Science and social inequality : feminist and postcolonial issues / Sandra Harding.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harding, Sandra.

Series:

Race and gender in science studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Progress.

Feminism and science.

Postcolonialism.

Science and civilization.

Science--Social aspects--Developing countries.

Science.

Science--Social aspects.

Developing countries.

Physical Description:

xi, 205 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2006]

Summary:

In Science and Social Inequality, Sandra Harding makes the provocative argument that the philosophy and practices of today's Western science, contrary to its Enlightenment mission, work to insure that more science will only worsen existing gaps between the best and worst off around the world. She defends this claim by exposing the ways that hierarchical social formations in modern Western sciences encode antidemocratic principles and practices, particularly in terms of their services to militarism, the impoverishment and alienation of labor, Western expansion, and environmental destruction. The essays in this collection-drawing on feminist, multicultural, and postcolonial studies-propose ways to reconceptualize the sciences in the global social order.

At issue here are not only social justice and environmental issues but also the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our understandings of natural and social worlds. The inadvertent complicity of the sciences with antidemocratic projects obscures natural and social realities and thus blocks the growth of scientific knowledge. Scientists, policy makers, social justice movements, and the consumers of scientific products (that is, the rest of us) can work together and separately to improve this situation.

Contents:

Introduction : science and inequality

The social world of scientific research

Thinking about race and science

Seeing ourselves as others see us : postcolonial science studies

With both eyes open : a world of sciences

Northern feminist science studies : new challenges and opportunities

Discriminatory epistemologies and philosophies of science

Feminist science and technology studies at the periphery of the enlightenment

Truth, relativism, and science's political unconscious

The political unconscious of Western science

Are truth claims in science dysfunctional?

Does the threat of relativism deserve a panic?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [157]-198) and index.

ISBN:

0252030605

0252073045

OCLC:

60375621

Publisher Number:

9780252030604

9780252073045