This original and scholarly book explores what practitioners of Euro-American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other. It suggests new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in the new and future world of science and technology.
How is this inevitable cultural-situatedness of knowledge both an invaluable resource as well as a limitation on the advance of knowledge about nature? What are the distinctive resources that the feminist and postcolonial science theorists offer in thinking about the history of modern science; the diversity of "scientific" traditions in non-European as well as in European cultures; and the directions that might be taken by less androcentric and Eurocentric scientific projects? How might modern sciences' projects be linked more firmly to the prodemocratic yearnings that are so widely voiced in contemporary life? Carefully balancing poststructuralist and conventional epistemological resources, this study concludes by proposing new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.
How is this inevitable cultural-situatedness of knowledge both an invaluable resource as well as a limitation on the advance of knowledge about nature? What are the distinctive resources that the feminist and postcolonial science theorists offer in thinking about the history of modern science; the diversity of "scientific" traditions in non-European as well as in European cultures; and the directions that might be taken by less androcentric and Eurocentric scientific projects? How might modern sciences' projects be linked more firmly to the prodemocratic yearnings that are so widely voiced in contemporary life? Carefully balancing poststructuralist and conventional epistemological resources, this study concludes by proposing new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.