12 thoughts on “Siddiqui”

  1. India may have a pivotal role in the future between America and Russia. We should do more regarding our relationship.

  2. The few “Siddiqis'” I’ve known have all been Muslims from Pakistan so it’s interesting that his interest here is the Indian space program. Lest you think I’m stereotyping, my gastroenterologist is a female Muslim from Pakistan & she has no problem giving me a colonoscopy (w/o a male family member present). It was just that India & Pakistan don’t have a “warm & fuzzy” relationship.
    That said, given your “blog persona”, I’d think a meeting would be something you’d both benefit from.

    2. His interest is not the Indian space program. His interest is space history, and he is particularly best known for his books on the early human spaceflight program in both the USSR and Russia.

      1. On his academic website
        http://faculty.fordham.edu/siddiqi/Asif_Siddiqi/Welcome.html
        he describes his wide-ranging but interconnected interests.

        I’ll quote the first part, but if the following interests any readers, they should click, because after the part I’m quoting, he elaborates on two different space-related projects he is working on, one on the Indian space program, and one on “a cultural investigation of the more than two dozen places on Earth where humans created communities and infrastructure to launch objects off the planet”


        Broadly speaking, I am interested in the history and ontology of scientific communities under intense social, economic, and political stress. This focus is reflected in two current projects supported by my recent Guggenheim Fellowship, one on postcolonial science in modern India and the other on expert communities in the Stalinist Gulag. In these and other projects, I seek to identify the sinews of knowledge production across nations, communities, and disciplines. My scholarship draws from a diverse and interdisciplinary range of knowledge systems, including postcolonial thought, and has been shaped by a multi-sited approach to the history of science and technology.

        My early writings focused on the intersection between science and technology and modern Russian history, specifically, the history of Russian/Soviet science and technology. In my first two books, I explored the intellectual, political, cultural, and social dimensions of Russian interest in the cosmos. More recently, my interests have gravitated in a number of different directions. These include:

        •science, technology, and modernities in the colonial and postcolonial contexts, particularly in South Asia
        •“global” histories of science and technology
        •the political economy and social history of the Soviet Union
        •medieval technology
        •the history of popular science
        •technology and rock’n’roll

      2. Yes Rand, but the piece you linked to talks about his intrest in the history of the Indian Space program

        “Siddiqi has used this time, which continues until the end of the academic year, to focus his work on the history and impact of India’s space program. “I’m interested in how developing nations allocated resources for very high-technology projects, despite their apparent social and economic problems. I wanted to look at India because it is a country with some obvious societal inequalities, but at the same time, they also prioritized this very modern technology. So I’m looking at the Indian space program through that lens,” he says.”

        1. OK, anyway, the only reason I linked was because I was interested in the fact that he’s in southern California currently, with an opportunity to meet him, not because of the Indian space program thing.

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