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 ECOLOGICAL NATURALISM

Lorraine Code

in Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location

Starting with a critical reading of the promise of Quinean naturalized epistemology for feminist and other post-colonial theories of knowledge, this chapter instead proposes an ecological naturalism ... More

Starting with a critical reading of the promise of Quinean naturalized epistemology for feminist and other post-colonial theories of knowledge, this chapter instead proposes an ecological naturalism centred on a conception of the natural and of natural knowledge-making derived from the science of ecology. For Quinean naturalism, laboratory-based cognitive science is the place to study how human beings “naturally” know; yet its promise is vitiated by the artificiality of its regulative conception of “the natural”. Its reliance on a residual positivist-empiricism blocks its capacity to relinquish the epistemological imaginary of mastery and control, to engage with specific, diverse human knowings, and to address the politics of knowledge. Although ecological science counts as a “weak” science by orthodox positivist standards (following Kristin Schrader-Frechette and Sharon Kingsland), this so-called weakness becomes a strength in the enhanced capacity it offers to know interpretively, non-reductively, and responsibly.Less

What (Again) is So Special about Science?

in Unhastening Science: Autonomy and Reflexivity in the Social theory of Knowledge

This chapter takes up the fundamental notion of knowledge politics in order to prepare an alternative ‘normative description’ of scientific autonomy. The first step in the argument introduces a ... More

This chapter takes up the fundamental notion of knowledge politics in order to prepare an alternative ‘normative description’ of scientific autonomy. The first step in the argument introduces a ‘knowledge–political continuum’, which replaces the heavily guarded, impassable boundary policed by essentialist criteria of truth, logic, and method by a gradient of lesser distinctions, lower thresholds, and weaker boundaries, which range all the way from the micropolitics of science to the macropolitics of the state. The second step in the argument introduces a differential time dimension in addition to the traditional dimension of space, suggesting that scientific autonomy can be reinvented within this new framework of graded distinctions and permeable boundaries by attending to the specific effects of deceleration or unhastening. This temporal gradient can be filled out by means of a critical phenomenology which points up a set of pragmatic differentials between slower ‘writing cultures’ and faster ‘talking cultures’, highlighting significant variations in public exposure, issue selectivity, and relative audience size. The question about the temporal specificity of science is then recaptured on the broader canvas of the so–called ‘social triangle’. This spatio–temporal model revises the classical triadic ontology of culture, polity, and economy in order to re–balance the liberal problem of the separation of social spheres with the postliberal one of de–differentiation and boundary erosion.Less

Food, genetics and knowledge politics

Reece Walters

in A Handbook of Food Crime: Immoral and Illegal Practices in the Food Industry and What to Do About Them

This chapter explores the issues of genetic technologies and the politics and power of food production and distribution. It argues that food crime must also be understood within the discourses, ... More

This chapter explores the issues of genetic technologies and the politics and power of food production and distribution. It argues that food crime must also be understood within the discourses, debates and contestations surrounding ‘knowledge’ and its application to food security, distribution and consumption. Those in positions of state and corporate power that have the means to shape the contours of global food trade, notably what is safe to eat and what is not, requires an examination of the ways in which ‘knowledge politics’ plays a crucial role in shaping public discourse and influences political debate. In doing so, this chapter extends definitions of ‘food crime’ to include a political economy analysis of food production, distribution and consumption and the ways in which ‘knowledge’ becomes imperative in a global politics of power and profit.Less

The Discipline as a Field of Struggle: The Politics and the Economy of Knowledge Production in International Law

Akbar Rasulov

in International Law's Invisible Frames: Social Cognition and Knowledge Production in International Legal Processes

This chapter is an inquiry into the discipline of international law as a social form. What is that content which is contained within this form? What sort of social structure does it presume and ... More

This chapter is an inquiry into the discipline of international law as a social form. What is that content which is contained within this form? What sort of social structure does it presume and enable? Taking as its point of departure the concept of knowledge production, this chapter develops a critical account of international law as a field of theoretical labour and ideological contestation. How is the process of knowledge-production in international law today actually set up? What are those basic products which it produces? What kind of added value does it add to them and how is this value extracted and appropriated in practice? This chapter seeks to explain the disciplinary politic that surrounds these and other related issues as a reflection of discursively sublimated inter-group conflicts, the ultimate object of which is the internal distribution of resources and the power to decide the intra-disciplinary division of labour.Less

