Download or read book Feminism and Evolutionary Biology written by Patricia Gowaty and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standing at the intersection of evolutionary biology and feminist theory is a large audience interested in the questions one field raises for the other. Have evolutionary biologists worked largely or strictly within a masculine paradigm, seeing males as evolving and females as merely reacting passively or carried along with the tide? Would our view of nature `red in tooth in claw' be different if women had played a larger role in the creation of evolutionary theory and through education in its transmission to younger generations? Is there any such thing as a feminist science or feminist methodology? For feminists, does any kind of biological determinism undermine their contention that gender roles purely constructed, not inherent in the human species? Does the study of animals have anything to say to those preoccupied with the evolution and behavior of humans? All these questions and many more are addressed by this book, whose contributing authors include leading scholars in both feminism and evolutionary biology. Bound to be controversial, this book is addressed to evolutionary biologists and to feminists and to the large number of people interested in women's studies.
Download or read book Women Feminism and Biology written by Lynda I. A. Birke and published by Methuen Publishing. This book was released on 1986 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esta obra supone una nueva visión de la biología desde el contexto de la teoría feminista. En contraposición a otras aproximaciones reduccionistas y deterministas, la autora opina que una persona biológica se encuentra en continua y dinámica interacción con el ambiente -Ambiente que incluye el contexto social y politico. Este proceso de interacción puede provocar cambios en la persona y en su autopercepción.
Download or read book Molecular Feminisms written by Deboleena Roy and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: �Should feminists clone?� �What do neurons think about?� �How can we learn from bacterial writing?� These provocative questions have haunted neuroscientist and molecular biologist Deboleena Roy since her early days of research when she was conducting experiments on an in vitro cell line using molecular biology techniques. An expert natural scientist as well as an intrepid feminist theorist, Roy takes seriously the expressive capabilities of biological �objects��such as bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants�in order to better understand processes of becoming. She also suggests that renewed interest in matter and materiality in feminist theory must be accompanied by new feminist approaches that work with the everyday, nitty-gritty research methods and techniques in the natural sciences. By practicing science as feminism at the lab bench, Roy creates an interdisciplinary conversation between molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, science and technology studies, feminist theory, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. In Molecular Feminisms she brings insights from feminist and cultural theory together with lessons learned from the capabilities and techniques of bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology to o er tools for how we might approach nature anew. In the process she demonstrates that learning how to see the world around us is also always about learning how to encounter that world.
Download or read book Feminism and the Biological Body written by Lynda I. A. Birke and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a body? What are our perceptions of our inner bodies? How are these perceptions influenced? In recent years, thinking about the body has become highly fashionable. However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine. As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.
Download or read book The Politics of Women s Biology written by Ruth Hubbard and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work the author explores the social and political assumptions of biology, and genetics in particular. She examines the ways biologists use scientific language, use genetics, and apply it to human situations, especially to women's situations.
Download or read book Sex gender written by Anne Fausto-Sterling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anne Fausto-Sterling's Sex/Gender is the only interdisciplinary book for undergraduate courses to explain sex and gender from a biological, social, and cultural perspective.
Download or read book Gut Feminism written by Elizabeth A. Wilson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn’t so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism’s provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.
Download or read book Science and Gender written by Ruth Bleier and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bleier (neurophysiology, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) dissects the theme of women's biological inferiority contending that science has been engaged in elaborate mythologizing to explain the subordinate position of women in Western civilizations since Aristotle. Exploring the scientific and ideological b
Download or read book The Science Question in Feminism written by Sandra G. Harding and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can science, steeped in Western, masculine, bourgeois endeavors, nevertheless be used for emancipatory ends? In this major contribution to the debate over the role gender plays in the scientific enterprise, Sandra Harding pursues that question, challenging the intellectual and social foundations of scientific thought.Harding provides the first comprehensive and critical survey of the feminist science critiques, and examines inquiries into the androcentricism that has endured since the birth of modern science. Harding critiques three epistemological approaches: feminist empiricism, which identifies only bad science as the problem; the feminist standpoint, which holds that women's social experience provides a unique starting point for discovering masculine bias in science; and feminist postmodernism, which disputes the most basic scientific assumptions. She points out the tensions among these stances and the inadequate concepts that inform their analyses, yet maintains that the critical discourse they foster is vital to the quest for a science informed by emancipatory morals and politics.
