This presentation is part of the Anonymity: Navigating the Unknown track.

This presentation is part of the Anonymity: Navigating the Unknown track.

This presentation is part of the Anonymity: Navigating the Unknown track.

This presentation is part of the Anonymity: Navigating the Unknown track.

In this presentation I will argue that philosophers of science are missing important opportunities to contribute to essential dialogues and make a positive impact on our various communities. From our own institutions to national and international policy, the insights of philosophy of science can make important contributions to many important and essential realms, from pedagogy to international policy.

I focus on two case studies—research ethics training for scientists and climate change science and policy—and illustrate on the one hand, the value of enlarging the scope of our work and developing a more robust appreciation of the usefulness of the methods of philosophy of science for contributing to answers to important questions such as these and, on the other hand, how working in these areas would not only expand the scope but positively enrich the methods and practices of philosophers of science.

While these topics, and the typical approach to training scientists the proper “procedures,” are certainly important, this vision of research ethics is far too limited a venue to convey an appreciation of the full extent of the ethical dimensions of scientific research.

As I develop the first case study, I argue for the adoption of a more adequate model of research ethics in science and engineering, one to which the contributions of philosophers of science would be essential. Typical research ethics training is focuses on responsible conduct of research issues (ethical aspects of the process of conducting scientific research, such as: falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism; care for human and nonhuman subjects; responsible authorship issues; analysis and care for data; and conflicts of interests). While I do not deny the importance of RCR issues, they are far too limited to provide a basis for scientists and engineers to appreciate the full range of ethical issues they face. I offer an account of a more robust model, what I and my colleagues have labeled the Ethical Dimensions of Scientific Research (EDSR) and argue that EDSR not only offers a more adequate model of the ethical literacy needed by scientists and engineers, but that it also provides an opportunity for philosophers of science to contribute by designing ethics training responsive to epistemic concerns. In developing this analysis, I argue that the work of feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science who have examined the relationship between ethical and epistemic issues serves as a key element in developing this account.

On the basis of the analysis of this case study, I call for the development of an applied approach to the philosophy of science, similar to contemporary practices in bioethics, in which philosophers of science enhance both the practice of science as well as contribute to policy decisions within the NSF and other science and engineering institutions.

My second case study focuses on a new role for philosophy of science in both research design and in science policy. I argue for an essential role for philosophy of science in the identification of values and assumptions that are intrinsic to scientific research, that is, are embedded in the very context of hypothesis development, data gathering and analysis, governing equations, models, strategies for addressing uncertainty, and the like, and the full analysis of their epistemic and ethical import. This example is designed to illustrate the importance of working to ensure that all science, but particularly policy-relevant science, is as transparent as possible concerning embedded values and their intertwined epistemic and ethical import. I argue that philosophers of science need to understand, and perhaps at times even participate in, the policy context so that we can ensure that our work is framed in ways to be of benefit in this arena.

Using the case study of climate science, I examine two issues; 1) how climate models, and in particular integrated assessment models (IAMS), which deal with high levels of uncertainty about future climate impacts, imbed values and assumptions that are ethically salient and 2) how philosophy of science can play a leading role in enhancing research that foregrounds the importance of taking account of gender in the context of climate change science and policy.

Issue 1: IAMs have been rapidly developing over the past two decades as a way to inform policy and decision-making regarding climate change, but are also used within science to better understand complex system interactions, particularly between socioeconomic and biophysical processes. I illustrate the importance of the role of philosophers of science and other science studies theorists in: identifying key sources of overconfidence imbedded in such IAMS; providing insights on how best to quantify types of uncertainty; helping to critically reevaluate previous studies to help determine when omitting low probability, high impact events can lead to poor decision making; and the like. I argue that this type of transparency would not only lead to better policy-making, but would also be likely to point to reveal significant questions in need of scientific analyses.

Issue 2: Gender issues are only now gaining recognition in the realm of climate policy and science. In this section of the talk I argue that feminist philosophy of science can play an essential role in moving discussion of issues of gender and climate change forward both in the context of empirical design, and also in the policy realm. I argue that the work of feminist science studies theorists and epistemologists in identifying value judgments and tracing their impact in allegedly ‘objective’ scientific practices and, in particular, in economics, is highly relevant to the growing literature on gender and climate change. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the intertwining of ethical and epistemic concerns so central to feminist epistemology (e.g. Code, Harding), provides new resources for this literature that augments its social justice perspective

Audre Lorde: “In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the position of the dehumanized inferior.”

People with disabilities, including “psychiatric”/psycho-social diversities, may live in ways that reject hegemonic standards of personhood, societal membership, and contribution. Such dominant norms tend to value people for how “productive” they are, framing disabled and other marginalized people as a drain on public resources. Such framing makes invisible any link between the workings of oppression and their marginalization. In Iris Young’s terms these ideological constructions of personhood enact three of the faces of oppression – cultural imperialism (in which all are judged by a single dominant standard), marginalization (in which some are excluded altogether from the dominant system of labor), and violence (in which “members of some groups live with the knowledge that they must fear random, unprovoked attacks on their person or property, which have not motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy the person”).