Knowledge Mobilization across Inter-organizational Healthcare Innovation Partnerships: A Network Ambidexterity Perspective

Eivor Oborn, Karl Prince, and Michael Barrett

in Mobilizing Knowledge in Healthcare: Challenges for Management and Organization

Recent research has furthered our understanding of mobilizing research knowledge into practice with a focus on appropriate ways for health organizations to address the “knowledge gap.” This chapter ... More

Recent research has furthered our understanding of mobilizing research knowledge into practice with a focus on appropriate ways for health organizations to address the “knowledge gap.” This chapter examines how knowledge mobilization is performed in inter-organizational healthcare networks, and how different stakeholders work together to achieve a balance between research knowledge production and implementation in three different network initiatives. In particular, it explores how network ambidexterity—the balance between exploration and exploitation—is achieved to facilitate knowledge mobilization. The findings reveal four key challenges common across the case studies: managing and engaging stakeholders, managing appropriate funding strategies, managing competing priorities, and the politics of knowledge in innovation. The chapter reveals how network ambidexterity is developed differently across each inter-organizational initiative in light of these challenges and contribute to the literature by developing a classification of ambidexterity in inter-organizational networks that may prove useful in illuminating knowledge mobilization practices.Less

Conclusion

Leah N. Gordon

in From Power to Prejudice: The Rise of Racial Individualism in Midcentury America

The conclusion reviews the book’s central arguments, describing the growth of racial individualism in the two decades after WWII and pointing to the intersecting dynamicsthat aided this paradigm’s ... More

The conclusion reviews the book’s central arguments, describing the growth of racial individualism in the two decades after WWII and pointing to the intersecting dynamicsthat aided this paradigm’s postwar development. Systemic and relational frameworks did compete against individualistic views on the race issue, the conclusion simultaneously makes clear. Theoretical challenges to racial individualism emerged not only from political radicals but also from African American-led intellectual spaces such as Fisk University’s Race Relations Institutes and Howard University’s Journal of Negro Education. Linking social science and social action proved complicated across the segregated postwar academy In the late 1940s and 1950s, many antiracist scholar-activists supported systemic and relational theories of the race issue while dismissing the reformist implications of these theories as impractical or unrealistic. By the mid 1960s the tide would turn. In these years, both theoretical and reformist alternatives to racial individualism regained a central place in debates on the race issue among many mainstream social scientists and civil rights activists. Still, racial individualism’s ongoing impact remained evident in the late twentieth century rise of colorblindness and the utility to opponents of school desegregation of the assumption that the only true racial harms are intentional.Less

Conclusion

Kirsten Leng

in Sexual Politics and Feminist Science: Women Sexologists in Germany, 1900-1933

The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a ... More

The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a larger twentieth century history of women’s sexological work, one that is international in its scope and grapples with the rupture in female sexual knowledge production affected by the Second World War and its geopolitical realignments, the reshuffling of the ideological landscapes after 1945, and the rise of new social movements in the 1960s. Finally, the Conclusion argues that the history of women’s sexological work is especially significant at this particular moment in time, as twenty-first century feminist theorists positively embrace science and nature as intellectual and rhetorical resources once again.Less

Epilogue

Saida Hodžić

in The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs

The Epilogue returns to the politics of knowledge about cutting that disavows its endings – not only in Ghana, but across the African continent and in the global North. Having shown that debates ... More

The Epilogue returns to the politics of knowledge about cutting that disavows its endings – not only in Ghana, but across the African continent and in the global North. Having shown that debates about knowledge have practical consequences, I point to the scholarly and political work that lies ahead.Less

Introduction: Accumulating the Primitive

Sarita Echavez See

in Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American Museum

By focusing on the colonial origins and practice of Philippine archival collection in the American museum and university, this chapter reinvigorates scholarly debates in Marxist and post-Marxist ... More

