Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences

by Hilary Rose

Overview

Over the past decade Western science and technology have been sharply interrogated by a multi-stranded feminism. While this interrogation has extended to every area of cultural production, this book primarily addresses the issue of the nature and form of knowledge of the natural world.

Rose's passionately engaged book develops new terms for thinking about science and feminism. Rose locates the feminist criticism of science as both integral to the feminist movement and also to the radical science movement. She returns to her own ground breaking work from 1983 on the feminist reconstruction of rationality, drawing on UK, US and Scandinavian research. Rose attends to the political economy of the production of knowledge; and to what does and does not count as knowledge; how women and minorities are affected by these processes is also explored.

Because "biology is destiny" is both an old and oppressive claim made by science, Rose examines at length the latest and massively resourced claimant - the Human Genome Programme - the so called Holy Grail of the new industrialized genetics. She contrasts Genome's ability to turn leading male molecular biologists into a status approaching that of millionaires, with the resistance of feminism and the commitment of many working biologists, particularly but not only women, who work for and with families confronted by serious genetic disorders. Rose's commitment to feminist resistance against the science and technology of oppression, leads her to explore feminist science fiction as an ally of the feminist science critics with its imaginative capacity to explore different futures with different sciences and technologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745668468
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	07/03/2013
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Hilary Rose is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the West Yorkshire Centre for Research on Women at the University of Bradford.

Table of Contents

Prologue.

1. Introduction: Is a Feminist Science Possible?.

2. Thinking From Caring:.

Feminism's Construction of a Responsible Rationality.

3. Feminism and the Academy:.

Success and Incorporation.

4. Listening to Each Other:.

Feminist Voices in the Theory of Scientific Knowledge.

5. Gender at Work in the Production System of Science.

6. Joining the Procession:.

(Man)aging the Entry of Women into the Royal Society.

7. Nine Decades, Nine Women, Ten Nobel Prizes:.

Gender Politics at the Apex of Science.

8. Feminism and the Genetic Turn: .

Challenging Reproductive Technoscience.

9. Dreaming the Future:.

Other Wor(l)ds.

Epilogue: Womens Work is Never Done.

Bibliography.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

'A highly original choice of subject matter ... the book is an exciting adventure in alternative ways of looking at science.' Public Understand Science

'This is a real heavyweight work of high academic quality. It, no doubt, marks a milestone in the development of feminist theory globally.' Scientists for Global Responsibility Newsletter

'Remarkable for its clarity in a field where recent literature has often been barely comprehensible - particularly to students.' Times Higher Education Supplement

'Immensely readable and lively. It was a constant delight to read and Hilary Rose managed to sustain the reader's interest throughout every page ... the book is important as well as engaging.' Sociology

'This is a richly informed interdisciplinary work which anyone interested in science needs to read.' Women's Philosophy Review

' 'In characteristically challenging and exciting style Hilary Rose has produced, in Love, Power and Knowledge, a 'tour de force' of feminist sociological critique of the social and biological sciences ... enormously wide ranging ... a thoroughly academic and scholarly journey demonstrating all that is exciting about rigorous but politically informed scholarship.' Contemporary Politics

From the Publisher