Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science Heidi E. Grasswick Editor Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science Power in Knowledge Editor Prof. Heidi E. Grasswick Department of Philosophy Middlebury College Middlebury, VT 05753, USA [email protected] ISBN 978-1-4020-6834-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-6835-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-6835-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011926688 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover design: eStudio Calamar S.L. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgments There are many people who have helped in this project. Right from the volume’s inception, series editor Libby Potter was a constant source of insightful advice and moral support. Ingrid van Laarhoven at Springer was always ready to answer yet another question as soon as it was asked. A large number of anonymous reviewers were also indispensible in making this volume what it is. The introduction benefitted immensely from Phyllis Rooney’s careful reading. Undergraduate research assistant Stephanie Joyce assisted with formatting and compiling at crucial moments. I especially would like to thank Lorraine Code, Carla Fehr, Phyllis Rooney, and Ilya Storm for their friendship, encouragement and help with this project. v Contents Introduction: Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Twenty-First Century........................................................................... xiii Heidi E. Grasswick Part I Intersections: Feminism, Epistemology, and Science Studies 1 The Marginalization of Feminist Epistemology and What That Reveals About Epistemology ‘Proper’ ....................... 3 Phyllis Rooney 2 Contextualism in Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science ...................................................................... 25 Kristina Rolin 3 Altogether Now: A Virtue-Theoretic Approach to Pluralism in Feminist Epistemology ................................................. 45 Nancy Daukas 4 The Implications of the New Materialisms for Feminist Epistemology ...................................................................... 69 Samantha Frost 5 Interrogating the Modernity vs. Tradition Contrast: Whose Science and Technology for Whose Social Progress? .............. 85 Sandra Harding Part II Democracy and Diversity in Knowledge Practices 6 Diversity and Dissent in Science: Does Democracy Always Serve Feminist Aims? .................................. 111 Kristen Intemann vii viii Contents 7 What Is in It for Me? The Benefits of Diversity in Scientific Communities ....................................................................... 133 Carla Fehr 8 What Knowers Know Well: Women, Work and the Academy ........... 157 Alison Wylie Part III Contexts of Oppression: Accountability in Knowing 9 More Than Skin Deep: Situated Communities and Agent Orange in the Aluoi Valley, Vietnam .................................. 183 Nancy Arden McHugh 10 ‘They Treated Him Well’: Fact, Fiction, and the Politics of Knowledge ................................................................ 205 Lorraine Code 11 Wrongful Requests and Strategic Refusals to Understand ................. 223 Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. 12 Liberatory Epistemology and the Sharing of Knowledge: Querying the Norms ............................................................................... 241 Heidi E. Grasswick Index ................................................................................................................. 263 About the Contributors Lorraine Code is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of Philosophy at York University in Toronto Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was named the Distinguished Woman Philosopher for 2009 by the US Society for Women in Philosophy. Her principal area of research is feminist epistemology and the politics of knowledge and she has numerous publications in the field, including What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Cornell 1991) and Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (Routledge 1995). Her most recent book, largely written during her tenure of the Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship, is Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location, published by Oxford University Press in 2006. She is currently develo- ping a moral epistemology sensitive to vulnerability, and working on questions generated by the new epistemologies of ignorance, on knowing across differences, and on the contestability of ‘natural kinds.’ Nancy Daukas is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Guilford College, in Greensboro, NC. Her work focuses on questions in feminist epistemology, virtue epistemology, social epistemology, and the epistemology of testimony. A previous publication relevant to the work in this volume is ‘Epistemic Trustworthiness and Social Location’ (Episteme: Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 3 1–2 (2006), pp. 109–124). She has also published articles on teaching philosophy, epistemic contextualism, and skepticism. Carla Fehr is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State University. She works in the philosophy of biology, feminist philosophy and feminist science studies. She is a co–Principal Investigator for ISU ADVANCE <http://www.advance.iastate.edu/>, a $3.3 million National Science Foundation grant, which is designed to test strategies for promoting the advancement and retention of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Her research investigates the impact of culture on biological explanations of topics related to sex and gender and on the social structures of scientific communities that promote excellent research. Samantha Frost is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Lessons ix x About the Contributors from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2008) and co-editor, with Diana Coole, of New Materialisms: Ontology, Ethics, and Politics (Duke University Press 2010). Heidi E. Grasswick is Professor of Philosophy at Middlebury College in Vermont. She is also a regular contributor to the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Middlebury. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology and social epistemology, particularly questions concerning the relationship between individual and commu- nities as knowers and the role of trust in knowledge. She has published in such journals as Hypatia, Synthese, and Social Epistemology. Sandra Harding is Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Her teaching and research interests include feminist and postco- lonial theory, epistemology, research methodology and philosophy of science. Harding is the editor or author of 16 books, including The Science Question in Feminism (1986), Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (1991), Is Science Multicultural? (1998), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader (2004), Science and Social Inequality (2006), Sciences From Below (2008), and The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader (2011). She was the coeditor (with Kathyrn Norberg) of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She has also served as a consultant on epistemology and philosophy of science issues for several UN organizations, including the Pan American Health Organization; the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development. Kristen Intemann is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Montana State University. Her research focuses on the roles of ethical, social, and political values in scientific research and the implications this has for scientific practices and conceptions of objectivity. She has published in journals including Philosophy of Science, Biology & Philosophy, Hypatia, Social Epistemology, FASEB Journal, and The European Journal of Epidemiology. Nancy Arden McHugh is Professor of Philosophy and department chair at Wittenberg University. She is the author of Feminist Philosophies A-Z and articles in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. She is completing a manu- script, Actions Which Change the Face of the World, from which the article in this volume is drawn. Nancy is one of the founding members and co-chair of FEMMSS (Feminist Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and Sciences Studies). She has also worked with Wittenberg University philosophy majors to develop STEP (Stand-Up for Ethics Program), which holds workshops in ethics for high school students in the Springfield, OH schools. Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Miami University (Ohio). She has published in Social Epistemology, Political Theory, and the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled Knowing (with)