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 SAmi people. Throughout, the contributors provide an overview of the complex processes required to challenge mainstream epistemology. Contributors: Linda MartIn Alcoff, ElIas 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 Ostmo, Ari Sitas, Maka Suarez, Sharon Traweek, Hebe Vessuri
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.
Acknowledgments vii Introduction. Epistemic Decentralizing: Distributed Agency in a Context of Knowledge Asymmetries / Leandro Rodriguez Medina and Sandra Harding 1 I. Thinking from the Margins 1. Extractivist Epistemologies / Linda MartIn Alcoff 31 2. Epistemic Decentralizing: Revisiting Knowledge Asymmetries from the Periphery / Leandro Rodriguez Medina 62 3. The Urgency and Benefits of Decentering and Decentralizing Knowledge Production: Knowledges from the Margins and the Social Studies of Ignorance / Daniel Lee Kleinman 92 4. Making Difference at the Edge / Sharon Traweek II. Intrastructuring Postcolonialities 5. Colonial Struggle and the Infrastructures of Knowledge: A Story from SApmi / Liv Ostmo, Johan Henrik M. Buljo, Line Kalak, and John Law 131 6. Remooring Academia: Postcolonial and Infrastructural Challenges / Angela Okune, Duygu Kasdogan, Aalok Khandekar, Maka Suarez, and Kim Fortun 153 7. Agroecological Innovation: Decentralizing and Democratizing Knowledge in Brazil's Agrifood Economy / Les Leidow 184 III. Creating Alternative Spaces 8. Therapeutic Space as Knowledge Space: Decentralizing Biomedicine in Inpatient Hospice and Palliative Care / Wen-Hua Kuo 221 9. Decentered Scientific Agendas and Decentralized Actors and Capacities in Patagonian Science / Ronald Cancino, Cristina Flores, ElIas Barticevic, and Hebe Vessuri 239 10. A State-Led Strategy of Decentralization: The BRICS Experience / Wiebke Keim and Ari Sitas 261 Contributors 289 Index 299
"I can think of no other volume that takes up epistemic decentralization as its primary focus. Building on feminist standpoint theory, actor network theory, agnotology, and calls to decolonize social theory, Decentralizing Knowledges will attract great attention from a range of scholars in science and technology studies and beyond." - Heather Paxson, editor of (Eating Beside Ourselves: Thresholds of Foods and Bodies) "This volume addresses an important cluster of questions about decentralization and decentering as methods, practices, and theories in the context of decolonial approaches to science and technology. It makes a clear case that commitments to decentralization and decentering make different demands than inclusivity in relation to race, region, economies, agencies, and other intertwined axes of power and knowledge. Important to both the politics and scholarship of decolonial science and technology studies, Decentralizing Knowledges will have a broader audience in cultural studies and anthropology, and among people committed to more globally inclusive knowledge practices." - Donna J. Haraway, author of (Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene)
