Description
Book SynopsisA preeminent science studies scholar shows how feminist and postcolonial science studies challenge the problematic modernity versus tradition binary.
Trade 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.” - Carolyn Anderson,
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith“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.” - Susan Hekman,
Contemporary Sociology“
Sciences from Below is a brilliant synthesis of three approaches to science and technology studies and a call for increased exchange between
them.” - Nancy Tuana,
Isis“[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.” - Emily R. Grosholz,
Women’s Review of Books“[A] stunning synthesis of research from post-positivist, feminist, and postcolonial science studies scholars.” - Bonnie Shulman,
Technology and Culture“
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
“
Sciences from Below is a brilliant synthesis of three approaches to science and technology studies and a call for increased exchange between
them.” -- Nancy Tuana * Isis *
“[A] stunning synthesis of research from post-positivist, feminist, and postcolonial science studies scholars.” -- Bonnie Shulman * Technology and Culture *
“[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.” -- Emily R. Grosholz * Women's Review of Books *
“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.” -- Carolyn Anderson * Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith *
“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.” -- Susan Hekman * Contemporary Sociology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
