"Racial" Economy of Science

SANDRA HARDING, a philosopher, is Professor of Education and Women Studies at UCLA. She is author of Whose Science: Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives and The Science Question in Feminism, and editor of Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues.

• PrefaceIntroduction: Eurocentric Scientific Illiteracy—A Challenge for the World CommunitySandra HardingI. Early Non-Western Scientific TraditionsPoverties and Triumphs of the Chinese Scientific TraditionJoseph NeedhamBlack Athena: Hostilities to Egypt in the Eighteenth CenturyMartin BernalEarly Andean Experimental AgricultureJack WeatherfordII. Science Constructs "Race"American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin: Blacks and Indians as Separate, Inferior SpeciesStephen Jay GouldRacial Classifications: Popular and ScientificGloria A. MarshallThe Study of RaceS.L. WashburnOn the Nonexistence of Human RacesFrank B. LivingstoneIQ: The Rank Ordering of the WorldR.C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. KaminThe Health of Black Folk: Disease, Class, and Ideology in ScienceNancy Krieger and Mary BassettAppropriating the Idioms of Science: The Rejection of Scientific RacismNancy Leys Stepan and Sander L. GilmanIII. Who Gets to Do Science?Aesculapius Was a White Man: Race and the Cult of True WomanhoodRonald T. TakakiCo-Laborer-in the Work of the Lord: Nineteenth-century Black Women PhysiciansDarlene Clark HineErnest Everett Just: The role of Foundation Support for Black Scientists 1920-1929Kenneth R. ManningNever Meant to Survive: A Black Woman's Journey—An Interview with Evelynn HammondsAimee SandsIncreasing the Participation of Black Women in Science and TechnologyShirley MalcomWithout More Minorities, Women, Disabled, U.S. Scientific Failure Certain, Fed Study SaysEileen M. O'BrienModern Science and the Periphery: The Characteristics of Dependent KnowledgeSusantha GoonatilakeIV. Science's Technologies and ApplicationsThe Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: "A Moral Astigmatism"James JonesCalling the Shots? The International Politics of Depo-ProveraPhillida BunkleColonialism and the Evolution of Masculinist ForestryVandana ShivaApplied Biology in the Third World: The Struggle for Revolutionary ScienceRichard Levins and Richard LewontinEnvironmental RacismKarl GrossmanV. Objectivity, Method, and Nature: Value Neutral?Methods and Values in ScienceNational Academy of SciencesNazi Medicine and the Politics of KnowledgeRobert ProctorRace and Gender: The Role of Analogy in ScienceNancy Leys StepanThe Bio-politics of a Multicultural FieldDonna HarawayCultural Differences in High-Energy Physics: Contrasts between Japan and the United StatesSharon TraweekThe "Relevance" of Anthropology to Colonialism and ImperialismJack StauderVI. The Future: Toward a Democratic Strategy For World SciencesScience and Democracy: A Fundamental CorrelationJoseph NeedhamPeople's ScienceBill Zimmerman et al.Science and Black PeopleEditorial, The Black ScholarScience, Technology and Black Community DevelopmentRobert C. JohnsonTowards a Democratic Strategy for Science: The New Politics of ScienceDavid DicksonModern Science in Crisis: A Third World ResponseThird World NetworkName Index

"By racial economy Harding means those institutions, assumptions, and practices that are responsible for disproportionately distributing along 'racial' lines the benefits of Western science to the haves and the bad consequences to the have—nots, thereby enlarging the gap between them. Challenging traditional views of Western science as a progressive force and pure intellectual endeavor, she instead locates it as a Eurocentric institution shaped by the racist, sexist, and imperialist character of the dominant social order (from which ranks its practitioners are still largely drawn), and disserving the needs and interests of the peoples of the Third World and minorities in Western society. She further suggests that science itself has suffered as a creative force by neglecting the potential of non—Western contributions. An impressively broad array of scholarship has been assembled to explore these issues, drawn from scientists and historians of science, activists, and public policy analysts. The essays address themes of non—Western scientific traditions, scientific views of race, who gets to do science, regressive effects of technology on peoples of non—European origin, the supposed value neutrality of science, and the possibilities for a different relationship between science and society. A rich lode of readily accessible thought on the nature and practice of science in society. Highly recommended. General; undergraduate; graduate."—L. W. Moore, formerly, University of Kentucky, Choice, May 1994