How do norms valuing ‘productivity’ and ‘pace’ (Wendell, 1997) over people constitute able-ist exclusion? How do able-ist notions of cognitive authority undermine moral and political critique from people with “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities? How can intersectional “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault) work to embody the disability activism slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us!”? Such an ideal requires much more awareness of the diversity of the “Us” that makes up people with disabilities, becoming more aware of “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities.

As various minority studies and activist movements have demonstrated, non-dominant ways of being are not necessarily failed or deficient examples of the dominant. Rather, they are their own expressions, which need to be understood on their own terms. So too “failures” to meet hegemonic society’s expectations of speed, “productivity,” and reasonableness may not indicate failures at all. Instead of complying with increasingly dehumanizing social practices of contemporary imperial market capitalism, some resist, challenge, and generally fail to thrive within that mainstream culture. They can produce critical knowledge that open onto other ways to be. By not enacting dominant “professional” and academic modes, they may be holding out for something else.

I use the term “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities in an attempt to capture “’psychiatric’/psychological disabilities” without endorsing the medicalized and pathologizing associations built into these terms. Can the average person today even conceive of people with “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities as having thought and experiences from which to learn, or even to imagine them (us?) as participants in human conversations aimed at producing knowledge? Deeming such people to be lacking in rationality, they assume that they have nothing to offer. As hegemonic culture so often does with oppressed people, it undermines their cognitive authority. Even in supposedly inclusive diverse and multicultural conversations, the best way to mark an idea as not even worthy of consideration is to call it “crazy.”

Elizabeth Minnich describes the “Root Error” of dominant Western culture to be the division of human beings into fundamentally different kinds and the subsequent ranking of those kinds. Minnich identifies processes by which the knowledge claims of privileged white men have been taken to be universal, while others (like those with “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities/psych survivors) are left out, or – worse – distorted and misrepresented.

. Minnich describes “classifying humans by kind” as the “root conceptual error that feeds knowledges that…derive from and legitimate systems of domination.” (Minnich, p. 25) Here Minnich is shifting from the earlier (1990) edition of Transforming Knowledge. There, she considered the basic error to be “taking a few privileged individuals to be Man and then using “Man” as if it were nevertheless the inclusive term, the form, and the ideal for all of us, as if a noninclusive, singularized abstraction from the great diversities of humanity could possibly be other than wrong in all senses of the term.” (p. 25) Now, she argues that divisions of people into groups must already be assumed before such hierarchies of people are made of them. Minnich wonders how she failed to notice before. After all, the very notion of groups being deemed superior and inferior to each other presupposes the constitution of such groups in the first place.

Minnich recognizes diversity as a fact of human existence. However, that variation does not by itself translate into the reified, categorical differences built into what comes to be thought of as race, sex, disability, etc. She writes that the error of superior/inferior relations described above are “preceded by another that entailed it: dividing humans into ‘kinds,’ not in the form of flexible, mutable distinctions, but as real divisions that are taken to be given (by gods, by a supreme deity, by nature – that is, not by the human agency and choice that make us responsible).” (p. 25) Minnich calls this dynamic turning distinctions among people into “abstract, hierarchical divisions by ‘kind’ such that a particular few emerge as the imperially inclusive ‘kind’ or term, the norm, and the ideal for all.” (p. 104)

Voices of people with “psychiatric”/psycho-social disabilities – along with those of others treated as disposable in the present system – may bring out moral and epistemic critique of hegemonic culture’s following features:

a) Its denial of human interdependence and its importance to our lives,

b) Its refusal to recognize the human status of some on the basis of some kind of capacity defined by what Tobin Siebers calls “the ideology of ability.”

c) Its failure to acknowledge the role of emotion in developing knowledge.

d) Its denial of the importance, needs, gifts, etc., of our “whole” selves – body/mind/spirit.

e) Its obscuration of how market fundamentalist values, that is, arrangements of the world in the interests of profit for the few rather than the well-being of all, are morally bankrupt.

“Dependency Discourse, Disability Rhetoric and Expediency Arguments – A Genealogy of the Relationship between Feminism and Eugenic Philosophy”

All known theories of human rights, whether based on humanity, social contract theory, utilitarianism, or citizenship, exclude individuals from the rights-bearing community if they do not possess the specific abilities required for membership. […] It is also to understand that the human-rights discourse will never break free from the ideology of ability until it includes disability as a defining characteristic of human beings. (178)

Moreover, the practice of granting rights to only those people capable of demonstrating a prescribed level of physical and mental ability must be swept away if being human is to serve as a universal standard for political membership. Basing human rights on disability, however, presents a more minimum standard for universality. (180)

--Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory, 2008

Social movements necessarily employ a rhetorical strategy when they struggle against the “system” to make change. Sometimes the strategy pays off and sometimes the effects to be had on the movement itself are far more reaching than anyone would ever have thought possible. The early women’s movement’s choice to employ a rhetorical strategy that fought against their “role” as dependents was perhaps necessary and complicated in a society where the concept of “dependency” had begun to take on a negative meaning. Unfortunately, while taking a stance for independence, the movement employed disability rhetoric to achieve its purpose. Referencing women’s legal and social disabilities, as well as setting criteria for those “fit” and “unfit” for citizenship, the leaders of the early movement created an atmosphere of intolerance rather than inclusion. This disability rhetoric was often coupled with expediency arguments that promoted a “betterment of society” through the provision of women’s rights, rather than adhering to a natural rights argument that would focus on the guarantee of rights for everyone. This complete strategy would have long-lasting effects on women with disabilities, as well as the relationships between female minority communities and the women’s movement – effects that are still present today.

