Chinar Mehta

DHS 110 · IIIT Bangalore

An introduction to the social, historical, and political dimensions of science and technology, designed to help engineering students critically examine the contexts in which technical knowledge is produced.

Lectures

Week 1: What is Technology?

• Andrewism (2021). The Tyranny of the Clock [video]
• daniel torres (2018). How Capitalism Changed Time Itself [video]
• Biographics (2023). The Luddites: Raging Against the Machines [video]
• Postman, N. (2000). Chapter 3: Technology. In Building a Bridge to the 18th Century. Knopf Doubleday.
• Nye, D. E. (2019). Can We Define "Technology"? In Writing in a Technological World (pp. 57–67). Routledge.

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• Sismondo, S. (2009). The Prehistory of Science and Technology Studies. In An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Wiley.
• Heidegger, M. (1954). The Question Concerning Technology.
• Kline, S. J. (1985). What Is Technology? Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 5(3), 215–218.
• Sanzo, K. (2020). What Came First: Thermodynamics or the Steam Engine? The Innovation.
• Kelly, K. (2010). What Technology Wants. Penguin.

Week 2: Science and Truth

• TED-Ed (2017). Mary's Room: A Philosophical Thought Experiment [video]
• Vox (2020). The Eclipse Photo that Made Einstein Famous [video]
• Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Introduction. In Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. University of Chicago Press.

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• Top Marx (2020). Interpretivism: A Level Sociology Revision [video]
• Johansson, R. (2004). Theory of Science and Research Methodology. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Week 3: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

• Bloor, D. (1991). The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge. In Knowledge and Social Imagery. University of Chicago Press.
• CrashCourse (2018). Eugenics and Francis Galton: Crash Course History of Science #23 [video]
• The School of Life (2015). Philosophy: Ludwig Wittgenstein [video]

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• Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1986). Chapter 3: The Construction of a Fact: The Case of TRF(H). In Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton University Press.
• Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1986). Chapter 4: The Microprocessing of Facts. In Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton University Press.
• Habib, S. I. & Raina, D. (1989). Copernicus, Colombus, Colonialism and the Role of Science in Nineteenth Century India. Social Scientist, 51–66.

Week 4: The Politics of Things

• The School of Life (2016). History of Ideas: Consumerism [video]
• Akrich, M. (1992). The De-scription of Technical Objects. In Bijker & Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society (pp. 205–224). MIT Press.
• Wilson, S. S. (1973). Bicycle Technology. Scientific American, 228(3), 81–91.

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• Cowan, R. S. (2023). Chapter 1: Housework and Its Tools. In More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Plunkett Lake Press.
• Cowan, R. S. (2023). Chapter 4: Twentieth-Century Changes in Household Technology. In More Work for Mother. Plunkett Lake Press.
• Miller, D. (2001). Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. Berg Publishers.
• Appadurai, A. (1988). The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Week 5: Social Construction of Technology

• Philosophy Tube (2021). Social Constructs (or, 'What is A Woman, Really?') [video]
• Bory, P. (2020). Chapter 1: Internet Histories, Narratives and the Rise of the Network Ideology. In The Internet Myth. University of Westminster Press.
• Cook, S. D. (1996). Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth. In Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors (pp. 67–82).

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• Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. (2012). The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Anniversary Ed.). MIT Press.
• Humphreys, L. (2005). Reframing Social Groups, Closure, and Stabilization in the Social Construction of Technology. Social Epistemology, 19(2–3), 231–253.
• Phalkey, J. & Chattapadhyay, S. (2015). The Aakash Tablet and Technological Imaginaries of Mass Education in Contemporary India. History and Technology, 31(4), 452–481.
• Kline, R. & Pinch, T. (1996). Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States. Technology and Culture, 37(4), 763–795.
• Sharma, A. (2020). 'We Do Not Want Fake Energy': The Social Shaping of a Solar Micro-grid in Rural India. Science, Technology and Society, 25(2), 308–324.

Week 6: How GenZ is the Internet and Social Media?

• Al Jazeera English (2017). Noam Chomsky: The Five Filters of the Mass Media Machine [video]
• Folding Ideas (2017). Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda [video]
• CrashCourse (2017). Social Interaction & Performance: Crash Course Sociology #15 [video]
• FilmStack (2021). The History of Propaganda in Movies (And How It's Still Used Today) [video]
• Standage, T. (2013). Introduction: Cicero's Web. In Writing on the Wall: Social Media: The First 2,000 Years. A&C Black.
• Standage, T. (2013). Chapter 1: The Ancient Foundations of Social Media. In Writing on the Wall. A&C Black.
• Standage, T. (2013). Epilogue: History Retweets Itself. In Writing on the Wall. A&C Black.
• Turkle, S. (2023). Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self. In Social Theory Re-wired (pp. 485–495). Routledge.

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• Hogan, B. (2010). The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 30(6), 377–386.
• Marwick, A. E. & Boyd, D. (2011). I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114–133.
• Turkle, S. (2011). The Tethered Self: Technology Reinvents Intimacy and Solitude. Continuing Higher Education Review, 75, 28–31.

