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Rating: 
Summary: Linguistic confusion leads to contradiction
Review: Harding, being fairly well known in the fields of feminisms and epistemologies, seems to be merely interested in profit with this book. While discussing the material in a class, many first time readers have pointed out to me various points where Harding actually contradicts what she has said only chapters before. Her rhetoric is so flowery that I myself have often lost the direction of her argument and require significant re-reading and elimination of sentences to garner any valuable points. Harding continually refers to the same exact points over and over and over in a whirlwind of words that even she gets lost in. While her concepts are noble and indeed poignant, Harding could have slimmed some radical feministic viewpoints (women bear most of the damage of militaristic tendencies), and much, much more of the flowery language that weighs this book down into the most esoteric of philosophical endeavors, truly seeking knowledge of post-Kuhnian accounts and post-colonial studies from a strongly objective standpoint. (Last "sentence" inspired by far too many fruitless readings of Hardings work) Seek out Haraway or other Harding works rather than this garbled attempt.
Rating: 
Summary: Multicultural and global feminism
Review: Sandra Harding is a very intresting writer with a lot to say about feminism and culture.Especially the neutral sciences discussion gives a new dimension to a very important issue and adds culture as a new factor.All woman interested in research should read her book to get the historical background and the new directions for thinking about science. Her statement that social progress for humanity is not progress for woman can not be overseen even if it shows the darkness of todays development for woman.
Rating:
Summary: Multicultural and global feminism
Review: Sandra Harding's work is a sharp reply to the elitism of the neo-positivists. In refuting realism, she seeks to put together the best of postcolonial, feminist and postmodern critiques of modern science. In a sharply dialectical manner(so rare these days) Harding maps the contributions and limitations of modern Science. She dismantles scientific myths, highlighting the fact that since its inception modern European Science has been multicultural. She does not throw the baby with the bathwater and argues for the possibility of a reconstructed notion of objectivity. For reconstructing objectivity, she goes back to what has been in her earlier works, her forte- 'standpoint epistemology'. She demonstrates how political disadvantage translates into an analytical advantage; experiences and knowledges of the oppressed are critical resources for a theory of society and nature. Thus Harding rejects realism but unlike many others who do so, does not get trapped into relativism.Overall, Hardings book is an excellent resource on how feminist and postcolonial scholarship is an engagement with the politics of Science. This work shows how not all postmodern epistemologies are necessarily anti-modern. A must for all feminist and postcolonial scholars.
Rating: 
Summary: For the Politicisation and Pluralisation Of Knowledge
Review: Sandra Harding's work is a sharp reply to the elitism of the neo-positivists. In refuting realism, she seeks to put together the best of postcolonial, feminist and postmodern critiques of modern science. In a sharply dialectical manner(so rare these days) Harding maps the contributions and limitations of modern Science. She dismantles scientific myths, highlighting the fact that since its inception modern European Science has been multicultural. She does not throw the baby with the bathwater and argues for the possibility of a reconstructed notion of objectivity. For reconstructing objectivity, she goes back to what has been in her earlier works, her forte- 'standpoint epistemology'. She demonstrates how political disadvantage translates into an analytical advantage; experiences and knowledges of the oppressed are critical resources for a theory of society and nature. Thus Harding rejects realism but unlike many others who do so, does not get trapped into relativism.Overall, Hardings book is an excellent resource on how feminist and postcolonial scholarship is an engagement with the politics of Science. This work shows how not all postmodern epistemologies are necessarily anti-modern. A must for all feminist and postcolonial scholars.
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