Description
Book SynopsisHow could ecological thinking animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns? Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson''s scientific practice, Lorraine Code elaborates the creative, restructuring resources of ecology for a theory of knowledge. She critiques the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated, to propose a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practice. Drawing on ecological theory and practice, on naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theories, Code analyzes extended examples from developmental psychology, and from two natural institutions of knowledge production--medicine and law. These institutions lend themselves well to a reconfigured naturalism. They are, in practice, empirical
Trade ReviewProfessor Code provides a rich and sensitive epistemology, an erudite yet eminently readable account of how we know and ought to behave. Her insights, arguments, and examples break new ground in helping us understand the dangers of autonomy, the role of advocacy, and the wisdom of ecological thinking. Anyone in ethics, epistemology, or feminist philosophy must read her book. * Kristin Shrader-Frechette, University of Notre Dame *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Ecological Thinking: Subversions and Transformations 2: Ecological Naturalism 3: Negotiating Empiricism 4: Ecological Subjectivity in the Making: "The Child" as Fact and Artifact 5: Patterns of Autonomy, Acknowledgment, and Advocacy 6: Rational Imagining, Responsible Knowing 7: Public Knowledge, Public Trust: Toward Democratic Epistemic Practices Conclusion Bibliography Index
