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SUMMARY:South Asia-Africa Seminar Series: The Politics and Technologies of
  Measurement        - Dr Shankar Nair (Oxford)\, Dr Rachel King (UCL)
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260310T140000Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260310T153000Z
UID:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/e860e50a-471e-4f81-800a-9c14d599b7c2/
DESCRIPTION:The Production of Value: Metrology\, Land Revenue\, and the St
 ate in Colonial India\, 1820-1900\nShankar Nair (Oxford) \n\nThe mapping o
 f India has long been viewed as an instrument of colonial governmentality 
 and control. In this view\, scientific survey and map-making legitimised B
 ritish territorial possession and extraction\, presenting an image of impe
 rial rule at once enlightened and powerful. More recently\, historians of 
 science have called for a greater focus on local contributions to colonial
  cartography\, emphasising the labour and knowledge of the ‘go-between
 ’ in the circulation of scientific knowledge and the often-imperfect man
 ifestation of science-making on the ground. The focus in all these studies
  has been on grand surveys\, notably The Great Trigonometrical Survey of t
 he nineteenth century\, and on particular scientific innovations. \nThis p
 aper\, part of the AHRC-funded ‘Colonial Standards’ project at History
  of Science Museum (HSM) Oxford\, looks instead at the ideas and practices
  of land surveying in the nineteenth century that underpinned a vital func
 tion of the British colonial state: the land revenue system. The largest s
 ingle source of colonial revenue\, the land tax has long been a contentiou
 s issue in Indian economic and social history. Yet\, little is known of th
 e social\, material\, and political-economic considerations of this system
 \, the techniques used to determine value\, and the interaction of this ca
 dastral knowledge with local forms of power and ordering such as caste. Us
 ing the scientific instrument collections at HSM Oxford and archival mater
 ials\, the paper argues that an engagement with the material and social pr
 actice of land surveying provides fresh insight into the making of the col
 onial state and the lasting entanglement of land and power in India.\n\nMy
  research focuses on the social and economic history of science and techno
 logy and its relation to the history of empire in South Asia in the 19th a
 nd 20th century. I am particularly interested in agricultural and rural in
 dustrial production\, and the history of scientific and commercial standar
 disation in a transnational and comparative perspective. I am currently a 
 Linda Hall Library Fellow in the History of Science and Technology (2025-2
 6). I previously worked as a Lecturer in the History of Science and Techno
 logy at King’s College London (2024-25) and co-convened the Centre for t
 he History of Science\, Technology\, and Medicine (CHoSTM) during this per
 iod. \n\nThe Big Sequence: chronology and the pan-Africanisms of the twent
 ieth century\nRachel King (UCL) \n\nDuring the mid-twentieth century archa
 eology on the African continent was fixated on producing chronological seq
 uences of artefacts and dirt: elements that held the key to a comprehensiv
 e picture of the continent's deep past. This recognition catalysed an unpr
 ecedented project to collate a continent's worth of distinct sequences\, e
 xcavated under varying paradigms by different research teams in various la
 nguages\, with an ambition of presenting the first scientific pan-African 
 archaeology: an Atlas and accompanying Lexicon of African Prehistory. Whil
 e this archaeological project did not explicitly align itself with other c
 ontemporary pan-African politics\, it had to contend with these amidst the
  rapidly changing landscape of the independence period. In particular\, th
 e ultimate pariah status of the apartheid government - representing the co
 untry with one of the best-documented human fossil chronologies on the con
 tinent - forced conversations about the limits of scientific cooperation\,
  with fractures ultimately forming between African and Euro-American archa
 eologists. This seminar explores how aspirations of organising time withou
 t borders in Africa's deep past confronted other forms of solidarity and r
 esistance\, and led to a reckoning in archaeology's purpose on the contine
 nt. \n\nRachel King is an inter-disciplinary scholar specialising in the s
 tudy of the recent past in southern Africa. Her most recent publications i
 nclude her 2025 book The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa (Cambridg
 e University Press)\, her 2024 co-edited textbook Methods and Methodologie
 s in Heritage Studies (UCL Press)\, and several forthcoming articles on th
 e impacts of South Africa's framework for protecting the past after 30 yea
 rs of democracy.\n\nSpeakers:\nDr Shankar Nair (Oxford)\, Dr Rachel King (
 UCL)
LOCATION:St Antony's College (Pavilion Room)\, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
TZID:Europe/London
URL:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/e860e50a-471e-4f81-800a-9c14d599b7c2/
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DESCRIPTION:Talk:South Asia-Africa Seminar Series: The Politics and Techno
 logies of Measurement        - Dr Shankar Nair (Oxford)\, Dr Rachel King (
 UCL)
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