CONNECTING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE - FEMINISM, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

The central themes of this article are the possibilities for oppositio n, critique, and resistance to dominant ideologies and practices in sc ience and technology that feminist scholars offer. The feminist critiq ue focuses on the sciences' as building models of consensus and system ic totality and on their social practices of generating and legitimizi ng knowledge (which are essentially self-referential). Against this ba ckground, ideas of an alternative practice of science and technology a re explored: methodological principles like epistemological pluralism and polyvalence; ways to a working culture which supports the particip ation of different communities and partial translations between their ''situated'' knowledges. The central idea is to combine established fo rms of scientific inquiry with a social pragmatic of developing and le gitimating goals, methods, theories, and products.