The century from 1840 to 1940 was a watershed moment in the global history of science, marked by infrastructural, technological, and political changes that transformed the culture and circulation of knowledge production. It was a time when forensic expertise turned dead bodies into juridical subjects, old gardens evolved into new laboratories, nature’s insects became agriculture’s pests, and expert fields shaped national imaginations. Most importantly, however, it was a period that opened up spaces and trajectories for local scientists to forge political power through scientific practice. In Southeast Asia, as in other regions of the global South, scholars have traditionally placed colonial administrations and coercive connections at the vanguard of these developments. This panel draws on multilingual sources, archival research, and ethnographic fieldwork to chart a set of science stories that locates Southeast Asian experts at the heart of this historical moment.
In particular, the panel uses the life and labor of local scientists to recast the history of science in Southeast Asia in ways that surface new interactions and infrastructures while also complicating old narratives and geographies. From Manila to Bangkok and from fisheries to forensics, it documents the sharp and subtle forms in which local scientists and their networks figured in the making of modern Southeast Asia. In sum, the panel foregrounds experts at the intersection of cosmopolitan and vernacular worlds whose labors were not only central to the workings of global science, but also, and most crucially, vital to matters of political and economic life.