Just as the movement demonstrated its racist bias, even while fighting for abolitionist causes, many women in the movement also embraced eugenics philosophy in the early to mid 20th century, following Margaret Sanger and Charlotte Perkins-Gilman in their support of birth control as the “great Saviour” of the poor and as a means to control population growth. Because eugenic philosophy also relies on a “dependency discourse,” uses disability rhetoric, and uses a rhetorical strategy that engages in expediency arguments, feminists could easily appropriate the tenets of eugenics and incorporate these notions of “betterment” into a preexisting feminist philosophy that already mirrored much of what eugenics was relying on in its own philosophy and rhetorical strategy. This Eugenic Feminism touched not only those women and men with disabilities, but also those of the “poor” and “lower” classes, those who were deemed “unfit.” Class-based and race-based eugenic philosophy impacted the African American community, as well as numerous other ethnic and minority communities in the US, stirring up tensions in the women’s movement in the latter part of the 20th century when abortion rights were the forefront of the women’s movement’s fights for freedom – reproductive freedom. Autonomy and independence become sticking points for the discussions to be had between feminists/feminism and the disability rights movement, as the definitions for autonomy and independence and the notions of liberation in each group were/are not necessarily the same.

Many feminists still continue to support eugenic methods in current day reproductive and genetic technology development, as well, creating a disconnect in the movement, one that has its roots in the early movement’s desire to distance themselves from a “dependent” role and to demand individual and autonomous rights over their bodies. Current debates between both communities continue to revolve around eugenic practices and reproductive rights and technologies in the 21st century. I will argue that the women’s movement’s desire to distance themselves as far as possible from any type of dependency, and their use of disability rhetoric and expediency arguments, provides the foundation for the movement’s support of eugenic philosophy and methods in the early 20th century, as well as eugenic methods in the late 20th early 21st centuries.

The epistemological concept of objectivity and its commonly assumed inherent connotation as ‘neutral’, or as “a view from nowhere” (Th. Nagel) has been pungently contested and unmasked as particularly androcentric by feminist philosophers during the 1980s and 1990s, e.g. by N. Hartsock, S. Harding, D. Haraway, L. Code, E. Fox Keller, P. Hill Collins, S. Hekman and many others. For them, the main aim consisted not merely in the modification of certain circumstances of science, but rather in the fundamental change of both scientific and socio-political structures. According to this integral idea of emancipation, feminist theorists strived to invade the core of the issue: One of the most crucial criticisms brought forth by feminist theorists concerned the androcentric bias of philosophy as a whole. This view was based on the assumption that (western) philosophical thoughts reflect the maleness not only of the actors (e.g. the philosophers) or the social circumstances, but also of philosophy itself as a scientific discipline. They claimed that the traditional notion of objectivity as being neutral because of its abstraction from contextual and concrete aspects is to be doubted and critically reflected. Although ‘objectivity’ stands traditionally for (Weberian) value-neutrality par excellence, it is the very abstraction from concrete, ‘lifeworldly’ dimensions of the human existence which conceals the in fact double-valued dualisms within the philosophical thinking. These dualisms are characterized by a hierarchical gender-connotation, within which the allegedly feminine part of the dualism is seen as inferior (e.g. form versus matter, transcendence versus immanence, activity versus passivity, culture versus nature, rationality versus emotionality). Feminists criticized therefore the philosophical ideal of objectivity as being a ‘phallogocentric’ (J. Derrida) system of representation and value.

It seems, however, that the request to reflect the term ’objectivity’ concerning its gender-related implications has weakened in the course of the increasing institutionalization of gender topics within the realm of academic research, especially in the context of the paradigmatic shift from ‘women’/’feminist’ studies to ‘gender’/’intersectionality’ studies. Evidently, the feminists’ politically agonistic tendency has faded away, the close connection between politics and theory broke during the paradigm shift as put forward by deconstructivist and postmodern approaches. After an incipient enthusiasm over a possible resort from the simple man-woman-enmity, one can increasingly observe that the category gender looses its former subversive analytic power – both in epistemological and socio-cultural perspective.

There is one central problem I would like to discuss in my paper: Obviously, feminist epistemology particularly shows the insufficiency of refusing the scientific legitimation of gender hierarchies (e.g. the androcentric concept of objectivity) in order to initiate emancipatory processes. In my paper, I hold that there is a connection between the loss of emancipatory impulse in political/socio-cultural terms on the one hand and the decrease of the exploration of the underlying (e.g. androcentric) structure of the concept of objectivity on the other. As long as ‘objectivity’ will be considered as a value-neutral warrantor for non-sexist (non-racist etc.) science, an emancipatory practice (both in science and society) will be impeded.

