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Course Description
"Our analysis may seem a bit labored, but only because we are so accustomed to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. Yet destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression" Edward Sapir, Language (1921)
Western science has long claimed status as the privileged knowledge system for understanding nature and the human condition. Quintessentially modern, objective, and universal, the scientific world view is often contrasted with 'the savage mind,' irrational superstition, primitivism, localism, static tradition, and attachment to ideology. Yet, when we closely examine the knowledge systems of non-Western and multicultural societies (including our own), we find that equally complex and dynamic - if not empirically accurate and effective - ways of knowing coexist and interpenetrate with the sciences. What are the implications of this revelation for a critical understanding of scientific practice itself? What are the cultural values embedded in a scientific world view, and how can we know them? Whose interests (capital, state, class, gender, etc.) are served by scientific findings and theories? What happens to scientific knowledge in cultural contexts where its basic categories differ from the native categories? A critical understanding of science as a way of 'representing and intervening' (Hacking) is of central public concern, both because of its perceived inevitability and that our lives and those of people in different cultures around the world are increasingly mediated by the knowledge scientists generate. It is also in this light that Sapir's insight has keen intellectual and moral relevance: if there is any possibility of understanding a fundamentally different way of knowing and expression, a 'destructive analysis of the familiar' - of the basic categories and concepts that we take for granted, including those of the sciences - is necessary.
Drawing on a variety of academic disciplines, this seminar explores how knowledge systems and their truth claims are produced, expressed, validated, accommodated, resisted, rejected, and hybridized in an interconnected world. During the first part of the semester, we will focus specifically on how scientific knowledge and practices both reflect and create new social relationships and culture. During the latter part of the semester, we will consider cross-cultural contexts in which different knowledge systems and world views interact. These topics will provide a prism through which we can consider how and why people know what they know, as well as broad social phenomena like modernity, the increasingly globalized construction of authority and expertise, and how people in different social contexts construct autonomous ways of knowing and being in an interconnected world.
These are enormous tasks! We will try to focus our explorations through the following questions: Is knowing a culturally-specific activity? What distinguishes a 'science' from a 'non-science?' How is it possible to observe, describe, or compare a knowledge system or world view? How is the production of scientific knowledge mediated by social processes, ideologies, and relationships of inequality (i.e., gender, class, and race)? How have people in non-Western and multicultural contexts accommodated, integrated, resisted, and/or altered scientific and modernist practices? What is an effective strategy to represent the contingency of knowing the world and one's place in it?
The following required texts are available for purchase at the University Store: