Technology, feminism and the body技术，女性主义与身体.pptVIP

Technology, Feminism and the Body (Week 4) Feminism and Technology Technology is closely associated with science Science and technology are markers of progress Associated with masculinity / knowledge / competence Feminist approaches:1. Access and regulation Recovering lost histories (e.g. Rosalind Franklin; Barbara McClintock; Alice White) Getting more women into science (education / employment) Identifying uses and abuses of science and technology Technology as neutral artifact Regulatory intervention Feminist Approaches 2. Radical critiques Use and abuses (e.g. military / environment) Capitalism; patriarchy Competing strategies 1. embracing technology (e.g. Shulamith Firestone – The Dialectic of Sex 1971) 2. Repudiating technology (e.g. Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE) – see Spallone and Steinberg (1987)) Is a science / technology of women’s values possible? Risks essentialising certain values as feminine (nurturing / creative / intuitive etc.) Overlooks the embeddedness of science and technology in masculine culture (e.g. history of excluding women – as inventors / users; the language of technology) Rethinking technology Re-defining technology (and its development) Rethinking what counts as competence The role of the “user” in technological (re)production What is technology? Wacjman 1991: Form of knowledge Human activities and practices hardware Changing technologies Technological development is unpredictable – novel uses for existing ideas Path Dependency? Competence Women are generally seen as technologically incompetent Technologies associated with women are not seen as technological (e.g. domestic technologies) Users Involved in every stage of the development of a technology Women (and men) are not simply victims / passive recipients of technologies (e.g. reproductive technologies; cosmetic surgery) (See Saetnan et al (2000) Bodies of Technology) So how does this relate to this modu