School of Social and Political Science

Description

This presentation explores how the modern western earth sciences emerged on the slopes of Indonesia’s volcanoes. The project examines how new understandings of the structure and evolution of the earth were shaped by encounters between Javanese spiritual traditions, Theosophy, orientalists, and the newly emerging science of volcanology in early twentieth century Netherlands East Indies. The project outlines political geology as a method which attends to the agency of geological matter in shaping social relations and as a subject of knowledge controversies. Ultimately, the project decentres the significance of western earth scientists in developing modern theories of the earth and asks what and who did they erase in creating a new vision of planetary existence.