Nature's Government - Science, Imperial Britain, and the Improvement of the World

Nature’s Government is a daring attempt to juxtapose the histories of Britain, western science, and imperialism. It shows how colonial expansion, from the age of Alexander the Great to the twentieth century, led to complex kinds of knowledge. Science, and botany in particular, was fed by information culled from the exploration of the globe. At the same time science was useful to imperialism: it guided the exploitation of exotic environments and made conquest seem necessary, legitimate, and beneficial.

Drayton traces the history of his idea of improvement, from its Christian agrarian origins in the sixteenth century to its inclusion in theories of enlightened despotism. It was as providers of legitimacy, as much as of universal knowledge, aesthetic perfection, and agricultural plenty, he argues, that botanic gardens became instruments of government, first in Continental Europe, and by the late eighteenth century, in Britain and the British Empire. >>>

A Selected Bibliography/Videography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Libraries

South Indian Cinema

Books

Das Gupta, Chidananda.
Talking About Films / Chidananda Das Gupta. New Delhi: Orient Longman, c1981.
--UCB Main PN1993.5.I8 D27

Hood, John W.
The essential mystery : the major filmmakers of Indian art cinema / John W. Hood. Hyderabad, India : Orient Longman, 2000.
--Main Stack PN1993.5.I8.H66 2000

Valicha, Kishore.
The Moving Image: A Study of Indian Cinema / Kishore Valicha. Bombay: Orient Longman, c1988.

Hood, John W.
"Satyajit Ray." In: The essential mystery : the major filmmakers of Indian art cinema / John W. Hood. Hyderabad, India : Orient Longman, 2000.
--Main Stack PN1993.5.I8.H66 2000

Power Play, by Abhay Mehta

Over the last five years, private investment in infrastructure development and management has been in the news in one form or another. In particular the power sector has been the focus of much media attention and academic analysis. In the process a series of myths have sprung up around the sector ranging from power shortages - (not that shortages don't exist, but the nature of the shortages remains largely misunderstood) to the absolute necessity for foreign investment in the power sector.

This book takes up for study the first - and arguably the most controversial - private power project in India since 1991. The project is being set up by Enron Corporation in Maharashtra. The progress of events relating to this project is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of post-independence India. The saga is still in progress and the last word in the chapter is yet to be written. >>>