Epistemological Critiques of Science
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2-20200713T021408Z-001.zip2/Untitled document.docx
Quiz 2 Epistemological Critiques of Science
For this quiz, you should apply the knowledge and feminist approaches in epistemological critique learned during this theme. I will be looking for your complex analysis using the new content as well as readings and discussions from class to demonstrate your understanding of theme 2 concepts(Uploaded in other file) . There are 3 questions, each worth 5 points.
If there are a series of related questions, be sure to address each part. You should write at least a full paragraph for each question prompt with citations. Don’t forget to proofread. For each question,
· 2.5 points: Inclusion, discussion, and analysis utilizing the readings for the prompt
· 2.5 points: Critically engages the Theme 2 concepts from the course to answer questions posed and Demonstrates a critical feminist analysis of this issue
1. Read this article about indigenous youth activism on climate change: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36482-indigenous-youth-are-building-a-climate-justice-movement-by-targeting-colonialism
(Links to an external site.)
Notice the author and the focus of the article. How might Kimmerer, Meyers, or Subramanium respond to and carry this conversation forward? How does this article and the authors you cite encourage new/old indigenous epistemological ways of examining the science of climate change? Include a direct reference to at least two of these authors as well as a direct reference to the article you read at the above link.
2. Watch the following clip to prepare for this question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzikL5MJWCg&feature=fvwrel
How does Wangari Mathaai's and Vandana Shiva's research and work connect to Marilyn Waring's work? Discuss both form and content of the work that each of them do based on the clips and how they are engaged in feminist work. Directly reference at least two reading from Theme 2 in your response.
3.
Read this recent piece in The Mary Sue about science fiction and unlearning racism:
Explore these two explorations about Janelle Monae's music and videos. You should also watch her Q.U.E.E.N. video (link within the links below). Then respond to the prompts below. We saw her fine acting and a bit of her dancing in Hidden Figures so she'll be familiar to you!
http://nerdreactor.com/2015/02/20/sci-fi-cindi-mayweather-janelle-monae/
How are Monae's creations science fiction? How are they specific to African American women's experiences? How can you extend the analyses in these 3 pieces to talk about their connections to science and technology explicitly? Why does this matter in a class about gender and science in 2020? You should directly reference 1 of the links above using the author's (or site's) name and year like this (Walker 2015) and one additional reading assigned for any theme in the class. The course reading reference should include author year and page #. One good sized paragraph can address these prompts with the 2 references.
For all: Be sure to address each question in the prompt, reference as instructed, and discuss your quoted references thoroughly.
Directly reference source from:
Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass
2/Theme 2 Week 2 Summer20.pptx
Theme 2 Epistemological Critiques of science
Slide theme is in honor of Barbara McClintock, Nobel Prize winning botanist about whom Evelyn Fox Keller wrote. We’ll watch an interview with her next week
To Do This Week
Discussion Board
News Report
You could use it to begin exploring about your final project topic
Or it can be about another issue/topic
Final Project prep!
See the possible topics in the syllabus module
Select one
Post responses to my prompts in Canvas week 2 about your topic. This starts our conversation about it. If you have a topic in mind that is not on the list, post there asap about it and I’ll respond. I often approve other topics, or help refine the idea with you. (I generally do not approve women in xyz field.)
All topics usually need some sort of narrowing to be manageable. I’m glad to help talk through this with you by appointment or email.
Videos and Online Links
Race: The Power of an Illusion
Already open on canvas
Worksheet is optional but can be a guide as you watch
An older documentary and the science in genetics and DNA is more advanced today but the basics of how science was used in racist ways is important. As is the ways that science can be used to undo and undermine racism.
You’ll also follow links in this ppt to watch a clip of a talk by Chandra Mohanty and a short clip from the TV show The West Wing.
The ppt also has links to online resources for exploring related to disability, privilege and decolonization
Looking ahead to week 3
I’ll provide links in the ppt to short videos of each of the authors for the week, a half hour interview with Evelyn Fox Keller, and a documentary about feminist economics—we’ll watch 3 clips totaling 30 minutes.
You’ll want to be starting research on your final project topic and
Art
For week 3, you’ll be creating an art project and writing a 2 page statement explaining your process, why you made particular artistic choices, and how your art connects to course concepts.
The syllabus has directions, descriptions, and the rubric.
I’m glad to chat if you’d like to talk through ideas.
