Suchergebnisse

Historians of science have amply demonstrated that the natural sciences were shaped by the history of colonialism. In this short essay, I explore the field of botany. Drawing on the 'pressed' plant of the herbarium sheet, I explore the possibilities of decolonising botany. I am inspired by Chela Sandoval's Methodology of the Oppressed to develop and lay out counter-colonial methodologies. I argue that we need to move to a different imagination of the sciences—interdisciplinary and adisciplinary sciences—if we are serious about reckoning with colonial histories in science.

People, plants, and animals travel; so do theories, ideas, and concepts. Concepts migrate across disciplines—from the sciences to the humanities and back—oft en repurposed to theorize new objects in new contexts. Many terms span species and disciplines, from human contexts in ethnic
studies, post/colonial studies to scientific/biological terminology: native, alien, local, foreign, colonizer, colonized, naturalized, pioneer, refugee, founder, resident. In this article, I explore concepts around mobility and "migration" and how the values and political contexts accompanying these concepts circulate across geopolitical and scientific terrains. In extending theories of migration to examining the history of science, I explore the migrations and diasporic lives of concepts.

Angela Willey (2016), Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology. Durham: Duke University Press. 216 pp., 9 illustrations. $89.95 (Cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8223-6140-4; $23.95 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-0-8223-6159-6.

This special issue explores intersections of feminism, postcolonialism, and technoscience. The papers emerged out of a 2014 research seminar on Feminist Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan. Through innovative engagement with rich empirical cases and theoretical trends in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, and STS, the papers trace local and global circulations of technoscience. They illuminate ways in which science and technology are imbricated in circuits of state power and global inequality and in social movements resisting the state and neocolonial orders. The collection foregrounds the importance of feminist postcolonial STS to our understandings of technoscience, especially how power matters for epistemology and justice.

The following dialogue between two biologists and Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars, Banu Subramaniam and Sigrid Schmitz, took place on June 16th, 2016 at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Banu Subramaniam gave a talk on "Interdisciplinary Hauntings: The Ghostly Words of Naturecultures." Afterwards both researchers discussed the linkages between feminist science studies, postcolonial perspectives, and eco-diversity discourses.