In this context, it is the very dualistic structure of thinking itself, which is to be reflected again with regard to a revisited concept of objectivity. Even for critical scientists, it seems impossible to think one part of a conceptual couple without its counterpart. Therefore, it appears to be impossible not to think in dualistic terms, because couples are logically intertwined with each other. This structural and categorical condition of our thinking has far-reaching consequences in regard to the evaluation of binarity, since the difference between the two parts of a binary couple is not conceived as a simple dissimilarity or even a contrast, but as a contradiction (e.g. objectivity vs. subjectivity). Moreover, we have internalized the gender connotations of the following pairs of polarized opposites: mind - body, intellect - emotion, rationality - irrationality, autonomy - dependence, power - weakness, courage - modesty, publicity - domesticity, culture - nature (c.f. Aristotle’s category theory). The critical-epistemological question is here, whether dichotomies need necessarily be conceived as hierarchical. In other words, is there any alternative with regard to binarity?

My thesis in the paper is therefore, that a stricter methodological differentiation between an analysis concerning the phenomenological gender distinction on the one hand and an analysis on the basis of the logical/conceptual character of the gender distinction on the other is required in philosophy and theory of science. This differentiation could entail a more detailed qualification of the epistemological spectrum and its inherent values. (The gender-dichotomy serves here as the prime example for other potential hierarchical dichotomies which might bear insights for studies in the field of intersectionality.) Philosophical research could be committed to clarify, whether conceptions really have to be viewed through ‚polarizing glasses‘. The assessment of possible ways out of the hierarchical dichotomic raster could be settled thoroughly in the context of subversive infiltration of established norms and values. This kind of request would not entail a great revolution at first instance. However, revisiting the conception of “situated knowledges” (D. Haraway) may offer a theoretical grasp on genderness without any androcentric or other lopsided traps. For even feminists themselves are not immune to ideology! For Haraway, the possibility to meet the constraints of knowledge consists not in the ‘view from nowhere’, but rather in marked positions and perspectives. Haraway compasses the claim of cognition not to be disposed to arbitrariness, but to be applied constructively in the persuit of knowledge. A (self)critical reflection of conceptual dichotomies could make problematic gender connotations and values transparent instead of reproducing them. A pluralistic scope on research items could foil existing dualistic-hierarchical patterns of thinking by multiple constructive, subversive and interactive infiltrations. This need by no means result in a total destruction of values. The accretion of diverse new criteria can be understood as a utopian experiment with open outcome. The aim is, at least, to liberate concepts from hierarchical binarity.

Feminist epistemologists have long been concerned with clarifying the legitimate roles that social and ethical values might play in the acceptance or justification of empirical theories and beliefs. Their concern stems, at least in part, from what Louise Antony has defined as the ‘bias paradox’ (1993). Since to be a feminist is, at least, to be committed to a cluster of political and ethical values about the injustice of discrimination against women, feminists cannot claim value neutrality for their inquiries. But, if knowledge requires value-neutrality, then feminist values cannot play any legitimate roles in the justification of empirical theories.

This paper is divided in two sections. In the first, after providing some background discussion about the role of values in empirical research, I present a defence of the view that neither autonomy nor value neutrality are desirable ideals for the justification of theories and beliefs. My argument here is greatly indebted to Elizabeth Anderson’s defence of the situatedness of knowledge. As I also make clear in this section, Anderson remains committed to the necessity of impartiality for knowledge. In the second section I offer an argument for the claim that knowledge does not require impartiality because practical interests can make the difference between knowledge and mere true belief (Cf, Stanley, 2005). I conclude the paper with some observations about how the rejection of impartiality for knowledge offers a vindication of some versions of standpoint epistemology against the challenges posed by feminist empiricism.

There is widespread agreement on the claim that all kinds of values may, even in quite bizarre ways, lead individuals or communities to formulate theories and hypotheses or to acquire beliefs that happen to have quite a lot of epistemic mileage. In other words, it is undisputed that contextual social and political values, of all sorts, might play helpful or not so helpful roles in the so-called context of discovery. Feminist values and commitments to the promotion of women’s interests can play the same roles.

There is no necessary relation between the endorsability of the values driving a bit of research and the epistemic value of the theories or beliefs produced as a result. Good values can lead to bad theories. That is, theories which are false or empirically inadequate or with little explanatory power. Bad values, on the other hand, can lead to good theories. Hence, the mere fact that bad values played a role in the formulation of a view is not sufficient to determine that the theory is epistemically bankrupt (Anderson, 1995a, p. 76). It appears reasonable, however, to take the bad history of a theory to license the need for a thorough scrutiny of its empirical adequacy.

The need for scrutiny in such cases does not imply that values can or should always be screened out when we consider the justification of theories or beliefs. Quite the opposite might be true, if, as feminist epistemologists hold, enquiry is inevitably value-laden in the sense that allows for the unavoidable presence of values in the justification of theories and beliefs. The value-ladeness of justification in the natural sciences is a consequence of the under-determination of scientific theories by all available empirical data (Quine, 1980). Often whether any given observation conflicts with, or offers evidence in support of, a given theory might well depend on the background assumptions of the theorist.

It is not just factual assumptions that feature in the background and contribute to justification, values can play the same role. Cognitive values might directly lead one to prefer a theory to another on grounds such as simplicity, ease of applicability, or prospect of future explanatory fruitfulness. But contextual values can also play a similar role; they may offer support to background assumptions which are not at stake when the justification for specific theories is being considered.

The point can be further strengthened if we note that much knowledge, including scientific knowledge is concerned with social kinds. This is especially true in the social sciences, but it is equally applicable to medicine where many of the classifications used are driven by a concern with promoting human health. The very distinction between a pathogenic and non-pathogenic element is drawn so as to track human health (Anderson, 1995b, p. 44). In this way, contextual values become embedded in the very content of theories. Their influence goes well beyond the mere context of discovery.

Feminist empiricists are committed to the claim that the grounds for accepting a theory should only make a reference to factual evidence and to cognitive values. This position is best understood in terms of the notion of impartiality as developed by Hugh Lacey (2005). A theory’s acceptance is said to be in accordance with impartiality when the theory is best supported by the empirical evidence and manifests the cognitive values to a higher degree than its rivals (p. 230). Thus, impartiality requires that moral and political values do not appear among the grounds for accepting a theory so that its justification is rationally binding on all irrespective of the contextual values they might endorse. Contextual values, however, are permitted to play numerous roles in accordance with impartiality. First, they are embedded in the research programmes or strategies that lead to the formulation of any theory. Second, contextual values are crucial to an assessment of whether applying the theory in practical contexts is at all useful. That is to say, these values are essential to assessing the significance of the theory. Third, contextual values play a role in the selection and classification of the empirical data that can count for or against a theory. Thus, for instance, interest in the promotion of human health is at the basis of the classification of some agents as pathogenic. This is a classification that is deployed in the description of the phenomena that can count as evidence for or against medical theories about the causes and natures of some diseases. Fourth, since contextual values play a role in the selection of the factual data against which the theory is measured, and since supporters of different values might use different data as the phenomena that might confirm or disconfirm their theories, if the domain of study is amenable to study under more than one research programme, then before any theory can be accepted more than one programme needs to be developed so that the theory that is finally accepted is better confirmed by the data selected under its research programme (and manifests the cognitive values more highly) than any other competitor theory is confirmed by the data selected under its own programme (Lacey, 2005, p. 230).

Impartiality is compatible with the value-ladenness of enquiry because it is independent of value neutrality, where the latter is understood as the requirement that values play no role in the justification of theories (Lacey, 2005, pp. 240-7; Anderson, 2004, 3). Impartiality requires that cognitive values and factual considerations alone count as evidence for or against the truth of a theory. However, impartiality permits that contextual values are relevant to an assessment of the significance of a theory. In this manner, contextual values can play a positive role in theory choice in accordance with impartiality.

Defenders of impartiality argue that contextual values cannot count as evidence for a theory but can play a role in the assessment of its significance. Their argument presupposes that practical interests cannot make the difference between mere true belief and knowledge, but this presupposition is false. My argument for this claim is based on the well known fact that knowers need not be able to rule out all incompatible possibilities- no matter how remote- in order to count as having knowledge. Instead, being in a position to rule out only those alternatives that are relevant is sufficient. Social and ethical values can play a role in determining which alternatives are relevant in a given situation and in this manner contribute to the evidence for theories and beliefs. For example, in medicine, the important ethical value of not harming patients, makes even quite unlikely scenarios relevant and thus determines that in order to count as having knowledge of the properties of a given compound scientists will have to engage in extensive testing and be able to rule out many alternative possibilities including some that have quite low initial probability.

If these considerations are right practical interests and social values do make a difference to knowledge that shows, contra feminist empiricism, that impartiality is not a desideratum of empirical inquiry.

Analyses of migration and trafficking focus on the flow of persons from poorer to wealthier countries. In relation to health care, these accounts emphasize either the drain of resources from poorer countries, as skilled medical personnel migrate to developed economies, or the burden placed on developed economies by the immigration of disadvantaged populations. Medical tourism, in which the flow of persons is reversed, raises a different and even more critical set of ethical difficulties at the juncture of medicine, mobility, and justice.

Typically, medical tourists travel from a wealthy country to a poorer one to obtain medical care at a substantially discounted rate. Agencies market package tours combining medical services in a hospital or clinic with convalescence in a hotel or resort style accommodation. Historically, medical tourism consisted largely of female patient/tourists seeking elective plastic surgeries at a discount. Recently, the numbers of patient/tourists traveling for organ transplants has surged. Reproductive services constitute a booming part of the industry.

Bioethics rarely reflects on medical tourism; yet, annually, more than a million Americans alone travel as patient/tourists. Some conventional health insurance companies have begun to market package tours. A growing genre of private companies specializes in medical tourism, matching patients with providers, and arranging travel, accommodation, translation services, and recreational or tourist activities. Studies suggest that the marketing of medical tourism is even more advanced in the UK, than in the US.

Health care analysts in the US predict that medical tourism will soon become a structurally integrated part of the delivery system, encouraged as a means of reducing costs. An operation costing $30k in the US costs $6k in Costa Rica, including recuperation on the beach. India’s first for-profit hospital promotes “First-World Health Care at Emerging Market Prices” to an international clientele. Some employers and insurance providers in the US are exploring medical tourism as a low-cost alternative to local care. The government of India, in conjunction with for-profit providers, is now actively pursuing a “subcontracting” relationship with the British National Health Service for the outsourcing of medical care, that is, for shipping British patients to India to receive care. Thus, medical tourism not only shifts resources within the “host” country, from the local population to profit-generating foreigners, but also threatens to undermine guarantees of care in the tourist’s home country.

