Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Harding, Sandra G.

Publication

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, ©2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 205 pages; 24 cm.

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."--

Series Statement

Race and gender in science studies

Uniform Title

Race and gender in science studies

Subject

• Progress
• Feminism and science
• Postcolonialism
• Science and civilization
• Science > Social aspects > Developing countries
• postcolonialism
• 08.44 social philosophy
• Science > Social aspects
• Soziale Ungleichheit
• Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt
• Wetenschap
• Feminisme
• Antiracisme
• Postkolonialisme
• Sociale rechtvaardigheid
• Soziale Ungleichheit
• Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt
• Developing countries
• Westliche Welt
• Westliche Welt

Bibliography (note)

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

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?

ISBN

• 0252030605
• 0252073045
• 9780252030604
• 9780252073045

LCCN

• 2005012422
• 9780252030604
• 9780252073045

OCLC

• ocm60375621
• 60375621
• SCSB-8804827

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library