Sciences from below: feminisms, postcolonialities, and modernities.
Sandra Harding's newest book, Sciences from Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities, continues her work in feminist standpoint theory and science and technologies studies, asking how we might judge "good" science. Attentive to race, class, gender, and imperialism, Harding critically examines Northern and Southern sciences and technologies by adopting the perspective of those who see from below. This vision from the peripheries lets Harding question stories of modern scientific progress, revealing a multiplicity of "ethnosciences" and critiquing modernity itself. However, while Harding aims to produce knowledge for the North's others by emphasizing woman's experience, she fails to question the category "woman," ignoring contemporary transgender and queer scholarship. Further, it is Harding's care for the North's subjugated others that motivates her writing, revealing that the struggle to achieve the standpoint "from below" so critical to her project is fueled by what her ally Maria Puig de la Bellacasa would term not thinking from, but thinking with, or, more precisely, "thinking with care."
Weaver
Harlan
H
Department of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. harlanweaver@gmail.com
D000349:Africa; D001210:Asia, Southeastern; D018595:Colonialism; D003906:Developing Countries; D005060:Europe; D019513:Feminism; D006801:Humans; D009656:North America; D044469:Racial Groups; D012586:Science; D012737:Sex Factors; D012923:Social Class