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Sandra Harding

Other affiliations: University of Delaware
Bio: Sandra Harding is an academic researcher from University of California, Los Angeles. The author has contributed to research in topics: Feminist philosophy & Feminism. The author has an hindex of 43, co-authored 108 publications receiving 17410 citations. Previous affiliations of Sandra Harding include University of Delaware.


Papers
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Book
01 Jan 1986
TL;DR: Harding as mentioned in this paper provides the first comprehensive and critical survey of the feminist science critiques, and examines inquiries into the androcentricism that has endured since the birth of modern science, and argues that the critical discourse they foster is vital to the quest for a science informed by emancipatory morals and politics.
Abstract: Can science, steeped in Western, masculine, bourgeois endeavors, nevertheless be used for emancipatory ends? In this major contribution to the debate over the role gender plays in the scientific enterprise, Sandra Harding pursues that question, challenging the intellectual and social foundations of scientific thought. Harding provides the first comprehensive and critical survey of the feminist science critiques, and examines inquiries into the androcentricism that has endured since the birth of modern science. Harding critiques three epistemological approaches: feminist empiricism, which identifies only bad science as the problem; the feminist standpoint, which holds that women's social experience provides a unique starting point for discovering masculine bias in science; and feminist postmodernism, which disputes the most basic scientific assumptions. She points out the tensions among these stances and the inadequate concepts that inform their analyses, yet maintains that the critical discourse they foster is vital to the quest for a science informed by emancipatory morals and politics.

3,205 citations

MonographDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the science question in global feminism is addressed and a discussion of science in the women's movement is presented, including two views why "physics" is a bad model for physics.
Abstract: Introduction - after the science question in feminism. Part 1 Science: feminism confronts the sciences how the women's movement benefits science - two views why "physics" is a bad model for physics. Part 2 Epistemology: what is feminist epistemology "strong objectivity" and socially situated knowledge feminist epistemology in and after the enlightenment. Part 3 "Others": "...and race?" - the science question in global feminism common histories, common destinies - science in the first and third worlds "real science" thinking from the perspective of lesbian lives reinventing ourselves as other Conclusion - what is a feminist science.

2,390 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the science question in global feminism is addressed and a discussion of science in the women's movement is presented, including two views why "physics is a bad model for physics" and why women's movements benefit science.
Abstract: Introduction - after the science question in feminism. Part 1 Science: feminism confronts the sciences how the women's movement benefits science - two views why \"physics\" is a bad model for physics. Part 2 Epistemology: what is feminist epistemology \"strong objectivity\" and socially situated knowledge feminist epistemology in and after the enlightenment. Part 3 \"Others\": \"...and race?\" - the science question in global feminism common histories, common destinies - science in the first and third worlds \"real science\" thinking from the perspective of lesbian lives reinventing ourselves as other Conclusion - what is a feminist science.

2,259 citations

Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: Harding as mentioned in this paper explores what the last three decades of European/American, feminist, and post-colonial science and technology studies can learn from each other, and proposes new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.
Abstract: "Is Science Multicultural?" explores what the last three decades of European/American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other. Sandra Harding introduces and discusses an array of postcolonial science studies, and their implications for 'northern' science. All three science studies strains have developed in the context of post-World War II science and technology projects. They illustrate how techno-scientific projects mean different things to different groups. The meaning attached by the culture of the West may not be shared or may be diametrically opposite in the cultures in other parts of the world. All, however, would agree that scientific projects - modern science included - are 'local knowledge systems.' The interests and discursive resources that the various science studies bring groups to their projects, and the ways that they organise the production of their kind of science studies, are distinctively culturally - local also. While their projects may be unintentionally converging, they also conflict in fundamental respects. How is this inevitable cultural-situatedness of knowledge both an invaluable resource as well as a limitation on the advance of knowledge about nature? What are the distinctive resources that the feminist and postcolonial science theorists offer in thinking about the history of modern science; the diversity of 'scientific' traditions in non-European as well as in European cultures; and the directions that might be taken by less androcentric and Eurocentric scientific projects? How might modern sciences' projects be linked more firmly to the prodemocratic yearnings that are so widely voiced in contemporary life? Carefully balancing poststructuralist and conventional epistemological resources, this study concludes by proposing new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.

775 citations


Cited by
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Book
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as mentioned in this paper are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

21,123 citations

01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: The contention among various research paradigms for legitimacy and intellectual and p;uadigmatic hegemony was discussed in the first edition of the Handbook of Qualitative Research by Guba and Lincoln as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: n our chapter for the first edition of the Handbook of Qualitative Research, we focused on the contention among various research paradigms for legitimacy and intellectual and p;uadigmatic hegemony (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). The postmodern paradigms that we discussed (postmodernist critical theory and constructivism) 1 were in contention with the received positivist and postpositivist paradigms for legitimacy, and with one another for intellectual legitimacy. In the half dozen years that have elapsed since that chapter was published, substantial change has occurred in the landscape of social scientific inquiry. On the matter of legitimacy, we observe that readers familiar with the literature on methods and paradigms reflect a high interest in ontologies and epistemologies that differ sharply from those undergirding conventional social science. Second, even those est::~blished professionals trained in quantitative social science (including the two of us) want to learn more about qualitative approaches, because new young professionals being mentored in graduate schools are asking serious questions about and looking for guidance in qualitatively oriented studies and dissertations. Third, the number of qualitative texts, research papers, workshops, and training materials has exploded. Indeed, it would be difficult to miss the distinct turn of the social sciences tow::~rd more interpretive, postmodern, and criticalist practices and theorizing (Bloland, 1989, 1995). This nonpositivist orientation has created a context (surround) in which virtually no study can go unchallenged by proponents of contending paradigms. Further, it

9,521 citations

01 Jan 1982
Abstract: Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

7,539 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Joan Acker1
TL;DR: The authors argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them.
Abstract: In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodie...

5,562 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Leslie McCall1
TL;DR: The authors argue that intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution women's studies, in conjunction with related fields, has made so far, and they even say that intersectional is a central category of analysis in women’s studies, and that women are perhaps alone in the academy in the extent to which they have embraced intersectionality.
Abstract: Since critics first allegedthat feminism claimed tospeak universally for all women, feminist researchers havebeen acutely aware ofthe limitations of genderas a single analyticalcategory. In fact, feministsare perhaps alone in the academy in theextent to which theyhave embraced intersectionality – the relationshipsamong multiple dimensions andmodalities of social relations and subject formations – as itselfa central category ofanalysis. One could evensay that intersectionality isthe most important theoreticalcontribution that women’s studies,in conjunction with relatedfields, has made sofar.1

4,744 citations