Synopses & Reviews
In
Sciences from Below, the esteemed feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding synthesizes modernity studies with progressive tendencies in science and technology studies to suggest how scientific and technological pursuits might be more productively linked to social justice projects around the world. Harding illuminates the idea of multiple modernities as well as the major contributions of post-Kuhnian Western, feminist, and postcolonial science studies. She explains how these schools of thought can help those seeking to implement progressive social projects refine their thinking to overcome limiting ideas about what modernity and modernization are, the objectivity of scientific knowledge, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity. She also reveals how ideas about gender and colonialism frame the conventional contrast between modernity and tradition. As she has done before, Harding points the way forward in
Sciences from Below.
Describing the work of the post-Kuhnian science studies scholars Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, and the team of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowtony, and Peter Scott, Harding reveals how, from different perspectives, they provide useful resources for rethinking the modernity versus tradition binary and its effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, for the most part, they do not take feminist or postcolonial critiques into account. As Harding demonstrates, feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies have vital contributions to make; they bring to light not only the male supremacist investments in the Western conception of modernity and the historical and epistemological bases of Western science but also the empirical knowledge traditions of the global South. Sciences from Below is a clear and compelling argument that modernity studies and post-Kuhnian, feminist, and postcolonial sciences studies each have something important, and necessary, to offer to those formulating socially progressive scientific research and policy.
Review
“
Sciences from Below is a splendid book. Sandra Harding’s project of intellectual integration, bringing together some of the most influential literatures on modernity, science, and feminism, is a welcome, much-needed project. Her project is needed because the social justice movements need synthetic scholarship, and it is needed because there is an academic tower of Babel with few translators.”—
Hilary Rose, author of
Love, Power, and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the SciencesReview
“Sandra Harding fills significant gaps in three crucial, overlapping, yet strangely independent scholarly literatures on science and technology: feminist analyses of science, “traditional” science and technology studies, and postcolonial science studies. This is a unifying and strengthening project of great significance both practically (for the future of science throughout the world) and within academe.”—Anne Fausto-Sterling, author of Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality
Review
“Sandra Harding’s voice is one of the most important in the science and technology studies field. With Sciences from Below, she opens up a broad vista, one in which the entire field of social movements and alternative visions of modernity is gendered.”—David J. Hess, Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Director of the Program in Ecological Economics, Values, and Policy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Review
“It seems that a work of this nature is long overdue and, will significantly improve the communication between modernity theorists and those working in feminist or postcolonial studies.”
Review
“This is an ambitious and impressive book. . . . Harding’s book is a significant contribution to the literature on science, feminism, and postcoloniality. It is certainly a step in the direction of the transformation of science and politics that is Harding’s goal.”
Review
“[T]he philosophical—and human—imperatives that led [Harding] to write this book are extremely important, and the book itself opens possibilities that philosophers must explore.”
Review
“[A] stunning synthesis of research from post-positivist, feminist, and postcolonial science studies scholars.”
Review
“
Sciences from Below is a brilliant synthesis of three approaches to science and technology studies and a call for increased exchange between
them.”
Synopsis
A feminist analysis of current, major postcolonial and science studies theorists, showing the continued importance and ongoing neglect of gender in their work.
Synopsis
A preeminent science studies scholar shows how feminist and postcolonial science studies challenge the problematic modernity versus tradition binary.
About the Author
“
Sciences from Below is a splendid book. Sandra Harding’s project of intellectual integration, bringing together some of the most influential literatures on modernity, science, and feminism, is a welcome, much-needed project. Her project is needed because the social justice movements need synthetic scholarship, and it is needed because there is an academic tower of Babel with few translators.”—
Hilary Rose, author of
Love, Power, and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences“Sandra Harding fills significant gaps in three crucial, overlapping, yet strangely independent scholarly literatures on science and technology: feminist analyses of science, “traditional” science and technology studies, and postcolonial science studies. This is a unifying and strengthening project of great significance both practically (for the future of science throughout the world) and within academe.”—Anne Fausto-Sterling, author of Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality“Sandra Harding’s voice is one of the most important in the science and technology studies field. With Sciences from Below, she opens up a broad vista, one in which the entire field of social movements and alternative visions of modernity is gendered.”—David J. Hess, Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Director of the Program in Ecological Economics, Values, and Policy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Why Focus on Modernity? 1
I. Problems with Modernity's Science and Politics: Perspectives from Northern Science Studies
1. Modernity's Misleading Dream: Latour 23
2. The Incomplete First Modernity of Industrial Society: Beck 49
3. Co-evoloving Science and Society: Gibbons, Nowotny, and Scott 75
II. Views from (Western) Modernity's Peripheries
4. Women as Subjects of History and Knowledge 101
5. Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies: Are There Multiple Sciences? 130
6. Women on Modernity's Horizons: Feminist Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies 155
III. Interrogating Tradition: Challenges and Possibilities
7. Multiple Modernities: Postcolonial Standpoints 173
8. Haunted Modernities, Gendered Traditions 191
9. Moving On: A Methodological Provocation 214
Notes 235
Bibliography 257
Index 281