At the same time, countries in Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe have embraced medical tourism as a key element of economic development. In 2003, the Singapore Ministry of Health launched Singapore-Medicine, a “multi-agency government-industry partnership committed to promoting Singapore as a world-class destination for advanced patient care.” Through Singapore-Medicine, the government’s Economic Development Board collaborates with its Tourism Board to “brand and market” Singapore’s health care services internationally. Singapore plans to attract 1 million medical tourists annually by 2012 and to become a major competitor to well-established markets in South Africa, Thailand, and South America. Recent amendments to Singapore’s Human Organ Transplant Act eliminated the prohibition against payments to living donors. Despite laws against organ trading, Singapore has engaged the worldwide advertising firm DDB to “handle all marketing and advertising communication for its Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA) campaign,” and is already attracting foreign clients.

Following a similar strategy, the government of India actively promotes collaboration between for-profit health care providers and the tourism industry. Finance Minister Jaswant Singhi’s 2003 budget made the development of India as a “global health destination” official government policy. Medical tourism is frequently identified as India’s most important growth industry.

India’s development policy for medical tourism specifically targets “reproductive outsourcing” as a key sector of economic growth. Surrogacy produces nearly $500 million a year in revenue in for-profit clinics. Under guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research, women recruited as surrogates, who are almost invariably poor and frequently illiterate, sign away, often with a thumbprint, any relation to the children they bear. Policies actively isolate the surrogates from both donors and clients, while children are immediately removed from the surrogate at birth. These practices insure the alienation of the surrogates from the social and generative aspects of pregnancy, reducing them to the status of rented wombs.

Marketing strategies in the industry specifically contrast the conditions of surrogacy in the West with the practices of surveillance and confinement to which Indian surrogates are subjected. Frequently, surrogates are housed in hostels attached to for-profit medical clinics, where they are constantly monitored. Clinics advertise the regimens of exercise and diet and the “supervision” by medical personnel to which surrogates submit. One American client remarked, “[In the U.S.] You have no idea if your surrogate mother is smoking, drinking alcohol, doing drugs. You don’t know what she’s doing. You have a third-party agency as a mediator between the two of you, but there’s no one policing her.”

The ethical difficulties of medical tourism arise from the exploitation of inequities of wealth and power, both between the home and “host” countries and within the “host” country itself. Efforts to employ medical tourism as a form of cost-containment in the US and Britain exemplify the exploitation of social inequity within the home country as well.

These policies differentially aggravate the subjection of women, reinforcing their poverty and powerlessness, as well as their status as property. Policies that alienate the surrogate from pregnancy and birth, subject her to surveillance and discipline, and reduce her social relations to an economic calculus constitute a paradigm of the commodification of the body to benefit governmental power and wealth.

Some argue that prohibiting or even criticizing payments to poor women in India who serve as surrogates constitutes paternalism, if not imperialism. This argument ignores the effect of these practices in reinforcing the very structural inequities of power and wealth that subject women in the first place. The collaboration of governmental power and economic privilege in the aggressive marketing of the wombs of poor women may provide an isolated, marginal economic gain for a particular woman, but it systematically secures and consolidates her status as property. Similarly, structural inequities are reinforced when medical tourists buy organs in poorer countries, just as gender inequities are intensified when medical tourists travel to Turkey to practice sex selection.

My paper argues that medical tourism not only constitutes an “internal drain” on the “host” country’s health care system, comparable to the external drain of personnel and wealth due to immigration, but also that it depends on and reinforces structures of subjection, as well as the systematic disparities of wealth and power that they produce. Whatever wealth results from this industry, there is little, if any, evidence that it ameliorates existing economic and social inequities, while it clearly depends not only on the commodification of the body and the rendering of persons as property, but also on entrenched and historically determined inequities that differentially affect women.

Les périmètres à géométrie variable que couvrent ces trois notions - féminisme, science et valeurs – ainsi que les interminables discussions que leur mouvance engendre justifient l’analyse d’une illustration concrète de leurs interactions et des opportunités qu’elles génèrent : la mortalité maternelle, une tragédie inacceptable et gardée sous silence.

Thème du cinquième objectif du millénaire qui vise à le réduire de 75%, ce problème de santé publique, cette atteinte aux droits humains, touche entre 10 et 20 millions de femmes dans le monde chaque année, plus particulièrement celles d’Afrique subsaharienne et d’Asie du Sud-Est. Il est estimé que 15% des 135 millions de naissances donnent lieu à des complications chez la mère (hémorragie, infection, avortement, hypertension, travail prolongé,…) qui nécessitent des interventions dans le cadre hospitalier (anesthésie, césariennes, transfusion sanguine,…). L’accès à un personnel qualifié lors de l’accouchement et aux soins requis en cas de complications est parfois impossible ou refusé. La non-assistance à ces femmes en danger entraîne annuellement le décès de 536.000 d’entre elles. Des millions d’autres évitent la mort de justesse, la morbidité sévère les menant à une incapacité temporaire ou définitive (fistule, infection, dépression, …) qui renforce leur dépendance ou justifie leur exclusion de la communauté.

