
Science and Social Inequality
Feminist and Postcolonial Issues
Sandra Harding(Author)
University of Illinois Press
Will be published approx. on 31. March 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-0-252-07304-5 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"Harding has for decades set the terms of liberatory science studies that have moved the dialogues forward in substantial ways, and she continues to do so in her latest book."--Signs"[Harding] continues to be one of very few philosophers who has worked consistently and courageously to make science live up to both its epistemic and its emancipatory potential."--Philosophy in Review
"Science and Social Inequality, a collection of foundational and innovative work from a leading thinker in feminist science studies, is valuable in many ways: as a reference work, as an historical overview of crucial debates in feminist science studies, and as a powerful contribution to current efforts to push those debates forward into new and vital territories."--NWSA Journal
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
286 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-252-07304-5 (9780252073045)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
Book
05/2006
University of Illinois Press
€40.85
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Sandra Harding is a professor of philosophy and women's studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, and the author or editor of eleven books including The Science Question in Feminism, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?, and Is Science Multicultural?
Content
Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Science and Inequality Part I: The Social World of Scientific Research 2. Thinking about Race and Science 3. Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us: Multicutural and Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies 4. With Both Eyes Open: A World of Sciences 5. Feminist Science Studies: New Challenges and Opportunities 6. Discriminatory Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science 7. Feminist Science and Technology Studies at the Periphery of the Enlightenment 8. The New Production of Scientific Knowledge: Intellectual and Political Challenges Part II: Truth, Relativism, and Science's Political Unconscious 9. The Political Unconscious of Western Science 10. Are Truth Claims in Science Dysfunctional? 11. Does the Threat of Relativism Deserve a Panic? Notes Bibliography