Via UC Press website

Released this May 2015 from Duke University Press is Sandra Harding’s Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research. Harding’s book critically examines the notion of objectivity, and posits a new framework for scientific thought that does not strive to be politically and culturally neutral. Instead, Harding argues, scientists must consider the economic, social, and political dimensions of their work, and seek to produce knowledge and new technologies that are sensitive to the ways in which these innovations may impact disenfranchised populations. In this way, Harding suggests that science may be truly “objective” by reflecting the social reality of the world in which it is practiced and produced.

Harding’s book contributes to the constructivist body of literature on the social and cultural dimensions of scientific practice, alongside the likes of Daston and Galison’s Objectivity (2010), Agazzi’s Scientific Objectivity and its Contexts (2014), and Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution (1996). Harding similarly demonstrates the cultural situatedness of science, while underscoring the responsibility of contemporary science to promoting social justice. This publication will be of interest for science and technology (STS) scholars as well as anthropologists researching biomedicine and the culture of scientific and evidence-based care practices, particularly amongst underserved or marginal populations.

Sandra Harding is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA. Her work explores the philosophy of science, epistemology, and feminist and postcolonial theories.

To learn more about Harding’s book, click here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo19804521.html

Other books cited on objectivity:

Daston and Galison 2010: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/objectivity

Agazzi 2014: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319046594

Shapin 1996: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3620548.html