Londa Schiebinger

In the natural course of events, humans fall sick and die. The history of medicine bristles with attempts to find new and miraculous remedies, to work with and against nature to restore humans to health and well-being. In this book, Londa Schiebinger examines medicine and human experimentation in the Atlantic World, exploring the circulation of people, disease, plants, and knowledge between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. She traces the development of a colonial medical complex from the 1760s, when a robust experimental culture emerged in the British and French West Indies, to the early 1800s, when debates raged about banning the slave trade and, eventually, slavery itself.

Massive mortality among enslaved Africans and European planters, soldiers, and sailors fueled the search for new healing techniques. Amerindian, African, and European knowledges competed to cure diseases emerging from the collision of peoples on newly established, often poorly supplied, plantations. But not all knowledge was equal. Highlighting the violence and fear endemic to colonial struggles, Schiebinger explores aspects of African medicine that were not put to the test, such as Obeah and vodou. This book analyzes how and why specific knowledges were blocked, discredited, or held secret.… (mehr)

In Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science, Londa Schiebinger explores “how gender – both the real relations between the sexes and ideological renderings of those relations – shaped European science in the eighteenth century, and natural history in particular. Crucial to [her] story is that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who described nature were almost exclusively male. Female naturalists were a rare breed, female taxonomists even rarer” (pg. 2). Schiebinger continues, “Gender was to become one potent principle organizing eighteenth-century revolutions in views of nature, a matter of consequence in an age that looked to nature as the guiding light for social reform” (pg. 4). Beyond gender, Schiebinger takes into account the roles of race and class and how Enlightenment scientists mirrored their own societies in their descriptions of the natural world.
Examining Linnaeus’ taxonomy of plants, Schiebinger writes, “Linnaeus simply brought traditional notions of gender hierarchy whole cloth into science. He read nature through the lens of social relations in such a way that the new language of botany incorporated fundamental aspects of the social world as much as those of the natural world” (pg. 17). Further, “differences between the two sexes were reflections of a set of dualistic principles which penetrated the cosmos as well as the bodies of men and women” (pg. 38). Examining the classification of mammalia, Schiebinger writes, “Linnaeus created his term Mammalia in response to the question of humans’ place in nature. In his quest to find an appropriate term for (what we would call) a taxon uniting humans and beasts, Linnaeus made the breast – and specifically the fully developed female breast – the icon of the highest class of animals” (pg. 53). Schiebinger continues, “Early accounts of anthropoid apes pouring into Europe in this period often told more about European customs than about the natural habits of apes” (pg. 76). She writes, “By and large, female sexual organs were studied in order to highlight the animal side of human life. In some instances woman’s sexual organs were said to link her directly to apes” (pg. 89). In terms of race, Schiebinger writes, “For European anatomists, blacks were exotic. But, as we shall see, to men of the academy, European women were in many ways just as exotic” (pg. 116). Much of their taxonomic studies took into account aesthetics, classifying race based on ideas of beauty. Schiebinger writes, “The consolidation of the (predominately male) medical profession coincided with a scientific revolution in definitions of sex and the development of a new image of women as essentially nonscientific. It also coincided with the revolution in definitions of race and the attempt to ground scientifically the exclusion of men of color from science” (pg. 142). Schiebinger further writes, “Scientific racism and scientific sexism both taught that proper social relations between the races and the sexes existed in nature. Many theorists failed to see, however, that their notions of racial and sexual relations rested on contradictory visions of nature” (pg. 146). Additionally, “Racial science interrogated males and male physiology, while sexual science scrutinized European subjects” (pg. 146). In this way, “Naturalists did not draw their research priorities and conclusions from a quiet contemplation of nature, but from political currents of their times” (pg. 183).… (mehr)

In The Mind Has No Sex?: Women and the Origins of Modern Science, Londa Schiebinger analyzes “the rise of modern science in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing especially on the circumstances that led to the exclusion of women” (pg. 3). Schiebinger works primarily through summary, picking out examples of men and women scientists and examining their work against the backdrop of the scientific revolution. In this way, The Mind Has No Sex? is largely a synthesis of other historians’ work with her own addition of change over time through her expanded scope.
In seeking to dispel the idea that science was always associated with masculinity, Schiebinger writes, “It would be a mistake the see the exclusion of women from subsequent institutions of science as a foregone conclusion. The landscape was a varied one, rolling with peaks of opportunity and valleys of disappointment. Traditions that to some twentieth-century academicians seemed inevitable had, in fact, been crafted through a process of conflict and negotiation in previous centuries” (pg. 11). Prior to the seventeenth century, women were encouraged to learn a variety of subjects. Schiebinger writes, “Learned discourse was not only a feminine pastime but one favorable to women” (pg. 19). Women fostered that pastime through the salon, a network for discussing scientific ideas without the adversarial nature of publication or the university. In this period, “natural philosophy remained a part of elite literary culture. Noblewomen were able to insinuate themselves into networks of learned men by exchanging patronage or public recognition for tutoring from men of lesser rank but of intellectual stature” (pg. 65). Beyond the salon, Schiebinger argues that certain sciences practiced by women remained under their control during the early scientific revolution.
Through the eighteenth century, the practice of midwifery and herbal medicines largely remained in women’s control. Schibinger describes them as “examples of arts developed by women most often for the benefit of other women” (pg. 104). Eventually, however, even these fell under men’s control. Early attempts to limit midwives’ influence stemmed from an attempt to limit access to birth control, of which they possessed knowledge. Schiebinger writes, “The ascendancy of the male expert had consequences far more serious than symbolic disputes over priority. The replacement of women midwives by male gynecologists changed the development of gynecological practices. Women lost control not only over their own health care, but over definitions of their own minds and bodies as well” (pg. 118).
Images played a key role as well. Schiebinger describes how images portraying Scientia as female acted as a compliment or opposite to the male scientist (pg. 134). This complimentary concept fostered ideas of separate spheres based on biology. Sciebinger writes, “Even in this age [the late eighteenth century] where males and females were considered essentially perfect in their difference, difference was arranged hierarchically” (pg. 191). While Schiebinger does not examine race in her monograph, she does reference it as part of this hierarchy. These hierarchies of difference helped to justify removing women from the scientific world. Schiebinger writes, “The private, caring woman emerged as a foil to the public, rational man. As such, women were thought to have their own part to play in the new democracies – as mother and nurturers” (pg. 217). All of this culminated in the professionalization of science and the privatization of the home, which barred women’s access to science (pg. 245).… (mehr)