By focusing on the colonial origins and practice of Philippine archival collection in the American museum and university, this chapter reinvigorates scholarly debates in Marxist and post-Marxist theory over the primacy of economic versus colonial processes in the critique of capitalist accumulation. The chapter introduces the concepts of “knowledge nullius” and “accumulating the primitive” in order to underscore the epistemological and aesthetic dimensions of colonial, capitalist accumulation and to call attention to scholars and artists of color who have called for anti-accumulative theories and practices of knowledge production.Less

Theorising and resisting ‘political racelessness’ in Europe

Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu

in Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain

In this chapter we examine the construction of political racelessness (Goldberg 2006) in Europe and how it is reproduced and legitimised in ways that violently erase and exclude minority women and ... More

In this chapter we examine the construction of political racelessness (Goldberg 2006) in Europe and how it is reproduced and legitimised in ways that violently erase and exclude minority women and their interests from the European polity. We begin this chapter with a discussion of why political racelessness is a central feature of postcolonial amnesia in Europe. We move on to discuss how political racelessness is achieved and defended in Europe through the cultivation of ‘white ignorance’ and ‘white innocence’ (Mills 2007; Wekker 2016). We then turn to examine how the white European left—despite a long tradition of anti-racist and anti-fascist resistance—perpetuates political racelessness at the expense of minority groups and minority women in particular. We conclude with a discussion about how we might theorise minority women’s activism in a context of white ignorance in Europe.Less

State, Community, and Primary Health Care: Empowering or Disempowering Discourses?

Ritu Priya

in Equity and Access: Health Care Studies in India

The chapter reconstructs a narrative of health services development in post-Independence India by examining relationships of the state, community, and Primary Health Care approach through existing ... More

The chapter reconstructs a narrative of health services development in post-Independence India by examining relationships of the state, community, and Primary Health Care approach through existing literature. It combines materialist explanations with analyses of bureaucratic power and cultural hegemony to explain the maldistribution of health care. It argues that a critical analysis of the bio-politics and political economy of health care over the past century must consider five ‘missing links’ in the dominant discourse of HSD policy, that is, the unaffordability of the Euro-American institutional model of over-medicalized health care; the validity of plurality of knowledge; the dominant culture and ethics of health care providers; the prevalent physical, social and cultural iatrogenesis; and complexity of ‘the community’.Less

Mobile Phones and the Uses of Learning in a Training Intervention for Kenyan Community Health Workers

Jade V. Henry

in Training for Community Health: Bridging the global health care gap

Mobile phones help move training programmes out of the classroom and into community settings where CHWs live and work. This chapter examines what happens to ‘learning’ when training becomes ‘mobile’. ... More

Mobile phones help move training programmes out of the classroom and into community settings where CHWs live and work. This chapter examines what happens to ‘learning’ when training becomes ‘mobile’. To explore this, an analysis of a three-year intervention to train 90 Kenyan CHWs is drawn from science and technology studies (STS). It is argued that when a mobile learning application is deployed in an informal urban settlement and an isolated rural village, its movement makes it available for many more uses than is originally envisioned. These varied uses subject the CHWs to multiple definitions of what it means to learn and conflicting visions of how learning leads to social change. The chapter ends with a discussion of how power circulates through global health policies, mobile devices, CHWs, and the material conditions of extreme poverty to generate controversies over what knowledge matters most for health worker training programmes, and for the broader aims of international development.Less

Americans’ Attitudes on Individual or Racially Inflected Genetic Inheritance

Jennifer Hochschild and Maya Sen

in Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics

This chapter proffers a political science perspective on how Americans view the ways in which genetics affect identity. It lays the groundwork for exploring possible relationships in the eyes of the ... More

This chapter proffers a political science perspective on how Americans view the ways in which genetics affect identity. It lays the groundwork for exploring possible relationships in the eyes of the public between genetics and race, by developing hypotheses based mainly on extrapolations from popular media or American history. Next the chapter introduces a 2011 public opinion survey of approximately 4,000 US adults. The Genomics Knowledge, Attitudes, and Politics Survey includes questions designed to reveal Americans' views about the importance of genetics in explaining various traits, behaviors, and diseases. The chapter then shows that respondents' understanding of the relationships among race, genes, and phenotypes is coherent and sensible (regardless of whether it is right or wrong).Less