La Science semble avoir depuis longtemps rempli une bonne partie de son contrat. Dans le domaine médical, les interventions de base à caractère préventif ou curatif ainsi que les soins à prodiguer d’urgence sont connus et validés. Les décès maternels sont évitables à 95%. La production (éducation, formation) et la gestion (ressources humaines et structurelles) du savoir-faire, tout comme les méthodes de mise en œuvre des politiques nationales de santé maternelle au sein du système de santé font cependant encore l’objet de nombreuses critiques et controverses. Les bienfaits du progrès scientifique ne touchent pas toutes les populations et n’atteignent guère les femmes pauvres du Sud qui vivent en milieu rural.

Les Valeurs semblent aussi bien cadrer la thématique. En terme de droits humains, de nombreuses déclarations (DUDH, 1948), conventions (CEDAW, 1979) et lois inscrivent le droit des femmes à la vie, au meilleur état de santé susceptible d’être atteint , à une grossesse souhaitée et une maternité sans risque. Sur le terrain par contre, les lois ne sont que rarement appliquées. Censée garantir la protection des femmes, l’affectation des ressources nécessaires à la politique de santé maternelle et la qualité des soins, l’éthique renvoie en réalité souvent au système dominant qui dévalorise la femme et ses nombreuses contributions à la société. Certains docteurs refusent ainsi de fournir des moyens contraceptifs ou de pratiquer l’avortement. La famille d’une mère en danger ne pourra payer que pour sauver le nouveau-né.

Le système patriarcal par ses codifications multiples perpétue les flagrantes inégalités et injustices. Fidèle à l’adage « Diviser pour mieux régner », il se nourrit des divergences d’opinion que les différents courants féministes défendent. Le malaise encore perceptible des féministes lorsqu’on évoque la maternité n’en est pas le moindre exemple.

Alors que certaines féministes redéfinissent leur rapport à la maternité en se concentrant sur les aspects sociaux (famille multimodale et autonomie) et la réalisation de soi (désir et plaisir d’enfanter), une brève analyse des risques liés à la maternité dans les pays du Sud met en exergue les causes profondes de discrimination et de violence auxquelles la condition féminine reste confrontée globalement, et questionne brutalement notre sens des priorités. Un décès maternel chaque minute. Que faut-il de plus ?

Le caractère structurel et transversal de cette violence envers les femmes rappelle le bas âge du Féminisme transnational, les limites de son champ d’action mais aussi la nécessité d’adresser les spécificités propres à chaque communauté.

En ces temps de crises économique et financière, la privatisation des services et profits et la socialisation des pertes précarisent encore plus fortement les femmes, accroissent les inégalités sociales de santé mais soulignent également à quel point certains éléments (santé, environnement, les droits fondamentaux) appartiennent à l’humanité tout entière. Les grossesses désirées ou non exposent les femmes à des dangers physiques, mentaux et sociaux qui menacent leur bien-être, parfois leur vie. Cette réalité ne peut laisser aucune féministe indifférente, sa solidarité et son engagement politique doivent dénoncer cette atteinte aux droits humains de la femme et mener des actions qui visent à confronter et responsabiliser les acteurs et les états, négligents ou assassins.

La pluralité des féminismes et des maternités ne peut nous faire oublier que chaque minute, dans le monde, une femme meurt en donnant la vie. Utilisant positivement les connaissances scientifiques et les valeurs universelles, l’action féministe se doit de tout mettre en œuvre pour éliminer la mortalité et la morbidité maternelles, une réalité d’autant plus choquante qu’injustifiée.

Science is very much recognized as giving new life to mankind and this new life means advancement or progress. Science is utilitarian because its discoveries and inventions satisfy human needs. Feminists perceive these impacts of science and technology though there exists a negative side of science and technology about which feminists are critical. Sal Restivo blames science as responsible for generating new social problems, which Sandra Harding accounted positively. Harding evaluates science and technology as both progressive and regressive.1 I shall analyze Harding’s feminist views of science and then I shall explain the standpoint of women scientists of Bangladesh.

I

Is science value free? Can science ignore ethics? Sometimes it is said that science cannot be blamed from such standpoints. But feminists hold that science presents theories and develop technologies which are used to the domination of race, class and gender. Science is blamed for hiding this fact in various ways.

The claim that science is value neutral is wrong. Scientists cannot overlook the consequences of the ideas, beliefs or conceptions which they uphold. Scientists are consciously and intentionally involved in their approach to new inventions and as such cannot be indifferent to the social consequences.

Feminists reject the claim that science is value neutral; they say, “theoretical science is pure science but often misused and abused”. New reproductive technologies have been strongly opposed by the feminists as these technologies have immense adverse effects on women’s health. Feminists for long time are opposing new reproductive technologies on several grounds especially that these have detrimental effects on women bodies which eventually lower women’s positions in the misogynous cultures. Moreover, these reproductive technologies restrict women’s reproductive choices widely. Thus it is observed that scientific researches and related inventions have been largely biased by sexism and androcentrism. Renowned feminist, such as, Sandra Harding, Ruth Hubbard, Carol Gilligan and Anderson hold that sexist and androcentric views are responsible for harmful research in biology and in the social sciences. Carol Gilligan revealed certain facts regarding development of woman personality and morality as necessary for the conduct of social relations which were previously acknowledged as immature, deviant and chaotic. Biological and psychological interpretations emphasize the qualitative traits of male but degraded those of female. Feminists argue that this is because androcentric biases illusioned the research at every stage.2

II

In Bangladesh women are more neglected than men in all the spheres of development. But it is true that women folk must be included in the mainstream development program. Different sociological, anthropological and philosophical studies have taken place in order to find out women problems. This in turn leads to the claim that discrimination level is to be minimized. Women rightists’ groups are very active in this respect. It has been seen that women are lagging behind men in education sector. Education is considered as the most important phenomenon in enhancing women’s position in the society. For women to play role in the development of the country and to fit themselves in decision-making stages they need education urgently.

