ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Measuring Plural Worlds: Collections, Commodities, and the Making of Colonial Metrology

• In Event: Measurement and Instrumentation

English Abstract

Museum collections have been crucial in showing how scientific practices were formed through objects, and how those objects circulated, were classified, and gained authority. This constructivist approach in the history of science, however, has emphasised moments of scientific innovation and the material cultures of scientific pioneers, overlooking the use of objects in diverse localities, and their changing relationship to existing material practices and values.

This paper explores how scientific and ethnographic collections can inform histories of measurement in nineteenth century colonial India. The paper draws on our ongoing AHRC-funded project 'Colonial Standards: Using scientific instrument collections in India and the UK to investigate mechanisms of control' at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford in collaboration with the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) aimed at bridging archives, museum scientific collections, and ethnographic research in UK and India. The paper argues that collections are critical sites where competing claims of accuracy, value, and authority were negotiated in contexts of their use, and where alternative histories of science and knowledge can be recovered. By foregrounding scientific and everyday object collections such as scientific surveying instruments, agricultural and artisanal measuring devices in the UK and India, the paper demonstrates how plural worlds of measurement practices emerged from both confrontation and collaboration, offering new ways to understand the making of 'official' scientific and economic knowledge in colonial India. The paper will trace the role of these objects in mediating local knowledge systems, colonial scientific regimes, and emerging global standards in measuring practices.

Authors

• J C Niala

• Shankar Nair