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Monday, December 20th, 2010
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1:59p
Rejection of Enlightenment values by well-educated people is a global phenomenon, as prominent in Washington, D.C., as in Delhi. Yet the devaluation of science as knowledge does not float randomly above class position. The postmodern and constructivist stance on multiple knowledges is affordable by some classes, but not others. Indeed, this privilege of disbelief creates class antagonisms. Farmers as a class, because of their position in production, and the pressures of reproducing farm livelihoods, are driven to science of necessity. They cannot afford ideology: rather, an empirical pragmatism is rooted in, and necessary for, their material life. The same constraints do not apply to activists; indeed, controversy is their mode of production (Herring 2006: 478).
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