Sandra G. Harding (born 1935) is an American philosopher of feminist and

postcolonial Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...

theory,

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epis ...

, research methodology, and

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...

. She directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000, and co-edited '' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society'' from 2000 to 2005. She is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education and Gender Studies at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

and a Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. In 2013 she was awarded the

John Desmond Bernal Prize The John Desmond Bernal Prize is an award given annually by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) to scholars judged to have made a distinguished contribution to the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).About the ...

by the

Society for the Social Studies of Science The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is a non-profit scholarly association devoted to the social studies of science and technology (STS). It was founded in 1975 and as of 2008 its international membership exceeds 1,200. In 2016, over ...

(4S).

Education and career

Sandra Harding received her undergraduate degree from

Douglass College Douglass Residential College, is an undergraduate, non degree granting higher education program of Rutgers University-New Brunswick for women. It succeeded the liberal arts degree-granting Douglass College after it was merged with the other und ...

of Rutgers University in 1956. After 12 years working as legal researcher, editor, and fifth-grade math teacher in New York City and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., she returned to graduate school and earned a doctorate from the Department of Philosophy at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

in 1973. Harding's first university teaching job was at The Allen Center of the

State University of New York at Albany The State University of New York at Albany, commonly referred to as the University at Albany, UAlbany or SUNY Albany, is a public research university with campuses in Albany, Rensselaer, and Guilderland, New York. Founded in 1844, it is one ...

, an experimental critical social sciences college which was "defunded" by the state of New York in 1976. She then joined the Department of Philosophy at the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...

, with a joint appointment to the Women's Studies Program. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979, and to full Professor in 1986. From 1981 until she left Delaware in 1996, she held a Joint Appointment to the Department of Sociology. She was Director of the Women's Studies Program at Delaware 1985-1991 and 1992–1993. From 1994 to 1996 she was Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at

on a half-time basis. In 1996 she was appointed Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, which is a research institute. She held that position until 2000. Meanwhile, since 1996 she has been a Professor in the Graduate Department of Education and the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA. In 2012 she was appointed Distinguished Professor of Education and Gender Studies. From 2000 to 2005 she also was co-editor of '' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society''. Harding has held Visiting Professor appointments at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

(1987),

University of Costa Rica The University of Costa Rica (Spanish: ''Universidad de Costa Rica,'' abbreviated UCR) is a public university in the Republic of Costa Rica, in Central America. Its main campus, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, is located in San Pedro M ...

(1990), the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

(ETH) (1987), and the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok (1994). In 2011 she was appointed a Distinguished Affiliate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University, East Lansing. She has been a consultant to several United Nations organizations including the U.N.

Commission on Science and Technology for Development The United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) is a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the six main organs of the United Nations. It was established by the General Assembly in its r ...

, the

Pan American Health Organization The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is an international public health agency working to improve the health and living standards of the people of the Americas. It is part of the United Nations system, serving as the Regional Office for ...

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

, and the U.N. Development Fund for Women. She was invited to co-edit a chapter of UNESCO's World Science Report 1996 on "The Gender Dimension of Science and Technology". This 56-page account was the first such attempt to bring gender issues in science and technology to such a global-scale and prestigious context. She was invited to contribute a chapter to UNESCO's World Social Science Report 2010 on "Standpoint Methodologies and Epistemologies: a Logic of Scientific Inquiry for People." Harding has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals in the fields of philosophy, women's studies, science studies, social research methodology, and African philosophy.

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

selected her as a national lecturer in 2007. She has lectured at more than 300 colleges, universities, and conferences in North America as well as in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Her books, essays and book chapters have been translated into dozens of languages and reprinted in hundreds of anthologies.

Research and criticism

Harding developed the research standard of "

strong objectivity Strong objectivity is a term coined by feminist philosopher Sandra Harding, known for her work on feminist standpoint theory. Harding suggests that starting research from the lives of women "actually strengthens standards of objectivity". Strong o ...

