“Such critiques remain unthinkable because of the real/constructed divide (sometimes formulated as a division between nature and culture), in which many map the knowledge of the real onto the domain of science (equating the constructed with the cultural).” Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 22.

“However, under both criteria well-being may be said to improve if people opt for the new alternative. Either way, a sufficient condition for welfare improvement is that people vote with their feet or their pocketbooks or their ballots for the modern over the traditional. Under the intrinsic criterion, the choice of new alternatives is evidence […]

“English Baconianism suited men who aimed to govern. ‘For knowledge itself is power,’ Bacon had declared, a memorable slogan that was often repeated during the following centuries. For the scientific programme that he launched, knowledge meant not only power over nature, but also power over people — including aristocrats exploiting their workers, England ruling her […]

“As Anderson and Morrison have observed: ‘Running through all these measures, whether major or minor in their effect, was the concern to stabilize the countryside politically. It was recognised internationally that the peasantry were incipient revolutionaries and if squeezed too hard could be rallied against the new bourgeois-dominated governments in Asia. This recognition led many […]

“The knowledge and power nexus is inherent to the reductionist system because the mechanistic order, as a conceptual framework, was associated with a set of values based on power that was compatible with the needs of commercial capitalism. It generates inequalities and domination by the way knowledge is generated and structured, the way it is […]