In Bangladesh the visibility of women in public sphere began during the twentieth century but it was a slow process. With the liberation of the country women began to appear in public sphere on socio-politico-economical grounds. But opportunities for women were not equal. But gradually more and more women appeared in public service, and the social atmosphere seemed to be liberal for women. But now-a-days there exists a mixed attitude regarding women’s outward workplace. Large number of people believe the traditional view that women’s primary workplace is the home – the family; but a liberal expectation is growing in the society that women will share the public workplace with men. The liberal ideology supports women’s higher education for women’s higher job opportunity. A large number of women are now seen in public and private offices, and also in banking services. In political areas also number of women appearances increased. Women came forward as business holders in the country. Nevertheless, the conservative ideology as against the liberal ideology is still very influential in the country.

I shall also explain women scientists’ perceptions of science. In Bangladesh there are few women scientists (i.e., those who are university faculty members or are working in the areas of medicine and technology) because girls are not encouraged for science study. Moreover, women in scientific research and workplace are not much interested in feminist matters. Generally, women in science believe that science is objective, logical and a rational pursuit. As such we find that like the western scientists here also women scientists uphold the concept of value-free pure science and do not consider the misuse of technology.

Women scientists, except a few, do not believe that there is any biasness between science and nature. They think that the questions of manipulating and degrading the nature are philosophical questions, that is to say value question, not scientific questions. Women scientists like to measure things from the social point of view, for example, the social problem they face is called the gendered family roles problem. No matter whether women are scientists they have to maintain their gender roles – this is the pressure they feel. Beyond this, they do not like to respond to the question whether science is ‘male’ oriented or the question that the manner their research is structured is a ‘male’ one. It appears that women scientists have less thought to feminist questions also.

In Bangladesh women scientists are more involved in their struggle to place themselves in the line of male-stream scientists for which they avoid to participate actively in feminist movement. Once they take this stronghold position in their field, they will open the path for their next generation scientists to see clearly what the social scientists are seeing, i.e., to see philosophical questions. This will enable them to challenge the regressive part of sciences.

Many feminist philosophers of science have critiqued traditional scientific method, arguing that scientific method essentializes the subject and neglects to consider the cultural factors that may be at play in describing gender, racial and cultural differences in intelligence, mating strategies and other contentious issues. By extension, evolutionary theory, particularly as it pertains to the human mind, has often been critiqued for being status quo affirming. Responses to both of these conceptual frameworks have been laced with much antagonism, and it is this dimension that I wish to explore in my submission to the Feminism, Science and Values conference.

My objective here is not to provide a commentary on the value of these ideas, even though I do think that they have much value, and have contributed much to our understanding of sexual differences. Regardless of “who’s right and who’s wrong”, or who can contribute what to the study of gender and with what accuracy is not my concern, but rather how we can unify the two perspectives.

Massive amounts of literature in social psychology tend to demonstrate the existence of an in-group and out-group bias. In-group biases are biases that encourage the individual to think more favorably about their own group, whereas out-group biases tend to collapse “outsiders” into a homogenous group, rather than considering them as individuals (Quattrone 1986). This bias is omnipresent, even when an “other group” is not available for comparison (Gaertner, Iuzzini, Orina and Witt 2006). The sense of importance and identification that one gains from their involvement with a particular group has little, if nothing to do with the aims of the group – the simple function of belonging is what matters (Tajfel 1970, Brewer 1979). This is a function that occurs regardless of the content of the group – be it feminist scholars versus evolutionary psychologists, or English students versus Cultural Studies students – differences are exaggerated, and a sense of superiority develops. Attempts to reduce this bias have involved placing an emphasis what groups of people share or have in common. This has been used in contemporary anti-racist and anti-sexist discourse to some avail (Crisp and Beck 2005), though many people, such as Taylor (2004) “We all have the same blood” ideology, saying that it subsumes real and significant differences and serves as a cover for racist beliefs. While this is useful, it is only useful to an extent in understanding the bodies of literature that feminists and evolutionary psychologists put forth.

Buss (1995) observes that feminists and evolutionary psychologists report many of the same findings about our social world, and thus their observations are not all that different. I am proposing a psychoanalytic reading of the exaggerated differences between feminists and evolutionary psychologists. In addition to the social psychological research, I intend to draw on Freud’s work in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, Group Psychology and Formation of the Ego as well as his essay, “The Taboo of Virginity”. Secondly, I intend to draw on Anna Freud’s work The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense to illuminate how and why we protect our ego from injury and how this pertains to academic debate surrounding issues of science and gender. Our desires to protect out egos from injury inhibit our ability to take in and process information in a fair manner, and this is the link that I wish to make, as it is something that I think gets annihilated in discussions of either evolutionary psychology or feminist theory: just how often basic social psychology becomes implicated in traditional “academic” objectivist and subjectivist discourses alike.