and the ‘uneven electrification’ of colonial India
History of Retailing and Consumption, 4:1 (2018), 94-108
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2018.1436226
The introduction of electricity supply into urban colonial India in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with the emergence of an Indian middle class debating its own identity and autonomy, and the development of ‘modern’ and Westernised urban centres. This article examines how colonial plans for urban and domestic electrification were influenced by the class politics of the urban Indian middle class and its varied notions of nationalism, traditionalism and modernity. I investigate how the colonial government and promoters of electrical technologies responded to the opportunities and constraints of the urban Indian middle-class domestic sphere to refashion the language of electricity to be contiguous with the political and social exigencies of the emerging Indian middle class. Looking at the language of electrification that arose in the social, cultural and political contexts reveals how far class and identity politics were matters of importance in what has been termed ‘the uneven electrification of the British empire’. While this article concentrates on urban colonial India, it brings to light newer aspects of the place of electricity within processes of urban development and class politics, and vice versa, especially within the unsettled cultural and social backgrounds of colonial societies.
Shifting Narratives of Electricity and Energy in Periods of Transition
Co-authored with Daniel Pérez-Zapico
Journal of Energy History/Revue d'Histoire de l'Énergie [Online], n°8, published 16 January 2023
URL: energyhistory.eu/en/node/311
This special issue aims at providing nuanced and multi-layered understandings of historical choices regarding, and perceptions of, electric supply and electrical technologies, by taking into consideration diverse groups, actors, agencies, and communities in distinct historical and regional settings. It also aims at rethinking energy systems, practices, and transitions through questions of gender, religion, race, design and architecture, material culture, colonialism, nationalism(s), and varied interpretations of tradition and modernity. It insists on reorienting our gaze from centring on electricity to examining electricity within existing energy regimes and sources, to historicise and problematise the place of electricity, electric supply and use within complex conceptions of energy transitions, thereby challenging linear narratives of progress and modernisation.
Manual and Electrical Energies in the Visualisation of “Electrical Calcutta”, c. 1890-1925
Journal of Energy History/Revue d'Histoire de l'Énergie [Online], n°8, published 17 April 2023
URL: energyhistory.eu/en/node/330
Through examinations of domestic servants in electrical advertisements and writings this article looks at the imaginations and realities of visions of an “Electrical Calcutta” at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that the diverse conceptions of an “Electrical Calcutta” were intimately linked to not just the technological and mechanical benefits of electrical technologies, but also the centrality of servants to societal notions of morality, class and social hierarchy, and cultures and discourses of human bodies, labour and energy within the domestic sphere.
Rethinking Global History of Technology from Alternative Archives
Co-authored with Alejandra Osorio Tarazona and David Drengk
Technikgeschichte Bd. 88 (2021) H. 2, 202-206