May 01 2022 to May 01 2022 5 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Obaid Siddiqi Lecture 2022 #1

Annual lectures delivered by the Obaid Siddiqi Chair in the History and Culture of Science at the Archives at NCBS. This talk will be delivered by MD Madhusudan, Obaid Siddiqi Chair, Archives at NCBS.

Maps are a way to freeze space and time. As a primarily visual artefact, they are also remarkably more accessible than oral, textual or numerical testimonies of complex spatio-temporal arrangements.

Who makes a map, why they want to make one at all, and on what authority and legitimacy they draw, determine the map they produce. Governments make maps all the time. Such an official map of forests produced by a formal state authority, say, can look very different from one drawn under the authority of science. Or a map made by the communities that use and dwell in and around forests, can look still more different. With not only land, but even water, wind and sun, all becoming monetisable, business corporations too are keen on making maps, with theirs unlikely to resemble the other three. Maps are thus not only representations of place and time, but are also mirrors to the contestations that animate place and time.

In this talk, MD Madhusudan looks at examples of how forests, ‘wastelands’ and protected areas have been mapped, to examine and illustrate the essentially political nature of mapping. There are—and will always be—many maps of nature and its ever-morphing boundaries with human culture. They must serve as invitations to a conversation about the many ways of defining, delineating and sustaining nature, than as calls to battle for the one map to end all conversations.

Image credit: Thumbnail and Header Art by Megha Ramachandra

In collaboration with NCBS