Memo+40+Abstract

Vandana Shiva's concept of “biopiracy” is an admirable way to frame the exploitation of indigenous knowledge of nature, but historically these two categories of the “primitive” and the pirate may have been more closely related than we think, and together they made have made more contributions to science than we are aware of. Drawing on postcolonial feminist/subaltern theory to highlight previously invisible social groups, I argue that a) these groups have had greater impact than credited; b) their study helps us theorize more generally about the roles that deviant groups serve in relation to science and technology; and c) that in showing these relations we can see more clearly the actual constitution of historical and present science. I use archival research and discourse analysis based on communications and private correspondence, combined with literature reviews of the history of cartography, natural sciences, and tropical medicine, to study the role that these marginalized social groups have played in the development of colonial and modern science. Focusing on larger issues of access to technology and the importance of local knowledge networks, this project shows how the STS explorations of the relations of laity and expert in Western science can be further illuminated by incorporating such oppositions as deviant/norm and user/abuser.