And remember, your art technique is not being graded (it’s not an art class after all) but how you engage with concepts from the course.
To start thinking about
Art and science
Merrie, “Radical Ocean Futures”
How does drawing from science fiction allow us to imagine a better future? How can science fiction writers help solve problems like environmental degradation by imagining responses in new ways?
”Scenario development using science fiction prototyping” (Merrie, et al 22)
I chose this reading for us to examine ideas in theme 2 and also to hopefully inspire you as to how you can think about science from an artistic perspective.
Two feminist scholars’ perspectives as we start Theme 2
Chandra Mohanty on decolonization, and more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XLAzPQ7NIo
Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality
This video is not required but a further examination of intersectionality
Epistemology
Study of knowledge
How do we know what we know?
How do we ascribe value to what we know or what we want to know?
In the Discussion Board
I asked you to share how your discipline asks questions. Which questions are valued.
Over the next two slides, you’ll see the questions that WGSS and Queer Studies asks.
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University
The Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Oregon State University relies on multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of gender and sexuality, particularly as they intersect with race, ethnicity, class, culture, religion, nation, and ability.
Our program emphasizes academic excellence, the use of feminist and anti-racist pedagogies, and scholarship that contributes to social change and justice. We are committed to challenging all forms of oppression, and we center queer, transnational, and women of color feminisms in our curriculum. We encourage creative, innovative, and collaborative frameworks of study, and we work to meet the needs of a wide range of students, developing curriculum that is meaningful for students who wish to pursue careers in academia, as well as those who may be interested in community organizing, feminist nonprofit work, and/or other professional areas.
In Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies we ask
In Women and Gender Studies we ask
Where are the women?
Why do we not have their names, their stories, their accomplishments?
Why are women oppressed?
Why are genders beyond the binary oppressed?
How does gender affect everyone’s lives?
How does cis privilege impact people?
How do sexuality and sexual identity and orientation affect one’s life?
How do other social locations/identities intersect and affect an individual’s life?
How can we improve society/institutions/world for genders that have not been at the center like heterosexual men have been?
How can the history of social movements give us tools for contemporary work?
What is Queer Studies?
Queer Studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines how gender, sexuality and ideas of "normal" work together with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, age and religion to create social categories that result in structural, institutional, and ideological discrimination—and further—imagines and works towards social justice for all people.
Queer Studies isn't just for people who identify as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer. Queer Studies is for those who want to work for social transformation at all levels. Queer Studies is for everyone.
Queer Studies at Oregon State University
Our curriculum centers on perspectives and critical approaches that focus on Queer Indigenous/Two-Spirit critiques, Queer of Color Critiques, Queer Diasporic Critiques, Transnational Sexualities and Feminisms, Transgender & Gender Non-Conforming critiques, Queer Disability activism, and other grassroots movements for radical social change. We place queer women of color feminisms at the center of our pedagogy, curriculum and educational goals. In these aspects, Queer Studies at OSU is unique among Queer Studies programs throughout the United States.
In Queer Studies we ask
How is our understanding of the world constrained by binaries?
How does heteronormativity and cis privilege affect our daily lives and the disciplines we study?
How do ideas of “normal” work together with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, age, and religion to create social categories?
How do these social categories result in structural, institutional, and ideological discrimination?
How do we imagine and work toward social justice for all people?
How does heterosexuality impact STEM fields whether or not a focus is placed on sexuality? Think not only about the people who do science but also the kinds of science that is
Consider this statement
“The most political act as a scientist is to take a measurement.”
A science professor at OSU shared this quote that he learned from his professor in graduate school and it has influenced his career.
Political here refers to the ways that power exists and is challenged.
Why is taking a measurement taking a stance about something that is being studied?
Think about measurement in multiple ways.
How do you decide what to measure?
Choosing what to measure says something about our values and priorities.
How many ways can you measure something?
How do you decide which measurement to use?
The tools we use to study can impact what we study and the ways we interpret the data we collect.
How do these decisions indicate priorities?
i.e. choosing to measure this means it is important to study.
And more important (at least for this moment) than studying that.
How does research get funded? Which research projects get funding? How does funding play into decisions about what to study and how to measure?
Science is a contested zone
Paradox
The purpose of this class is to challenge notions of “objectivity” and “rationality”
Science is implicated in many racist, sexist, and trans and homophobic studies and imperialist enterprises.
