Well, now that visa problems prevent euro travel this summer, i might as well turn my mind to what’s in my dock, what’s moving across my desk, what’s in the hopper, and what need concentrated work. Summer’s a time when we must turn ourselves more than ever to productivity concerns, hmm?
It would be nice to see what you’re processing too. In that sense this space could do some of the more traditional bloggy thing, that is, frame and bring attention to the products of our labor. [ We both tend to enjoy focusing on the processes of our co-ponderings, so we rarely mention our actual output here! ] Or, as Chris K. suggested, think about linking to actual products, ours or others.
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I submitted that book review today, Aug 1 (Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory) – recall that I was reading it at the Clayman, and it seemed down your street too. It’s a really well done dissertation-turned book (clearly inspired by Tim Mitchell’s work), and my only regret is that it sets out to single handedly rediscover the importance of technoscience to modernity ! This seems laughable to us, but sadly, the truth of the new interdisciplinarity is that students and faculty alike are retreating to clearly demarcated fields, and although they may read a half dozen books outside their disciplines, the boundaries remain quite predictable. Thus she can claim that there are very few works on non-european nationalism and its efforts in scientific knowledge production; I recall the claim made by a Clayman visitor that there existed no work in postcolonial science studies. It’s curious indeed.
At any rate – the book, esp part 2, on peasants, and part 3, on population, are worth a read for your work on bangladesh, population, development [tho, note, she makes a distinction between development, as used by PArtha Chatterjee, and welfare, as used by early 20th C Egyptian nationalists. The distinction isn't very convincing to me - at the very least, it needs som genealogical work into the two terms, I'd think.] – although i was struck by the absence of reference to work by you, adele clark, laura briggs, ashwini tambe, antoinette burton, etc on the feminist side and even conventional refs like david arnold, ajay skaria, donald moore, etc on the history of science and environment.