Floracrats
Regular price
€25.99
Regular price
€35.50
Sale
Sale price
€25.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Andrew Goss
Author_Andrew Goss
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=NHF
Category=NL-HB
Category=NL-PD
Category=PDX
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Language_English
Price_€20 to €50
Product details
- ISBN 9780299248642
- Weight: 377g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2011
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Situated along the line that divides the rich ecologies of Asia and Australia, the Indonesian archipelago is a hotbed for scientific exploration, and scientists from around the world have made key discoveries there. But why do the names of Indonesia's own scientists rarely appear in the annals of scientific history? In The Floracrats Andrew Goss examines the professional lives of Indonesian naturalists and biologists, to show what happens to science when a powerful state becomes its greatest, and indeed only, patron. With only one purse to pay for research, Indonesia's scientists followed a state agenda focused mainly on exploiting the country's most valuable natural resources - above all its major export crops: quinine, sugar, coffee, tea, rubber, and indigo. The result was a class of botanic bureaucrats that Goss dubs the 'floracrats.' Drawing on archives and oral histories, he shows how these scientists strove for the Enlightenment ideal of objective, universal, and useful knowledge, even as they betrayed that ideal by failing to share scientific knowledge with the general public. With each chapter, Goss details the phases of power and the personalities in Indonesia that have struggled with this dilemma, from the early colonial era, through independence, to the modern Indonesian state. Goss shows just how limiting dependence on an all-powerful state can be for a scientific community, no matter how idealistic its individual scientists may be.
Andrew Goss is assistant professor of history at the University of New Orleans.
