Sciences from Below

Sandra Harding is Professor of Women’s Studies and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her many books include Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues; The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies; Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology (coedited with Robert Figueroa); Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies; and Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives.

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction: Why Focus on Modernity? 1I. Problems with Modernity's Science and Politics: Perspectives from Northern Science Studies 1. Modernity's Misleading Dream: Latour 232. The Incomplete First Modernity of Industrial Society: Beck 493. Co-evoloving Science and Society: Gibbons, Nowotny, and Scott 75II. Views from (Western) Modernity's Peripheries 4. Women as Subjects of History and Knowledge 1015. Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies: Are There Multiple Sciences? 1306. Women on Modernity's Horizons: Feminist Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies 155III. Interrogating Tradition: Challenges and Possibilities 7. Multiple Modernities: Postcolonial Standpoints 1738. Haunted Modernities, Gendered Traditions 1919. Moving On: A Methodological Provocation 214Notes 235Bibliography 257Index 281

“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 betweenthem.” - 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 betweenthem.” - 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)