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This introduction to a special issue of BJHS concerned with intermedial approaches to the history of the public culture of science (those that pay attention to the forms of different science media and how they relate to each other) also stands as an argument for such approaches. It amplifies a trend within humanities and social-science approaches to its subject of studying the interactions between science, media and publics as complex historical phenomena – in comparison with evaluative research approaches that seek to make science communication more effective. It argues for the virtues of going beyond most existing scholarship in the field by considering many media together. Drawing on the work of media studies scholars Irina Rajewsky and Klaus Bruhn Jensen, it introduces working definitions of intermediality. It then explores historically the genealogies of intermediality, which emerges as an entanglement of changing disciplines, technological change and media practice. Two brief sections take the example of museum display in this intermedial context with the aim of showing first that museum practice was already intermedial before it was considered to be ‘one of the media’. It then concludes by showing how, and in what circumstances, the mediatization of museums came to seem necessary.
Finding the right balance between education and entertainment in science communication has always been a challenge. This essay argues that this balance has often been framed in terms of the correct proportion and use of animation and live-action footage in popular-science media. Clarifying the assumptions behind a century of concerns about animation and science, this historical case study examines the advisory board’s complaints about animation in the Bell System Science Series, which aired in the United States between 1956 and 1964. AT&T interrupted the series mid-stream by switching the creative team from Frank Capra and his production company to Owen Crump at Warner Bros. Studio. Capra’s use of animation in the series featured prominently in this decision. The historical record – as well as Capra’s and Crump’s different aesthetic choices about animation – tells us much about the board’s objections and how they were resolved in production. This essay examines the differences between the two parts of the series to uncover a course correction steered primarily by the scientific advisory board, which reveals a sometimes-fraught relationship between live-action footage and animation in science education that persists even today.
There is a certain flip-flop mentality at play when it comes to assessing the green revolution. In many popular accounts, in reflections by scientists, or in policy discourses, the green revolution often comes across as all good or all bad. In the context of the prevailing charged debate around the subject, it may be better to assess the green revolution with a historical contextualization that highlights the contingencies and pitfalls of agrarian transformation. Its history reveals that HYVs are no magic wand that can transform agrarian lives for the better anywhere, anytime. A historical analysis also implores us to not to criticize the green revolution for not solving every problem of poverty and underdevelopment.
Tarai was a landmass running along an east-west axis just to the south of the Himalayan ranges and was a part of Himalayan Kumaun ecology. At the stroke of independence, the colonialists had made plans to clear the Tarai and settle it with Indian soldiers returning from World War II. The task of actual clearing fell on the sovereign Indian government as the pressure to settle refugees piled on top of the plan to settle soldiers. With the nation struggling to meet its food requirements a new vision was born to turn the Tarai into a “granary” for the province. Under these contingencies, the Tarai became a landmass wherein new settlers were encouraged to perfect the art of productive agriculture. The post-colonial developmentalist state set up a model state farm to propagate such practices. To the outside developer and modernizer, Tarai came across as empty though, in fact, it was inhabited by a limited number of hill communities and villages. As Tarai was turned into a farming land with settlers from beyond, a local democratic movement for autonomy erupted in the region that called into question the method of land settlement and transformation.