Week 7: Networks

• Aditi (2021). A Brief Explanation of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory [video]
• Clever Fox Academy (2021). The History of Anthropomorphism [video]
• Degree Doctor (2022). Structure and Agency Theory for Postgrads [video]
• Draftish (2025). Actor-Network Theory: For the Confused [video]
• Heaven for Sale (2023). The First Ever AI Chatbot: ELIZA (1966) [video]
• Latour, B. (1992). Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts. In Bijker & Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society (pp. 225–258). MIT Press.
• Suchman, L. (2007). Chapter 4: Interactive Artefacts. In Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge University Press.

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• Callon, M. (2007). Actor-Network Theory. In Asdal, Brenna & Moser (Eds.), Technoscience: The Politics of Interventions (pp. 62–66). Oslo Academic Press.
• Gomart, E. & Hennion, A. (1999). A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs, Drug Users. The Sociological Review, 47(1_suppl), 220–247.
• Muniesa, F. (2015). Actor-Network Theory. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 1(2), 80–84.

Week 8: War

• Bloomberg Podcasts (2026). America's Decade-Long AI War Efforts Get Trial by Fire in Iran [video]
• AJ+ (2025). How 5 Companies Are Keeping The World At War [video]
• Al Jazeera English (2021). How Israeli Technology Became One of the World's Most Feared Spyware [video]
• Davies, H. & Abraham, Y. (2025). Revealed: Microsoft Deepened Ties with Israeli Military to Provide Tech Support During Gaza War. The Guardian.
• Fatafta, M. (2024). Big Tech and the Risk of Genocide in Gaza. Access Now.
• Access Now. AI in Israel's War on Gaza.
• Stein, A. (2022). Disentangling the Digital Battlefield: How the Internet Has Changed War. War on the Rocks.
• Edgerton, D. (2007). Chapter 6: War. In The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Oxford University Press.
• Abraham, I. (1998). Introduction. In The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State. Zed Books.

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• González, R. J. (2022). War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future. University of California Press.
• Iraqi, A. (2024). 'Lavender': The AI Machine Directing Israel's Bombing Spree in Gaza. +972 Magazine.
• Melimopoulos, E. Who Bombed the Iranian Girls' School, Killing More Than 170? What We Know. Al Jazeera.
• Peperkamp, L. (2024). Technology and the Civilianization of Warfare. Ethics & International Affairs, 38(1), 64–74.
• Gupta, J. B. D. (2007). Science, Technology, Imperialism, and War. Pearson Education India.
• MacKenzie, D. (1986). Science and Technology Studies and the Question of the Military. Social Studies of Science, 16(2), 361–371.

Week 9: Infrastructure and Control

• Vinsel, L. & Russell, A. L. (2020). Chapter 4: Slow Disaster: What the Neglect of Maintenance is Doing to our Infrastructure. In The Innovation Delusion. Currency.
• Starosielski, N. (2015). Introduction: Against Flow. In The Undersea Network. Duke University Press.
• FactorDaily (2019). How India's Data Labellers are Powering the Global AI Race.
• Madapathi, M. (2024). Digital Barricades and Blackouts: A Case of Internet Shutdowns in India. Media and Communication, 12.

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• Pulitzer Center. AI Facial Recognition Is Denying Food to Pregnant Women Across India.
• NDTV. Analysis: India's Rail Infrastructure on Life Support.
• Armand, A., Augsburg, B. & Bancalari, A. (2021). Coordination and the Poor Maintenance Trap: An Experiment on Public Infrastructure in India. IFS Working Paper.
• IndiaSpend (2025). Reliant on British-era Infrastructure, the Indian Railways is Strained Beyond Capacity. Scroll.In.
• Gopakumar, G. (2020). Regime of Congestion: Technopolitics of Mobility and Inequality in Bengaluru, India. Science as Culture, 29(3), 345–364.
• Messier, P. (2024). Between Smart Images and Fast Trucks: Digital Surveillance and Obscured Labour in Hyderabad, India. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 25(2), 152–173.

Week 10: Algorithms, Data, AI

• DW Documentary (2024). How Big AI Companies Exploit Data Workers in Kenya [video]
• BOOM (2026). AI and Welfare: A Failed Match [video]
• New York Times Opinion (2025). Did the Camera Ever Tell the Truth? [video]
• Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A. & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 FAccT '21, 610–623.
• Mehrotra, K. (2022). Human Touch. Fifty Two.

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• Galloway, A. (2011). Are Some Things Unrepresentable? Theory, Culture & Society, 28(7–8), 85–102.
• Gitelman, L. (2013). "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron. MIT Press.
• Bucher, T. (2018). If ... Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford University Press.
• Bowker, G. C. & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. MIT Press.
• Manovich, L. (2011). What is Visualisation? Visual Studies, 26(1), 36–49.

