Program to Explore Notion of Uneven Industrial Development

Published 11.11.2003

News

The prevailing notion of the world's uneven industrial development will be the topic of the first in a series of faculty forums to be presented at the Pennsylvania College of Technology Library, beginning Nov. 21.

"Rethinking 'Development/Underdevelopment 1880-1907'" a program to be presented by Dr. Vinay Bahl on her ongoing research, is free and open to the public. The program will be offered from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the library, located in the Learning Resources Center on the main campus. Light refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Bahl, an associate professor of sociology, will explore the possibility of explaining the uneven development by focusing on the large-scale steel industry at the turn of the 19th century in four countries: Colonial India, Imperial Russia, Great Britain and the United States. She will challenge the hypothesis that the initial technological "backwardness" of a country keeps it underdeveloped and prevents it from catching up to Western nations, where technology developed earlier and faster.

Dr. Bahl took a one-year sabbatical leave from Penn College starting in September 2002 to serve as a guest scholar at the College de France in Paris. She was one of only eight educators chosen for the prestigious honor. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from State University of New York Binghamton, and holds master's degrees in history, political science and sociology and a master's of philosophy (pre-Ph.D.) in modern Indian history.

Dr. Bahl's first book, published in 1995, was "The Making of the Indian Working Class: A Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Company, 1880-1946." A second co-edited book, "History After the Three Worlds: Post Eurocentric Historiographies," was published in 2000.