It is also scientific procedures that have helped name racist and imperialist tendencies in the sciences.
Science has both regressive and progressive tendencies
We have better understandings of nature result when scientific projects are linked with and incorporate projects of advancing democracy.
Politically regressive societies are likely to produce partial and distorted accounts of the natural and social world.
Science can challenge notions of “objectivity” and “rationality”
We will be focusing this theme and in theme 3 on a variety of ways all of this has happened and ways that feminists have intervened.
Ways to understand the “racial” economy of science
Feminist Science Scholar, Sandra Harding writes about the “’racial’ economy of science.”
She refers in part to the the growing demand by the 2/3 world for us (in the “1st World”) to recognize all the world bears the consequences of policies made in the west, but the 2/3 world do not get a fair share in making these decisions.
Harding also notes the impact of the social sciences in identifying the ways in which science has been encoded by society
Around nation, hemisphere, gender, and race in particular
We will explore additional ways the rest of the term.
As scholars, we should
Address these topics in educational institutions
Desire to not unintentionally block critical thinking
Recognize that economics and politics of science shape the results of research
Methods can include identifying the scientist/researcher’s own values and how these values might effect the science
Goals of feminist science studies
Attract and retain more women, racial minorities, and other underrepresented groups
Addressing science illiteracy
This helps the public understand to make informed decisions about science issues
i.e. voting
Linking science, technology, nature, environment, etc. to all citizens, not just scientists and scholars
“Pure science”? “Pure nature”?
I use quotes to challenge the notions that science can be separate from a human endeavor.
We cannot distinguish a pure science from its social origins
For example, can we do pure research outside of funding?
Funding one study means that another is not funded.
Social and political problems often defined as scientific or technological ones.
i.e. we often encourage limiting reproduction in certain countries and/or people vs. finding ways to create more egalitarian distribution of food, health resources, labor power, etc.
We should strive for “Strong Objectivity”
This idea comes from Sandra Harding’s work
While no one can be truly objective (as humans we all have biases and values that influence all that we do), by recognizing our own positionality in the world (our own race, gender, sexuality, nation of origin, language, etc.) we can reduce the incidences of unintentionally letting these biases influence our research design or interpretation of data.
Strong objectivity occurs when we are cognizant of the racial and gendered economy of science
It should not be too narrowly nor too broadly defined
It should recognize the importance of “outsider” perspectives
Outside the academy
Outside the field
Outside the literate
Outside the ….
Questions to think about
How do you understand intersectionality as a process emerging through the institution of Science?
How do system of Oppression operate in institutions like Oregon State University? What is the importance of programs like Advance in our institution?
Systems of power in society
West Wing: Maps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM
What other examples of North/South power differentials can you give?
East/West?
How does this affect science and technology? “Development” projects in the Global South?
Check out this twitter activism on Decolonial Atlas:
https://twitter.com/decolonialatlas
Check out this article about maps and power:
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/28/166079782/all-over-the-map-cartography-and-conflict?sc=17&f=1001
Language
We should actively strive to use language that comes from within a group itself and reflects the way that a person identifies. Some terms are acceptable within communities when used by someone who belongs to that community but are not acceptable for others outside. Educating oneself is critical and a way to respect people who have different positionalities and social locations that we hold.
Pay attention to the ways that authors name and identify themselves
In many instances you will notice differences in our naming/claiming names across time
Examples:
Postcolonial activists and theorists have increasingly used Global South and 2/3 (or two-thirds) World instead of “third world” because of the ways that
If you are not from one of these countries, think about the power embedded in your use of the term “third world.” As a white feminist scholar from the United States, I alternate between Global South and 2/3 world and do not use Third World. Note that many people do still use this term, including feminists from India, Nigeria, and other countries, but pay attention to how it functions in language with regard to power when used by an Indian or Nigerian compared to someone like me who is implicated in colonial projects.
People of color – A term created in the 1980s to show the commonalities of the experience of racism felt by Black/African American, Latino/a, Asian, Native American/Indigenous and Middle Eastern/Muslim/Arab communities. This is the preferred term over “minorities” or the term “non-white” (which still centers whiteness). While this may seem similar to the offensive term “colored people,” it is not; “Colored people” was used in segregation era times to refer to Black/African- Americans, as one can see with the “whites” and “colored” drinking fountains. “Colored people” is an offensive term for Black people and should not be used. People of color is a term of empowerment that was created to show the connections between different communities of color. (Walidah Imarisha)
People living with disabilities encourage us to use “people-first” language.
