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Naked Science is about contested domains and includes different science cultures: physics, molecular biology, primatology, immunology, ecology, medical environmental, mathematical and navigational domains. While the volume rests on the assumption that science is not autonomous, the book is distinguished by its global perspective. Examining knowledge systems within a planetary frame forces thinking about boundaries that silence or affect knowledge-building. Consideration of ethnoscience and technoscience research within a common framework is overdue for raising questions about deeply held beliefs and assumptions we all carry about scientific knowledge. We need a perspective on how to regard different science traditions because public controversies should not be about a glorified science or a despicable science.
List of contents
Part I: Discovering Science; 1. Navigation in the Western Carolines: A Traditional Science - Ward H. Goodenough; 2. The Scientific Basis of Gastrointestinal Herbal Medicine among the Highland Maya of Chiapas, Mexico - E.A. Berlin, B. Berlin, X. Lozoya, M. Meckes, J. Tortoriello, and M.L. Villarreal; 3. Science for the West, Myth for Rest? The Case of James Bay Cree Knowledge Construction - Colin Scott; 4. The Savagery of the Domestic Mind - Jean Lave; 5. Scientific Literacy, What It Is, Why It s Important, and Why Scientists Think We Don t Have It: The Case of Immunology and the Immune System - Bjorn Claeson, Emily Martin, Wendy Richardson, Monica Schoch-Spana, and Karen-Sue Taussig; Part II: Culture, Power and Context: 6. The Prism of Heritability and the Sociology of Knowledge - Troy Duster; 7. Nuclear Weapons Testing: Scientific Experiment as Political Ritual - Hugh Gusterson; 8. Political Structuring of the Institutions of Science - Charles Schwartz; 9. Constructing Knowledge across Social Worlds: The Case of DNA Sequence Databases in Molecular Biology - Joan H. Fujimura and Michael Fortun; 10. Kikusaika, Gaiatsu, and Bachigai: Japanese Physicists Strategies for Moving into the International Pollitical Economy of Science - Sharon Traweek: Part III: Conflicting Knowledge Systems; 11. Public Policy, Sciencing, and Managing the Future - M. Estelllie Smith; 12. Inuit Indigenous Knowledge and Science in the Arctic - Ellen Bielawski; 13. Popular Delusions and Scientific Models: Conflicting Beliefs of Scientists and Nonscientist Administrators in Creation of a Secret Nuclear Surveillance System - David Jacobson and Charles A. Ziegler; 14. Japanese Science and Western Hegemonies: Primatology and the Limits Set to Questions - Pamela J. Asquith
About the author
Laura Nader
Summary
A collection of essays on different science traditions by pre-eminent scholars in social sciences, demystifying formal, Western science and encouraging readers to think of science in the plural and in lower case.