Hypatia

Hypatia 14.1 (1999) 132-135

Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. By Sandra Harding. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Those of us in science studies who are aware that minorities (defined as black, hispanic, and American Indian) received only 7% of master's degrees and 3.3% of doctoral degrees in the natural sciences and were only 6.2% of scientists and engineers in the labor force¹ have some difficulty seeing science as multicultural (National Science Foundation 1996). Although these statistics offer a partial answer to the question Sandra Harding poses in the title of her latest book, she does not seek to address who participates in science. Instead, this project is a complex analysis of the historical and ideological frameworks within which modern Eurocentric science, which she distinguishes from science, has developed. Always clear and systematic in her approach, [End Page 132] Harding works at the intersection of postcolonial, feminist, and post-Kuhnian analyses to deconstruct modern science, recognizing "that European expansion and the growth of modern science required each other" (Harding 1998, 70), and that modern science has borrowed local knowledge repeatedly and incorporated it into existing scientific ontology and epistemology (or has dismissed it as unscientific, which has tended to be more limiting for science and more dangerous for society). Given this framework, science might be considered multicultural as a result of its construction using diverse sources of local knowledge. Furthermore, Harding states that "successful" science (and here I can only assume that she refers to forms of non-destructive science) is achieved by balancing the local with the global and by using "diverse combinations of technical and social strategies that enable some . . . traditions to become more successful than others" (1998, 183).

Throughout the book, Harding raises many of the issues already familiar to those engaged in feminist studies of the natural sciences: whose interests are served as we "progress"; which forms of knowledge and information "count"; how science has achieved its distinctive place in global power relations; how scientists can claim to be objective, fooling each other and so many for so long, when no knowledge system can ever be culturally neutral. She begins with a summary of how, in a process akin to parallel evolution, various strains of science studies have uncovered the culture of science, but have not always been receptive to examining the creation of this culture or its relationship to other social constructions. Thus, the internalist and externalist examinations of science have been insufficient in explaining the rise of modern science whereas postcolonial science studies offer possibilities of seeing science through a new lens. This is, in part, because the postcolonial perspective allows for a co-constructive, relational approach that removes the obstacles perceived to be associated with relativism and constructivism. The rationale for selecting a postcolonial perspective unfolds with each chapter as Harding explores issues ranging from the Scientific "Revolution" to the creation of Mother Earth to the need for valuing the knowledge base of the colonized and marginalized.

Taking a feminist postcolonial perspective, Harding illustrates how the internalist approaches that explain(ed) the rise of modern science were so thoroughly Eurocentric that they could not even begin to question the nature of the relationship between European expansion and the expansion of modern science. Internalist epistemologies justified the unique authority of science. The feminist postcolonial interpretation of modern science shows how and why Europe and modern science rose, simultaneously, as a result of colonial practices and only by subjugating others and their knowledge, rather than through some internally generated historical superiority. Thus, modern science evolved to serve the interest of Europeans, facilitating industrial and capitalist expansion, and colonialization justified exploration and conquering [End Page 133] in the name of advancing scientific knowledge. The processes associated with colonialization, ongoing today in the form of "development" efforts, continue to be used to justify the subjugation of Others, including voiceless people and "nature."

In addition to the postcolonial critique presented throughout this book, there are frequent references to standpoint epistemologies, including gendered standpoints. Harding uses standpoint epistemologies to point out that important...