Philosophies of international science have been challenged by some aspects of the emer gence of various kinds of local knowledge movements and also by overt criticisms of the central concepts and principles of those philosophies. This essay looks at the strengths and limitations of three pro-democratic local knowledge movements and at the scientific and political dysfunctionality of the philosophic idea that modem sciences represent a unique unity of all legitimated scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge is thus uniquely uni versally valid. The projects of the local knowledge movements must be linked to the cri tiques of the philosophies of international science for each to make maximally useful contributions to pro-democratic social relations.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bass, Thomas A. (1990) Camping with the Prince, and Other Tales of Science in Africa, Houghton Mifflin, Boston .
2.
Blaut, J.M.I. (1992) 1492: The Debate on Colonialism, Eurocentrism and History, Africa World Press, Inc., Trenton, New Jersey.
3.
—. (1993) The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, The Guilford Press , New York.
4.
Bloor, David. (1977) Knowledge and Social Imagery, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
5.
Braidotti, Rosi, Chackiewiez, Eva, Hausler, Sabine and Wieringa, Saskia. (1994) Women, the Environment, and Sustainable Development, Zed Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.
6.
Brockway, Lucille. (1979) Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanical Gardens, Academic Press, New York.
7.
Collins, Patricia Hill. (1991) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Routledge, New York.
8.
Dupre, John. (1993) The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
9.
Galison, Peter and Stump, David. (eds), (1996) The Disunity of Science , Stanford University Press, Stanford .
10.
Goonatilake, Susantha. (1984) Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World, Zed Press, Atlantic Highlands.
11.
Haraway, Donna. (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modem Science, Routledge, New York.
12.
—. (1991) 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectives,' in Haraway, D., Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, Routledge, New York, pp. 183-202.
13.
Harding, Sandra. (ed.), (1993) The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.
14.
—. (1998) Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.
15.
Hartsock, Nancy. (1983) 'The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,' in Harding, S. and Hintikka, M. (eds), Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Reidel/Kluwer , Dordrecht, pp. 283-310.
16.
Hess, David J. (1995) Science and Technology in a Multicultural World: The Cultural Politics of Facts and Artifacts, Columbia University Press, New York.
17.
Hubbard, Ruth. (1990) The Politics of Women's Biology, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey .
18.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962; second edition, 1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press , Chicago.
19.
Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve. (1979) Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Sage, California.
20.
Levy-Bruhl, Lucien. (1910) Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures , Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, translated (1926) as How Natives Think , Allen and Unwin, London.
21.
Mies, Maria. (1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor, Zed Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.
22.
Pateman, Carole. (1990) Participation and Democratic Theory, Cambridge University Press, London.
23.
Patterson, Tom. (1997) Inventing Western Civilization, Monthly Review Press, New York.
24.
—. (forthcoming) 'Nature: The Shadow of Civilization', in Monthly Review.
25.
Petitjean, Patrick, Jami, Catherine and Anne Marie. (eds.), (1992) Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
26.
Quine, W.V.O. (1953) 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism,' in Quin, W.V.O., From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 20-46.
27.
Sachs, Wolfgang. (ed.), (1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, Zed Books, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.
28.
Sardar, Ziauddin. (ed.), (1988) The Revenge of Athena: Science, Exploitation and the Third World, Mansell, London.
29.
Sherif, Carolyn Wood. (1987) 'Bias in Psychology,' in Harding, S. (ed.), Feminism and Methodology, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 27-56.
Smith, Dorothy. (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Sociology for Women, Northeastern University Press, Boston.
32.
—. ( 1990) The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge, Northeastern University Press, Boston.
33.
Sterling, Anne Fausto. (1994) Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men, Second edition, Basic Books, New York.
34.
Suppes, Patrick. (1978) 'The Plurality of Science,' in Asquith, P. and Hacking, I. (eds), Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 2, Philosophy of Science Association, East Lansing.
35.
Traweek, Sharon. (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