“Rob uses a wheelchair.”
Rob is not wheelchair-bound, confined to a wheelchair, etc. He actually is able to more fully access a lot of the world because he can use a wheelchair.
“Sally has autism.”
Sally is a person first. Autism is a condition and diagnosis affects her but placing it before her diminishes her agency. Avoid saying Autistic Sally or Sally is Autistic. She is so much more than the autism.
We’ll discuss disability in more depth in week 4…
Doing Disability Ally Work by Eli Clare handout
Is posted in Canvas. Clare has made it available for use in the classroom, jobs, places we spend our time.
Instead of saying “crazy”…
https://www.mic.com/articles/146806/stop-saying-crazy-and-insane-if-you-care-about-mental-illness
https://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html
LGBTQ is a term/phrase that people from these communities prefer to be used. It stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer. If an author or classmate shares their sexual or gender identity, use the term they use.
Avoid saying homosexual to describe someone’s sexual identity/orientation if you are not in the LGBTQ community. The medicalized and legal history of the way people were medically treated and criminalized is long and painful. The word is still used is derisive ways, and though reclaimed by some LGBTQ folx, it should not be used in scholarship or academic settings without intentionality to these histories and lived experiences.
Systems of oppression are made up of history, tradition, practices, laws, etc. Though individuals can participate in “acts of meanness” regardless of one’s position in society, one group has systemic power.
For instance, a black person could attack a white person in South Central Los Angeles. And that person may have been targeted because of their whiteness, but this is not an instance of racism(as a system of oppression) because the legal and criminal justice system has been created and maintained to give white people an advantage. This attack would be a crime, and horrible, and prejudiced, but ultimately, a person of color does not have the same kind of access to societal resources and recourses.
It is important to remember that systems of oppression depend on the privileges of the dominant groups in a society. Whether or not we intend to participate in oppressing another group, if we are in the group that historically has had power, then we access those privileges.
For instance, I am treated in particular ways because I am white. Society grants me privileges and access to opportunities as a white person even though I work actively against racism. The fact that I live in a society with a history of and continued practices of systemic racism, as a white person, I benefit from this system.
Some examples of privilege:
White privilege
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
Size privilege
http://heyfatchick.tumblr.com/post/1296446884
Able-bodied privilege
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/03/19-examples-of-ability-privilege/
Can you think of others?
Major Systems of Oppression that facilitate privilege and inequality in society
Racism (based on real or perceived differences in “race” or ethnicity)
Sexism (based on gender)
Classism (based on class)
Heterosexism (based on sexual identity)
Ageism (based on age; too young or too old)
Looksism/sizeism/weightism (based on society’s looks, beauty, size, or weight standards)
Ableism (based on physical or mental ability)
In addition, Individuals are affected by
Nation of birth / nationality
Colonial history of nation
Citizenship status
Primary language
Accent
Religion
Lightness or darkness of skin (colorism)
Parenting status / fertility
Employment status
And…
Race, class, and gender form a matrix of privilege
Race, gender, class, etc constructed in these forms
Individual
Structural
Symbolic
Can be in conflict with each other
Invocations of symbolism and stereotypes frequently increase when structure is changing or perceived to be weakening
How do systems of oppression affect science?
How does intersectionality as a process emerge through the institution of Science?
Who has the money to fund research?
Who has the power to determine priorities?
What does it mean to live in (arguably) the most powerful nation in the world?
How do system of Oppression operate in institutions like Oregon State University? What is the importance of programs like Advance in our institution?
Theme 2
Ghost Stories for Darwin
Introduction
What is Subramanium’s thesis for the book?
”The central argument of the book is that disciplinary logics make invisible the political (eugenic) questions that are central to the question of variation. A naturecultural framework, however, makes visible why the question of variation is so central and long enduring in the cultural and natural worlds, and why the stakes are so high…
Questions of genetic variation in human and nonhuman organisms are deeply linked to questions of diversity and difference in human populations steeped in tortured histories of slavery, colonialism, and genocide…
A naturecultural analysis reveals that the question of variation in fundamentally about power—the politics of life and death” (Subramanium 7).
How did her experience in Women Studies affect her studies in biology?
What is natureculture?
How does Subramanium describe feminist science studies?