Week 11: Culture

• Bloomberg Originals (2021). When India's Mix of Religion and Nationalism Becomes Deadly [video]
• New York Times Opinion (2014). Rana Plaza Collapse Documentary: The Deadly Cost of Fashion [video]
• PBS NewsHour (2024). Social Media's Role in Fueling Extremism and Misinformation [video]
• UMD (2023). Emotions in Social Media [video]
• Fan, J. (2017). China's Selfie Obsession. The New Yorker.

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• Mankekar, P. & Carlan, H. (2019). The Remediation of Nationalism: Viscerality, Virality, and Digital Affect. In Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia. University of Michigan Press.
• Tolentino, J. (2019). The Age of Instagram Face. The New Yorker.
• Ghosh, M. (2010). Television, Nationalism and Indian Cricket in the Era of Global Media.
• Haidt, J., Koller, S. H. & Dias, M. G. (1993). Affect, Culture, and Morality, or Is It Wrong to Eat Your Dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 613.
• White, D. (2017). Affect: An Introduction. Cultural Anthropology, 32(2), 175–180.

Week 12: Gender and Technology

• Economy Media (2025). The Invisible Workers Behind AI [video]
• MIT OpenCourseWare (2023). Lecture 15: Gender and the Labor Market [video]
• Dutta, M. (2021). Factory Girls: Life and Work in a Tamil Nadu Electronics Company. In John & Gopal (Eds.), Women in the Worlds of Labour. Orient BlackSwan.
• Kalia, S. (2025). Living in a Ghost World, These Data Workers Make the Internet Possible. BehanBox.
• Mugendi, E. (2025). Fuelling the AGI Hype: The Recruitment Playbook to Land Big Tech Contracts. Africa Uncensored.

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• Bhallamudi, I. (2022). Daughters, Devices and Doorkeeping: How Gender and Class Shape Adolescent Mobile Phone Access in Mumbai, India. Information, Communication & Society, 25(6), 851–867.
• Datta, A., Endow, T. & Mehta, B. S. (2020). Education, Caste and Women's Work in India. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 63(2), 387–406.
• Dhanaraj, S. & Mahambare, V. (2019). Family Structure, Education and Women's Employment in Rural India. World Development, 115, 17–29.
• Shah, N., Gothoskar, S., Gandhi, N. & Chhachhi, A. (1994). Structural Adjustment, Feminisation of Labour Force and Organisational Strategies. Economic and Political Weekly, 29(18), WS39–WS48.
• Standing, G. (1989). Global Feminization through Flexible Labor. World Development, 17(7), 1077–1095.

Week 13: Health, Food, Water Systems

• Al Dahdah, M. & Mishra, R. K. (2020). Smart Cards for All: Digitalisation of Universal Health Coverage in India. Science, Technology and Society, 25(3), 426–443.
• Tiwale, S. (2025). What Standards Do and Whom They Serve: Fixing, Practising and Delivering Per Capita Water Supply Standards in Cities in India. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 8(2), 601–623.

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• Chatterjee, S. & Subramaniam, B. (Eds.) (2021). The Ethical Imperative: Elemental Frontiers of Technologized Meat. In Meat! A Transnational Analysis. Duke University Press.
• Dahdah, M. A., Kumar, A. & Quet, M. (2018). Empty Stocks and Loose Paper: Governing Access to Medicines through Informality in Northern India. International Sociology, 33(6), 778–795.
• Rajan, K. S. (2017). Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine. Duke University Press.
• Wiley, A. S. (2014). Cultures of Milk: The Biology and Meaning of Dairy Products in the United States and India. Harvard University Press.

Week 14: Environment

• Crawford, K. (2021). Chapter 1: Earth. In The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press.
• O'Neill, K. (2019). Chapter 1: The Global Political Economy of Waste. In Waste. John Wiley & Sons.
• Ensmenger, N. (2018). The Environmental History of Computing. Technology and Culture, 59(4, suppl.), S7–S33.

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• Chaplin, S. E. (1999). Cities, Sewers and Poverty: India's Politics of Sanitation. Environment and Urbanization, 11(1), 145–158.
• Lepawsky, J. (2018). Chapter 1: Introduction. In Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste. MIT Press.
• Parikka, J. (2015). Chapter 1: Materiality Grounds of Media and Culture. In A Geology of Media. University of Minnesota Press.
• The Times of India (2026). Bengaluru's Garbage Crisis: Govt Announces Rs 550cr Cleanup Plan.
• Hogan, M. (2015). Data Flows and Water Woes: The Utah Data Center. Big Data & Society, 2(2).
• CEEW (2026). How Is Data Centre Infrastructure in India Shaping Power and Water Use?
• Sharma, Y. (2024). India's Ambitious Lithium Dreams Have Stalled. Rest of World.
• Shivji, S. (2026). India is Going All-in on AI Data Centres. The Environmental Costs Will Have to Wait. CBC News.
• Dauvergne, P. & Alger, J. (2018). A Research Agenda for Global Environmental Politics. Edward Elgar Publishing.