Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays on Distributed Agency - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1478028556 ISBN 13: 9781478028550

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2025

Synopsis

In recent decades, there has been a call for decentering knowledge in the social sciences and humanities, bringing to light perspectives from previously ignored or undervalued groups or areas of the world. Feminist epistemologies and postcolonial studies have led this trend. However, there has been less interest in the specific infrastructures and practices that make decentering possible. Drawing from science and technology studies, Decentralizing Knowledges examines how to bring about such change. Contributors explore the multiple practices of knowledge production and circulation that favor and nurture nonhegemonic standpoints in academic fields, disciplines, and institutions—what they call epistemic decentralizing. The contributors combine theoretical and philosophical inquiry with empirical and historical case studies in settings ranging from palliative care in Taiwan, the repatriation of archaeological remains to Peru, and an experimental research platform in Kenya to a center of interdisciplinary ethnography in Ecuador and duck hunting as a knowledge practice of many indigenous Sámi people. Throughout, the contributors provide an overview of the complex processes required to challenge mainstream epistemology.

Contributors: Linda Martín Alcoff, Elías Barticevic, Johan Henrik Buljo, Ronald Cancino, Cristina Flores, Kim Fortun, Sandra Harding, Line Aimee Kalak, Duygu Kasdogan, Wiebke Keim, Aalok Khandekar, Daniel Lee Kleinman, Wen-Hua Kuo, John Law, Les Levidow, Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Angela Okune, Liv Østmo, Ari Sitas, Maka Suarez, Sharon Traweek, Hebe Vessuri

About this title

About the Author

Leandro Rodriguez Medina is Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Universidad Alberto Hurtado.

Sandra Harding (1935-2025) was Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478028556
• ISBN 13: 9781478028550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Rodriguez Medina Leandro, Harding Sandra