Decolonizing Science and Technology

What is decolonization? How and why decolonization relate to history of colonialism? And how history of colonialism is not about distant past but how it shapes the present?
This course will introduce you to decolonial studies by examining concrete examples of controversies on history of science and technology and their relation to colonial past. By engaging with these controversies you will deliberate on the historical processes by which “the West” has acquired its authority and dominance over “the rest” and how processes of decolonization means learning to “see” and question/contest this dominance of the West. You will learn to challenge the superiority of western European culture, knowledge, ways of living, religion, cosmology, and crucially, the racial hierarchies upon which the colonial power was fundamentally founded and exerted.

The core of the course will address how de- and post-coloniality is a much debated and contested terms, how they have originated in various liberational struggles across the globe. You will read iconic texts on diverse meanings of decolonization especially emerging from the postcolonial and decolonial studies from South Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

After engaging with these controversies and literature, at the end of the course, you will be able to understand how and why decolonization is a long term historical process.

This course will be suitable for MSc students from any discipline and study program interested in decolonial studies and history of colonialism.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Identify and compare diverse meanings of decolonization especially emerging from the postcolonial and decolonial studies from South Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
• Apply key concepts and theories on decolonization to societal and academic debates
• Understand the ways in which genealogies and legacies of colonialism shape current practices, how it is history of the present
• Analyze controversies on history of science and technology through a decolonial lens
• Develop a new sensitivity to understand history of industrial and scientific revolutions as products of history of colonialism
• Critically reflect on how Eurocentrism continues to prevail in academic literature, in history of technology, in daily lives, in popular culture
• Reflect and find your own positionality in decolonial debates