," and contributed to the articulation of standpoint methodology. This kind of research process starts off from questions that arise in the daily lives of people in oppressed groups. To answer such questions, it "studies up", examining the principles, practices and cultures of dominant institutions, from the design and management of which oppressed groups have been excluded. She has also contributed to the development of feminist, anti-racist, multicultural, and postcolonial studies of the natural and social sciences, asking the extent to which paradigms like feminist empiricism are useful for promoting to goals of feminist inquiry. She is the author or editor of many books and essays on these topics, and was one of the founders of the field of feminist epistemology. This work has been influential in the

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

s and in

women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

gender studies Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field ...

across the disciplines. It has helped to create new kinds of discussions about how best to relink scientific research to pro-democratic goals. In her 1986 book ''The Science Question in Feminism'', Harding touched on the pervasiveness of rape and torture metaphors for the

scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific ...

in the writings of

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

and others. In the book, she questioned why it would not be as illuminating and honest to refer to

Newton's laws Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows: # A body remains at rest, or in motio ...

as "Newton's rape manual" rather than "Newtonian mechanics". Harding later said she regretted the statement. This statement, among others, caused Harding's work to be controversial within certain scholarly circles. During the

Science Wars The science wars were a series of scholarly and public discussions in the 1990s over the social place of science in making authoritative claims about the world. HighBeam Encyclopedia defines the science wars as the discussions about the "way the sc ...

, a debate regarding the value-neutrality of the sciences of the 1990s, her work became a main target of critics of feminist and sociological approaches. She was criticized by mathematicians Michael Sullivan,Sullivan, M.C. (1996) A Mathematician Reads ''Social Text'', AMS Notices 43(10), 1127-1131. Mary Gray, and

Lenore Blum Lenore Carol Blum (née Epstein, born December 18, 1942) is an American computer scientist and mathematician who has made pioneering contributions to the theories of real number computation, cryptography, and pseudorandom number generation. She ...

, and by the historian of science

Ann Hibner Koblitz Ann Hibner Koblitz (born 1952) is a Professor Emerita of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University known for her studies of the history of women in science. She is the Director of the Kovalevskaia Fund, which supports women in scienc ...

.Ann Hibner Koblitz, "A historian looks at gender and science," ''International Journal of Science Education'', vol. 9 (1987), p. 399-407. Her essay on "Science is 'Good to Think With'"Harding, Sandra. "Science is 'Good to Think With'" in The Science Wars, ed. Andrew Ross. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1994. 15-28. was the lead article in the issue of the journal ''

Social Text ''Social Text'' is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception by an independent editorial collective in 1979, ''Social Text'' has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gende ...

'' that also included the

Sokal Hoax The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to '' Social Text'', an acad ...

, which focused on her work among others. Her work was also a main target of

Paul Gross Paul Michael Gross OC (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian actor, director, writer, producer, and musician born in Calgary, Alberta. Gross is known for his lead role as Constable Benton Fraser in the popular Canadian television series ''Due So ...

and Norman Levitt's ''

Higher Superstition ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science'' is a 1994 book about the philosophy of science by the biologist Paul R. Gross and the mathematician Norman Levitt. Summary Levitt states he is a leftist trying to save th ...

''. ross, Paul and Norman Levitt. Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. art, Roger. "The Flight From Reason: Higher Superstition and the Refutation of Science Studies," in The Science Wars, ed. Andrew Ross. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1996./ref>

Awards, honors, and fellowships

*2013. Awarded

of Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S).https://gseis.ucla.edu/directory/sandra-harding/ , Sandra Harding's GSEIS Profile. *2012. Appointed Distinguished Professor of Education and Gender Studies. UCLA *2011. Appointed Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing *2009. Received American Education Research Association (AERA) Award for Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Education Research. *2007-08. Appointed as a

National Lecturer. *2007. Awarded The Douglass (College) Society Membership. *2000-05 Co-editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. *1990 Woman Philosopher of the Year, Eastern Division Society for Women in Philosophy. *1989. Elected to membership in

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

Selected works

Books

* ''The Science Question in Feminism'', 1986. *''Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives'', 1991. * ''Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies'', 1998. * ''Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues'', 2006. * ''Sciences From Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities'', 2008. * ''Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research'', 2015.

