Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays on Distributed Agency (Paperback)

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 SÁmi people. Throughout, the contributors provide an overview of the complex processes required to challenge mainstream epistemology.

Contributors: Linda MartÍn Alcoff, ElÍas 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 Østmo, Ari Sitas, Maka Suarez, Sharon Traweek, Hebe Vessuri

Reviews

“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)

About the Author

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.