Repurposing an Idea: Scientific Temper in India
Speaker: Gita Chadha, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India
Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
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About the talk: The modern Indian nation-state developed out of a colonial encounter. Values of secularism, democracy, and justice were foundational to the making of India. Notions of development were based on a careful investment in big science and technology, leading to a gradual hegemony of science and scientific rationality over other ways of being and knowing.
Almost five decades after the term “scientific temper” entered the Indian constitution, it has become imperative to reimagine the idea, particularly by those of us who critiqued the project of modernity, and science from feminist post-colonial perspectives. With the rise of a virulent form of cultural nationalism in India, and the simultaneous failure of the organized political left, it is becoming urgent to reclaim, reinvent, reimagine, and repurpose all available tools of emancipation. Scientific temper is one such tool.
In this colloquium, drawing upon the contributions of feminist science studies—in India and elsewhere—I argue to excavate the core moral vision of the scientific temper. I do this in a sense, to keep the idea both dead (because it is hegemonic) and alive (because it has potential). Dead in one context, and alive for another, much like Schrodinger's Cat.
About our speaker: Gita Chadha is a sociologist who works in the area of Critical Science and Technology Studies. She has been involved in shaping the field of Feminist Science Studies in India. She has made significant contributions in building conversations around feminist sociologies in India. She is a committed pedagogue. Presently, she is Professor in Social Science at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. Prior to this, she held the Obaid Siddiqi Chair position at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, India .