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Technology, Feminism and the Body (Week 4)

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.

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Technology, Feminism and the Body (Week 4)

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  1. Technology, Feminism and the Body (Week 4)

  2. Feminism and Technology • Technology is closely associated with science • Science and technology are markers of progress • Associated with masculinity / knowledge / competence

  3. 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

  4. 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))

  5. 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)

  6. Rethinking technology • Re-defining technology (and its development) • Rethinking what counts as competence • The role of the “user” in technological (re)production

  7. What is technology? • Wacjman 1991: • Form of knowledge • Human activities and practices • hardware

  8. Changing technologies • Technological development is unpredictable – novel uses for existing ideas

  9. Path Dependency?

  10. Competence • Women are generally seen as technologically incompetent • Technologies associated with women are not seen as technological (e.g. domestic technologies)

  11. 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)

  12. So how does this relate to this module?

  13. Seminar task • Before the seminar, find a technology that has followed an unusual, or unpredictable path – you will be asked to introduce it during the seminar.

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