From climate change to COVID-19 to reproductive justice, there has been deep political polarization around science. Labs of Our Own provides a unique entry point into these twenty-first-century science wars by focusing on our affective relationships to science. The book delves into various sites where scientists, teachers, artists, and activists claim to create more democratic access to science--from DIY biology community labs to feminist classrooms to activist science practitioners. The reader will find that these claims for and attempts at democratic sciences not only impact what counts as science and who counts as a scientist but reconfigure who is included in the proper public. Instead of arguing for a knee-jerk defense of science against right-wing attacks, Labs of Our Own builds the case for a feminist, antiracist, decolonial, queer science tinkering practice that intentionally, politically, and ethically acts to produce new challenges to the definition and boundaries of the human.
Industry Reviews
"With clarity and care, Giordano investigates how race, gender, sexuality, and capitalism position us in relationship to capitalist science while showing the multiplicity of sciences flourishing outside it in DIY lab spaces. Dwelling with 'tinkerers,' practitioners of science outside of capitalism's well-funded labs, this book imagines the possibilities of a better, more just science in solidarity with Black, decolonial, and other feminisms." -- Kalindi Vora, * author of Reimagining Reproduction: Surrogacy, Labor, and Technologies of Human Reproduction *
"As students and academic workers speak out about university complicities in empire and accumulation, Sig Giordano's Labs of Our Own offers a heartfelt and street-smart pathway to the scientific works we need and the scientific cultures we need to leave behind. An essential read for teachers, scientists, tech workers, and anyone else who cares about how we make knowledge about our worlds." -- Lilly Irani, * author of Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India *