How does she use the idea of a Bollywood ghost to explore these ideas?
How is power a critical component when we study variation? And why is this important to challenge?
Across the introduction and chapters…
What is eugenics? How is eugenics used (or has it been used) in Subramanium's field? In the larger social world? Why is it important to recognize this legacy in the natural sciences?
How are the following terms used in these chapters?
Chapter 1:
diversity,
morning glory,
evolutionary biology,
model systems
Chapter 2:
eugenics,
variation,
fitness,
heredity,
Darwin and concept of variation
GSD Ch 1
How could and intersectional approach to science challenge eugenics?
How does a naturecultural approach both challenge and support eugenics?
What did morning glories teach Subramanium?
How are morning glories an example of natureculture?
GSD Ch 2
How are the social and biological linked within the Darwinian revolution? Where does power lie?
How do Darwin's concepts of variation influence eugenics? What roles does power play when we analyze this from a naturecultural perspective?
How is the idea of population thinking revolutionary for integrating science and culture?
How do we move beyond and learn from the ‘eugenics script’?
Chapter 4
What are the parallels between immigrants and plants/animals?
What examples does she give for alternate ways of viewing “invasive” species?
How does Subramaniam use the concept of naturecultures in her discussion of aliens?
Chapter 5
How does she employ interdisciplinary work to do feminist research with “invasive” species?
How does she challenge binary thinking?
Chapter 6
Creation of the “other”
“other” is often female and attributed with “hypersexual” fertility
Valorization of nature and the “natural”
Rhetoric of purity
How does intersectional feminism relate and parallel to Subramaniam’s discussion of organisms uniting?
Discuss Subramaniam’s depictions of “alien” ”outsider” and “multispecies”/”multidisciplinary” in relation to queer theory.
Think about chapters 7, 8, and 9
How do the three sections of the book work together to support her overall thesis about diversity and variation?
Woelfle-Erskine
The watershed body
Woelfle-Erskine asks, “What if, rather than trapping beavers into service as ’ecosystem engineers,’ humans emulated beavers’ reshaping of water and land by creating porous boundaries between land and water and up and downstream by way of stick-and-mud, leaky, temporary dams?” (6).
What does Woelfle-Erskine mean by “watershed body”?
How does it relate to natural landscapes, multispecies alliances, environmental restoration, Indigenous epistemologies, etc?
A trans theory of watershed embodiment
“changing engineered landscapes into beavered ones could realize the watershed’s many bodily potentials”
Woelfle-Erskine “argues against naturalizing arguments that trans (and queer) are not transgressive”
“Where ‘queer is a not yet here’ (Munoz, 2009), trans, as we theorize it, is a collective move to negotiate gendered movement through society that can accommodate many evolving expressions and categories of being” (6).
“transformation of watershed body into multispecies commons is not a change from one state or body into another. Rather, it is the recognition of of an already existing multispecies relation into which humans can enter” (23).
Questions to consider
What is Manifest Destiny?
How are dams Manifest Destiny projects?
How does Woelfle-Erskine challenge manifest destiny?
Why are we challenging it in Gender and Science?
How do decolonizing ethics fundamentally threaten Manifest Destiny?
What is manifest reversal?
How are the tools of Manifest Destiny used in the reversals?
What questions emerge from a shift in ethics and boundary crossing?
See page 25
How can we decolonize this practice and its legacies?
How could we write science fiction to challenge it?
How might human engineers learn from beavers and be in deeper, and reciprocal, relationship with our environments? (hang on to this idea of relationship; we’ll discuss it some more next week when we read Braiding Sweetgrass)
Decolonization
Settler Colonialism
“US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, through often termed “racist” or discriminatory,” are rarely depicted as what they are: classic cases on imperialism, a particular form of colonialism – settler colonialism…Settler Colonialism is a genocidal policy” (2 & 6). – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US.
Decolonizing
What does it mean to decolonize? We’ll explore this idea more with food next week, but start thinking about it now. Here are some thoughts for those of us who are not Indigenous or Native…
White Allies…
If you are Indigenous, decolonization will means something specific for you and your communities that may be distinct, even when related to other folx’ decolonizing work.
Here are some ideas
(These are optional readings/viewing)
Pedagogy of the Decolonizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN17Os8JAr8
Decolonization is for Everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9x1NnCWNY
Map of Indigenous Territories: https://Native-Land.ca
