Imperial technoscience: Transnational histories of magnetic resonance imaging in the United States, Britain, and India

Poonam Pandey*

Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Abstract:

What questions do we generally ask when we want to know about the history of technological innovation? The usual route is to look at who invented it, presumably, by finding out the Nobel Prize winner for the invention and then tracing the history forward from invention to industrial development to marketing and diffusion. In this process, the imaginary, which more than often emerges is that of a technological innovation first in Europe/ West and then elsewhere. This route, as Prasad establishes through this book, reinforces the linear model of innovation and dualist distinctions of West and non‑West, centre and periphery and periphery, developed and developing. These categories, on one hand, are problematic, hierarchical, and exclusionary toward the multifaceted, transnationally entangled and multilayered histories of technoscience. On the other hand, they are parasitic to its emergent, future imaginaries, and practices. This study stands distinct from earlier attempts to critically reformulate the center‑periphery thesis and its associated categories,^[1,2] as they had failed to challenge the universality and idealized characteristic of science. The author thus, wishes to add the growing literature of Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies which had radically transformed the understanding of transnational technoscience by focusing on the technoscientific practices. Read more. . .