The way innocuous utensils are arranged or used in a kitchen can say as much about a household and its members as the more decorative furnishings spread out in the drawing room, if not more. David Amold seeks to make a similar point about India's engagement with technology and modernity: He argues that a study of "everyday" technologies like typewriters, bicycles, sewing machines, and rice mills will be at least as illuminating as the continued focus on "big" technologies like railways, telegraphs, electricity, and large irrigation systems. In this well-researched work, Arnold brings to the table a rich array of sources—encompassing archival materials (including vintage photographs), novels, newspapers/magazines, and his own photography. Armed with these, he engages with a wide range of scholarly writing, from social construction of technology to the imagination of self, other, and nationhood; adds his own original insights; and presents a finely woven narrative that highlights the mutually constitutive roles played by everyday technologies, their promoters and users, and their sociocultural-economic goals and aspirations—all of which are punctuated by colonial and nationalist elements.