Download or read book Feminism in Twentieth Century Science Technology and Medicine written by Angela N. H. Creager and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What useful changes has feminism brought to science? Feminists have enjoyed success in their efforts to open many fields to women as participants. But the effects of feminism have not been restricted to altering employment and professional opportunities for women. The essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research. In archaeology, evidence of women's hunting activities suggested by spears found in women's graves is no longer dismissed; computer scientists have used feminist epistemologies for rethinking the human-interface problems of our growing reliance on computers. Attention to women's movements often tends to reinforce a presumption that feminism changes institutions through critique-from-without. This volume reveals the potent but not always visible transformations feminism has brought to science, technology, and medicine from within. Contributors: Ruth Schwartz Cowan Linda Marie Fedigan Scott Gilbert Evelynn M. Hammonds Evelyn Fox Keller Pamela E. Mack Michael S. Mahoney Emily Martin Ruth Oldenziel Nelly Oudshoorn Carroll Pursell Karen Rader Alison Wylie
Download or read book Has Feminism Changed Science written by Londa L. Schiebinger and published by . This book was released on 1999-05-28 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do women do science differently? This is a history of women in science and a frank assessment of the role of gender in shaping scientific knowledge. Londa Schiebinger looks at how women have fared and performed in both instances.
Download or read book Material Girls written by Kathleen Stock and published by Fleet. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A clear, concise, easy-to-read account of the issues between sex, gender and feminism . . . an important book' Evening Standard 'A call for cool heads at a time of great heat and a vital reminder that revolutions don't always end well' Sunday Times Material Girls is a timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex. Professor Kathleen Stock surveys the philosophical ideas that led to this point, and closely interrogates each one, from De Beauvoir's statement that, 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman' (an assertion she contends has been misinterpreted and repurposed), to Judith Butler's claim that language creates biological reality, rather than describing it. She looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection. Material Girls makes a clear, humane and feminist case for our retaining the ability to discuss reality, and concludes with a positive vision for the future, in which trans rights activists and feminists can collaborate to achieve some of their political aims.
Download or read book Biology at Work written by Kingsley R. Browne and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does biology help explain why women, on average, earn less money than men? Is there any evolutionary basis for the scarcity of female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies? According to Kingsley Browne, the answer may be yes. Biology at Work brings an evolutionary perspective to bear on issues of women in the workplace: the "glass ceiling," the "gender gap" in pay, sexual harassment, and occupational segregation. While acknowledging the role of discrimination and sexist socialization, Browne suggests that until we factor real biological differences between men and women into the equation, the explanation remains incomplete. Browne looks at behavioral differences between men and women as products of different evolutionary pressures facing them throughout human history. Womens biological investment in their offspring has led them to be on average more nurturing and risk averse, and to value relationships over competition. Men have been biologically rewarded, over human history, for displays of strength and skill, risk taking, and status acquisition. These behavioral differences have numerous workplace consequences. Not surprisingly, sex differences in the drive for status lead to sex differences in the achievement of status. Browne argues that decision makers should recognize that policies based on the assumption of a single androgynous human nature are unlikely to be successful. Simply removing barriers to inequality will not achieve equality, as women and men typically value different things in the workplace and will make different workplace choices based on their different preferences. Rather than simply putting forward the "nature" side of the debate, Browne suggests that dichotomies such as nature/nurture have impeded our understanding of the origins of human behavior. Through evolutionary biology we can understand not only how natural selection has created predispositions toward certain types of behavior but also how the social environment interacts with these predispositions to produce observed behavioral patterns.
