Sarai Reader
03: Shaping Technologies
by Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh
Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
[Sarai], Geert Lovink, Marleen Stikker
[Waag], Eds.
The Sarai Programme, CSDS, Delhi + The
Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam,
2003
382 pp. Paper, $15.00
ISBN: 81-901429-3-3.
Reviewed by Aparna Sharma
Aparna31S@netscape.net
With the intention to transcend commonplace
binarism that characterizes much discourse
on technology in South Asia and to open
a qualified space that takes into account
the mutual imbrication of technology,
society, culture and politics, the Sarai
Reader 2003, Shaping Technologies,
covers vast territory. The collection
comprises contributions from scholars
and practitioners that make for an intense
exchange between multiple impetuses.
Shaping Technologies is the third
in Delhi-based research collective, Sarais
annual publications. In the introduction
to the edition, Sarais editorial
collective states that technology, which
had figured importantly in previous readers,
"has taken center-stage [in this
edition] as a multi-faceted constellation
of ideas, images, reflections, debates,
histories and provocations" (vii).
Though the reader contains informative
accounts of technology-dumping and its
impacts on health and environment in urban
spaces, its contribution really rests
in mapping how commonly held polarities
of the "native," "rural,"
and the "modernising" meld.
Divided into nine sections that examine
specific facets of the technology/society
interface, it indicates technology as
being constituted in an unsettling manner,
entailing the interruption of indigenous
forces along with new and emergent technology/ies:
constituting a matrix of contingent and
disparate forces that interact without
negating or subordinating some in favour
of others. Debate around technology is
extended in the notion of "disruptive
innovation," summarised in Chennai-based
research scholar Nimmi Rangaswamys
comment: "that existing mainstream
markets are not starting places for waves
of growth, and there is need to "incubate
technologies from ground up rather than
introduce top down" (170).
Specificity, particularly in terms of
communities, is crucial to most research
contained in the reader. The notion of
community takes on board intricacies and
inter-operability of factors such as socio-cultural
patterns and practices, language, and
environment. Without being an essentially
materialist or localized description,
the reader examines these factors not
only to reflect better the re-appropriation
of technologies but also to highlight
how the process is persistent, responding
to varied, concurrent stimuli. Two comprehensive
and cogent arguments are Vikram Vyass
overview of an IT-based drought-proofing
model for water management and Rangaswamys
study around the introduction of the internet
in rural districts of the south Indian
state, Tamil Nadu. Both emphasize grass-roots
research and activation for enhanced possibilities
in relation to development; and note the
reciprocity between communities and technology.
Shaping Technologies does not examine
contemporary technologies only. Disruption
is traced in the participation with earlier
technologies, as discussed in the section
"excavations." In temporal specificities
such as those of say the colonial moment,
one finds that the interjection of the
native instils particular tensions in
the usage/s of technological devices and
the practices emanating from them. Particularly
engrossing is Sabeena Gadihokes
study of womens domestic and amateur
photography at the turn of the century
in which she posits the photographic camera
not only as the means for access to the
"outside" from within a confining
and restricting social order, but as imbued
with the pulls between that order and
womens conflicts at that moment
of nationalist upsurge. Similarly by describing
the "selective adoption" of
"naturalist" techniques in the
commercial imagery of the bazaar, Kajri
Jains paper identifies friction
and resistance between two differing scopic
regimes, wherein techno-rationalist devices
are employed to preserve and continue
the "messianic" or the sacred
with overtones of the cult and devotional.
The reader is replete with such dialogue
and has achieved a wide geographical palette
that extends outside India. The writings
offer reconstitutive insight not only
at an immediate level, but more subtly
in relation to politics as well, countering
much cynicism that surrounds technology
as being either "apolitical"
or exploitative. The disjunctive and inter-subjective
nature of the technology/society interface
emerges as exerting pressures on the boundaries
of what constitutes as "political"
and opens alternate theatres for contest,
which may not coincide fully with popular
modes for struggle or be equally explicit
or articulate. These throw a gauntlet
before anyone even vaguely examining technology
and stress its import not only as a means
towards elevated levels of economic development,
but as a drive in the construction of
the social and political realms. Chicago-based
anthropology student, Biella Coleman,
addresses this aspect most pointedly in
her paper that identifies the embedded
politics of transgression in the practice
of hacking.
One of the most impressive and poised
statements is the translated version of
Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagores
essay, "Airborne." A record
of thoughts from his first air flight,
it profoundly identifies the agenda for
the interface, then at its most nascent.
Though referring to the imperial mode
(the essay was written in 1932), Tagores
characteristic vision emphasizes an "intimacy,"
a situation "in the totality of space
and time" for creativity to manifest.
This emphasis is echoed through the reader,
opening new territories and introducing
reflective approaches that restore the
technology debate from slipping along
common trajectories that oscillate between
the extremes of either techno-fetishism
or phobia. The reader thus accomplishes
injecting necessary complexity and rigour
into discourse.