“What can we learn from the Haraway/Paper Tiger video about ways to teach/engage others to interpret the cultural dimensions of science?”

In this playful video on National Geographic coverage of primates, feminist historian and cultural analyst of science, Donna Haraway, advances many interpretations on issues that range from Big Oil’s response to decolonization to the sexuality of primate researchers. The video was made soon after she had completed the research for her book, Primate Visions (1989), but the video does not make evident the archival evidence or methodology of interpretation, including her criteria for selecting what aspects of the wider social context are relevant. Not surprisingly, therefore, the interpretations in the video provoke reaction from viewers—how can she support that claim?

In this case, we want you to turn any reactions you have—positive as well as negative—into a genuine inquiry into cultural interpretation of science. How does one link some aspect of science to some aspects of the social and cultural context? Does interpretation follow the same or different rules of evidence and reasoning from scientific claims? Where do questions come from? Where do interpretative themes come from? How do metaphors work in science? How does the outside social context get inside the science—indeed, is this the right image of what is going on? And so on.

By the end of this case, we want you to prepare two-page “Resource Guides for teaching/engaging others to interpret the cultural dimensions of science.” The audience you should envisage for these guides are students like you were 2 weeks ago, before you started the course or students like those you teach in discussion sections. But before you draft these guides we’ll work together to stimulate each other’s thinking about the specific interpretations of Haraway and the more general issues of formulating cultural interpretations of science.