Download or read book Knowing Women written by Helen Crowley and published by Polity. This book was released on 1992-04-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowing Women explores some of the most exciting and new developments in feminist theory, engaging the reader as an active participant in critical debates concerning the status of women as both objects and subjects of knowledge. The book introduces and reappraises key feminist questions concerning sex and gender, biology and the body, sexuality and motherhood. Various psychoanalytical perspectives are critically examined for the light they throw on the social and symbolic constructions of femininity. Later chapters explore theories of the subject and subjectivity, the place of language in the construction of social identities and the relation between discourse, power and knowledge. A concluding chapter focuses on the debate between feminism and post-modernism, stressing the political nature of the feminist project. The debates are presented in a way that will make them accessible to students. Introductions to each chapter lay out the main issues and introduce readings chosen for their clarity and accessibility. Ideal as an introductory textbook in feminism and women's studies, Knowing Women will also appeal to a wide readership interested in current debates in feminist theory.
Download or read book Mattering written by Victoria Pitts-Taylor and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminists today are re-imagining nature, biology, and matter in feminist thought and critically addressing new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience, epigenetics and other scientific disciplines. Mattering, edited by noted feminist scholar Victoria Pitts-Taylor, presents contemporary feminist perspectives on the materialist or ‘naturalizing’ turn in feminist theory, and also represents the newest wave of feminist engagement with science. The volume addresses the relationship between human corporeality and subjectivity, questions and redefines the boundaries of human/non-human and nature/culture, elaborates on the entanglements of matter, knowledge, and practice, and addresses biological materialization as a complex and open process. This volume insists that feminist theory can take matter and biology seriously while also accounting for power, taking materialism as a point of departure to rethink key feminist issues. The contributors, an international group of feminist theorists, scientists and scholars, apply concepts in contemporary materialist feminism to examine an array of topics in science, biotechnology, biopolitics, and bioethics. These include neuralplasticity and the brain-machine interface; the use of biometrical identification technologies for transnational border control; epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of the health effects of social stigma; ADHD and neuropharmacology; and randomized controlled trials of HIV drugs.A unique and interdisciplinary collection, Mattering presents in grounded, concrete terms the need for rethinking disciplinary boundaries and research methodologies in light of the shifts in feminist theorizing and transformations in the sciences.
Download or read book Time Travels written by Elizabeth Grosz and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-22 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently the distinguished feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz has turned her critical acumen toward rethinking time and duration. Time Travels brings her trailblazing essays together to show how reconceptualizing temporality transforms and revitalizes key scholarly and political projects. In these essays, Grosz demonstrates how imagining different relations between the past, present, and future alters understandings of social and scientific projects ranging from theories of justice to evolutionary biology, and she explores the radical implications of the reordering of these projects for feminist, queer, and critical race theories. Grosz’s reflections on how rethinking time might generate new understandings of nature, culture, subjectivity, and politics are wide ranging. She moves from a compelling argument that Charles Darwin’s notion of biological and cultural evolution can potentially benefit feminist, queer, and antiracist agendas to an exploration of modern jurisprudence’s reliance on the notion that justice is only immanent in the future and thus is always beyond reach. She examines Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration in light of the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and William James, and she discusses issues of sexual difference, identity, pleasure, and desire in relation to the thought of Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Luce Irigaray. Together these essays demonstrate the broad scope and applicability of Grosz’s thinking about time as an undertheorized but uniquely productive force.
Download or read book The Big Lie written by Tanya Selvaratnam and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A candid assessment of the pros and cons of delayed motherhood. Biology does not bend to feminist ideals and science does not work miracles. That is the message of this eye-opening discussion of the consequences of delayed motherhood. Part personal account, part manifesto, Selvaratnam recounts her emotional journey through multiple miscarriages after the age of 37. Her doctor told her she still "had time," but Selvaratnam found little reliable and often conflicting information about a mature woman's biological ability (or inability) to conceive. Beyond her personal story, the author speaks to women in similar situations around the country, as well as fertility doctors, adoption counselors, reproductive health professionals, celebrities, feminists, journalists, and sociologists. Through in-depth reporting and her own experience, Selvaratnam urges more widespread education and open discussion about delayed motherhood in the hope that long-lasting solutions can take effect. The result is a book full of valuable information that will enable women to make smarter choices about their reproductive futures and to strike a more realistic balance between science, society and personal goals.