Articles

* 1973. "Feminism: Reform or Revolution?" ''Philosophical Forum'' (Boston) 5, 271–284 * 1979. "The Social Function of the Empiricist Conception of Mind," ''Metaphilosophy'' 10 (Jan 1), 38–47 * 1979. "Is the Equality of Opportunity Principle Democratic?" ''Philosophical Forum'' (Boston) 10 (Dec 1), 206–22 * 1982. "Is Gender a Variable in Conceptions of Rationality: A Survey of Issues," ''Dialectica'', 36 (Jan 1): 225–42 * 1983. "Why Has the Sex/Gender System Become Visible Only Now," in ''Discovering Reality'', ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka * 1987. "The Method Question," ''Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy'' 2, 19–35 * 1987. "The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities," ''Women and Moral Theory'', ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana Meyers * 1990. "Starting Thought From Women's Lives: Eight Resources for Maximizing Objectivity," ''Journal of Social Philosophy'' 21(2-3), 140-49 * 1990. "Feminism, Science, and the Anti-Enlightenment Critiques," in ''Feminism/Postmodernism'', ed. Linda Nicholson, 83-106 * 1992. "After Eurocentrism? Challenges for the Philosophy of Science," ''PSA 1992'' Vol. 2, 311–319 * 1993. "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is 'Strong Objectivity'?" in ''Feminist Epistemologies'', ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter * 1995. "'Strong Objectivity': A Response to the New Objectivity Question," ''Synthese'', Vol. 104, No. 3, pp. 331–349 * 1998. "Women, Science, and Society," ''Science'', New Series, Vol. 281, No. 5383 (Sep 11 1998), 1599-1600 * 2002. "Must the Advance of Science Advance Global Inequality?" ''International Studies Review'', Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer), 87-105 * 2003. "How Standpoint Methodology Informs Philosophy of Social Science," in ''Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences'' * 2004. "A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory's Controversiality," ''Hypatia'', Vol. 19, No. 1, 25–47 * 2005. "'Science and Democracy:' Replayed or Redesigned?" ''Social Epistemology'', Vol. 19, No. 1, 5–18 * 2006. "Two Influential Theories of Ignorance and Philosophy's Interests in Ignoring Them," ''Hypatia'', Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer), 20-36 * 2007. "Modernity, Science, and Democracy," in ''Social Philosophy Today'', Volume 22. Philosophy Documentation Center * 2008. "How Many Epistemologies Should Guide the Production of Scientific Knowledge?" ''Hypatia'', Vol. 23, No. 4, 212-219 * 2009. "Postcolonial and Feminist Philosophies of Science and Technology," ''Postcolonial Studies'', Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 410-429 * 2010. "Standpoint Methodologies and Epistemologies: A Logic of Scientific Inquiry for People," ''World Social Science Report 2010'', 173-5 * 2012. "Objectivity and Diversity," in ''Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education,'' ed. James Banks * 2017. "Latin American Decolonial Studies: Feminist Issues," ''Feminist Studies'', Vol. 43, No. 3, 624-636 * and Kathryn Norberg, 2005. "New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies: An Introduction," ''Signs'', Vol. 30, No. 4, 2009–15

References

External links

"Starting from Marginalized Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding"
by Elizabeth Hirsh and Gary A. Olson ''JAC'' 15.2, Spring 1995.
"Women, Science, and Society"
by Sandra Harding, ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'', September 11, 1998.
Sandra G. Harding Papers
- Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University {{DEFAULTSORT:Harding, Sandra 1935 births 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Living people Epistemologists University of California, Los Angeles faculty Feminist philosophers Philosophers of science Postcolonial theorists Poststructuralists American women philosophers 21st-century American women