Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies

Sandra Harding explores what practitioners of Euro-American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other She discusses the array of postcolonial science studies that have flourished over the last three decades, and probes their implications for "northern" science. All three science studies strains have developed in the context of post-World War II science and technology projects. They illustrate how technoscientific projects mean different things to different groups. The meaning attached by the culture of the West may not be shared or may be diametrically opposite in other world cultures. All, however, would agree that scientific projects -- modern science included -- are "local knowledge systems". Harding argues that the interests and discursive resources that the various science studies groups bring to their projects, and the ways that they organize the production of their kind of science studies, are also culturally-local.

How is this cultural-situatedness of knowledge both an invaluable resource as well as a limitation on the advance of knowledge? What are the distinctive resources that the feminist and postcolonial science theorists offer in thinking about the history of modern science? Carefully balancing poststructuralist and conventional epistemological resources, this study proposes new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in the new and future world of science and technology.