Connecting communities of practice

Abstract

Abstract The central themes of this article are the possibilities for opposition, critique, and resistance to dominant ideologies and practices in science and technology that feminist scholars offer. The feminist critique focuses on the sciences' as building models of consensus and systemic totality and on their social practices of generating and legitimizing knowledge (which are essentially self-referential). Against this background, ideas of an alternative practice of science and technology are explored: methodological principles like epistemological pluralism and polyvalence; ways to a working culture which supports the participation of different communities and partial translations between their “situated” knowledges. The central idea is to combine established forms of scientific inquiry with a social pragmatic of developing and legitimating goals, methods, theories, and products.