ESSAY
Weaving on a Radical Loom: History, Epistemology, and Science Activism
Sigrid Schmalzer
Pages 65-89| Published online: 05 Nov 2023
Schmalzer, Sigrid. 2023. “Weaving on a Radical Loom: History, Epistemology, and Science Activism.” Marxism & Sciences 2(2): 65–89. https://doi.org/10.56063/MS.2310.02205
ABSTRACT
The author uses personal narrative to advocate for consciously interweaving intellectual, social, and political work to generate robust and liberatory alternatives to the worlds we inhabit. The narrative focuses especially on the author’s experiences studying the history of the original Science for the People and then participating in its revitalization, but also includes discussions of the anti-war movement, the history of science in Mao-era China, and radical education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, among other topics. The author argues that the tools of history and epistemology, informed by Marxist analysis, can help activists navigate the tensions of generational difference, and that ideas generated through activist discussion enrich scholarship, as evidenced in the benefits she has drawn from conversations about indigenous knowledge with generations of Science for the People members.
KEYWORDS: Activism, history, epistemology, personal narrative, Science for the People, Maoism, generational difference, indigenous knowledge..
REFERENCES
Davis, Chandler. 1972. “Mathematics in Vietnam and China: What Can We Learn?” Science
for The People 4(2): 19–21.
———. 2010. It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis. Seattle: Aqueduct Press.
Harding, Sandra. 1992. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity?’” The Centennial Review 36(3): 437–70.
Kuljian, Christa. Forthcoming. Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Levins, Richard. 2008. Talking about Trees: Science, Ecology, and Agriculture in Cuba. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
Merrifield, Juliet. 1993. “Putting Scientists in their Place: Participatory Research in Environmental and Occupational Health.” In Voices of Change: Participatory Research in the United States and Canada, edited by Peter Park, Mary Brydon–Miller, Bud Hall, and Ted Jackson. Toronto: OISE Press.
Philip, Kavita. 2001. “Indigenous Knowledge: Science and Technology Studies.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 11(2): 779–83.
Plant, Sadie. 1995. “The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics.” Body & Society 1(3–4): 45–64.
Schmalzer, Sigrid. 2021. “Connecting the Dots by Sigrid Schmalzer.”
https://youtu.be/IwzfO9LF1sQ
Science for the People. 1972. “About this Issue.” Science for the People 4(2): 3.
———. 2017. “Which Way for Science?” Accessed April 18, 2017.
https://scienceforthepeople.org/2017/04/18/which–way–for–science/
———. 2021. “Rereading China: Science Walks on Two Legs: A Critical Edition of an SftP Classic.”
https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/rereading-china-2021-special/
Sinha, Subir, Shubhra Gururani and Brian Greenberg. “The ‘New Traditionalist’ Discourse of Indian Environmentalism.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 24(3): 65–99.
Wang, Sophie. n.d. “Science Under the Scope.” Accessed June 15, 2023.
https://freerads.org/science-scope-full/
Wang, Zuoyue. 2008. In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Werskey, Gary. 1988. The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s. London: Free Association Books.