Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National
Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760-1850
Osiris, (2000)Abstract
In opposition both to the dominant vision of colonial science as an
hegemonic European enterprise whose universalization can be conceived
of in purely diffusionist terms, and to the more recent perception
of it as a simple reordering of indigenous knowledge within the European
canon, this essay seeks to show the complex reciprocity involved
in the making of science within the colonial context. Based on the
example of India during the first century of British colonial conquest,
it examines the specificities of intercultural encounter in the subcontinent,
the formalized institutions that were engendered, and the kinds of
knowledge practices that emerged in the case of the geographical
survey of India. The essay suggests that the knowledge created in
this context is not just local in character, but participates wholly
in the emergence of universal science, as well as of other institutions
of modernity.
Description
Wujastyk's main bibtex file, April 30, 2010