Globalization of techno-scientific research and development has entered a new phase in the last two decades. Apart from arousing strong public opinion all over the world, this new phase of techno-scientific globalization has been an important concern for policy makers and academics. This project will analyze socio-economic and technical features of techno-scientific globalization through a cross-cultural and transnational study of research and development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a cutting-edge medical technology, in the United Kingdom (UK), India and the United States (US). It builds on Amit Prasad?s previous work, which analyzed MRI research in India and the US.
Intellectual Merit. MRI offers an excellent example for the study of transformations in techno-scientific globalization because the life cycle of MRI research and development (from the 1970s to the present) very closely parallels (and has also partly propelled) such transformations. In this regard a three-nation cross-cultural study of MRI research is particularly useful. MRI research in the UK, India and the US have had different and yet inter-linked trajectories. A study of contrasting cases of MRI research in these three nations and linkages between them will provide useful insights into socio-technical networks within these particular nations and will bring to the fore how these networks are affected by and affect transnational techno-scientific research. A starting point for this project is that even though the relationship between the UK, India and the US is asymmetrical, techno-scientific research in and between these nations cannot be understood through simple conceptual dichotomies of center/periphery, west/non-west, dominant/dominated, or globalism/localism. This study, instead of using these dichotomies as explanatory categories, will critically scrutinize them through a cross-cultural and transnational analysis of MRI research in the UK, India and the US.
Central to this undertaking is a short period of fieldwork involving interviews with MRI scientists in the UK combined with a limited participant observation, and collection of data from multiple domains of evidence, which includes scientific papers, policy documents, lay articles, biographical and autobiographical notes. The data collected from the UK will be combined with the data that have already been collected from India and the US in order to develop a three-nation cross-cultural study. Some key questions that this project will investigate are: Are center-periphery models useful in understanding transnational topography of techno-scientific research? Or is there a need to develop more complex models of techno-scientific globalization? What role does socio-technical networks (of policies within a nation, practices of multinational companies, public opinion, and so on) have in creating hierarchical flows of knowledge, artifacts, and people within a nation as well as transnationally? Are transnational flows of knowledge, artifacts, and people making the nation-state (and national science and technology policies) increasingly irrelevant? Or have the nation-states transformed their roles and become facilitators of transnational flows? How is laboratory research affected by these transnational flows?
Broader Impact. This study, which will be published as a book monograph, will provide useful insights into globalization of techno-scientific research and development. It will help in policy making and contribute to several theoretical approaches and literatures, in particular science and technology studies, postcolonial science studies, and globalization studies.
