Sociology of Knowledge

I will primarily approach the study of pirate knowledge networks through a sociology of
scientific knowledge (SSK) perspective. While the sociology of knowledge is not intended to access the
validity of a truth claim, it does have the capability to explain the development and genesis of particular
theories. As Karl Mannheim argues, modern science cannot be accurately understood as long as its
social origins are unknown or obscured. In his book Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers, David
Turnbull completes a thorough study on the construction of medieval gothic cathedrals. By utilizing
comparative analysis Turnbull is able to demonstrate the construction of technoscientific knowledge in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by restructuring the cathedral as a “large-scale laboratories where
knowledge spaces were coproduced through a process of contingent assemblage” (Turnbull 2000)?. I
will undertake a similar approach in my analysis of pirate knowledge construction by re-orientating
pirate social networks as epistemic communities capable of creating knowledge (Knorr-Cetina 1999)?.
Further evidence for this framework can be seen in Naked Science, a collection of works edited by
Laura Nader, which provides numerous case studies of the development of legitimate scientific
knowledge within non-Western cultures from anthropological and SSK perspectives (Nader 1996)?.
Turnbull's work lends support to the concept of “messy practices” being able to produce valid scientific
knowledge (Turnbull 2000)?. Post-Kuhnian science studies as a whole has recognized that science is not
a field isolated from social institutions or values, which supports to the notion that pirates were able to
make valid contributions to science.

Postcolonial Theory and Subaltern Studies

I plan to situate this project firmly within the discourse of postcolonial standpoint and subaltern
studies. As Amartya Sen points out in Development as Freedom, Western science is highly respectful of
authority. Sen lists “the governor, the minister, the military junta, the religious leader” but I believe that
the he could have easily included the “qualified” scientists among this list of authority figures. It is
unsurprising that contributions to “official” knowledge by non-experts are either overlooked or
commandeered by authority figures. In order to cross the great divide between modern science and
other knowledge systems science must become unprivileged, a concept that is supported by both
subaltern studies and feminist standpoint theory (Turnbull 2000)?.
Sandra Harding's approach to postcolonial studies attempts to close the “gap between
marginalized interests and consciousness” and explore “the way the dominant conceptual schemes
organize social relations, including those of scientific and technological changes” (Sandra G. Harding
1998)?. According to Harding, the marginalized perspectives of women and postcolonial peoples,
including the pirate-criminal epistemic community, brings to light aspects of both nature and modern
science that are overlooked by the institutions which produce “official” knowledge. However, the
adoption of some medical practices such as acupuncture and indigenous medical practices into Western
medicine is an indicator that the Western scientific community itself realizes the value of indigenous and
traditional sciences (Sandra. Harding 2006)?. Michael Ada's work, Machines as the Measure of Men,
focused on the bias and prejudice through which dominant groups viewed marginal groups. While STS
scholars such as Sandra Harding, have have brought the feminist perspective to this discussion, I seek to
give a stronger voice to other marginalized groups, specifically criminals.

Cultural Cognition
It is important not only to challenge the accepted structure of modern science, but also to
question how it is that these sciences came about. Falling in line with the DPDF theme, this project
analyzes concepts of deviance, norms and intelligence in the primitive and criminal mind and their
relation to cognitive theory in STS. As Foucault points out in Madness and Civilization, there are forms
of social control which need deviance in order to impose their version of normalcy - versions which
impose ideology disguised as social, mental, or moral health. But cultural analysis of deviancy has gone
beyond this negative critique: several scholars have demonstrated that while pathologizing the scientific
“other,” science also appropriates their contributions, and its history is promptly cleansed of this
muddled past. For example, Weatherford notes how native American’s indigenous pharmacology
included bioactive substances still in use today (such as curare in eye surgery) (Weatherford 1991)?. This
dissertation will examine a rich, underutilized resource in which there are many such examples of
individuals operating outside of the norm; yet producing valid scientific and technological discoveries -
some of which may have made their way into the mainstream of Western science and technology.
Drawing on theories of the “primitive mind,” I demonstrate that individuals operating outside of
the norm are just as capable of producing valid scientific and technological contributions as Western
science experts. As Bronislaw Malinowski has pointed out, we will not fully understand the structure of
human civilization until we have determined how culture relates to both the physical environment and
human biological equipment. In The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization, published in 1931,
Charles Aldrich presents his interpretation of the “primitive man” and basic human nature from a Jungian
perspective (Malinowski 1926)?. Aldrich emphasizes two major points a) the existence and activity of a
racial unconscious is the fundamental basis of cultural phenomena and b) the overwhelming importance
of a gregarious instinct in the development of society. In this respect I align myself with Malinowski,
who did not agree with Adrich's theory, but felt that in order to respond to these pressing issues it was
necessary for psychology and anthropology to come together. The relationship between anthropology
and psychology has continued to develop in recent years. In 1995 Edwin Hutchins proposed that the
combination of cognitive theory combined with anthropological methods could produce a new
interpretation of cognitive science. Hutchins then developed his “cognition in the wild” approach – the
study of cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory – to compare traditional
Micronesian and modern navigational systems, as well as computational and cognitive systems on a
larger scale.
Navigation as a metaphor has a long use in the human sciences, dating back to ancient the Greek
use of spatial mapping as mnemonic technique and the invention of “cognitive maps” in contemporary
cognitive science. Most recently in science and technology studies the study of Polynesian navigation
has played an important role in postcolonial studies projects, such as those by David Turnbull and Ward
Goodenough. My project builds on the tradition of navigational and maritime studies and cognitive
theory by creating a comparative study between cognitive studies of indigenous navigation and my own
work in criminal sciences and technologies. Utilizing Hutchin's theory of cultural cognition, this case
study brings to light new meanings and interpretations of deviance and criminality, and will contribute to
the transformation and understanding of contemporary cognitive science.

The Social Construction of Technological Systems

I believe that the best way to approach another potential category of study in this project, the study of
access, appropriation and alternative use of technology, is through a social construction of technology
(SCOT) viewpoint. Unlike the empirical programme of relativism, SCOT allows for more analysis of
historical cases. This perspective views technologies as a social constructs, taking into account the social
groups concerned with particular artifacts and the meaning assigned to those particular artifacts. The
modification of merchant ships by pirates fits into the SCOT theory of technological development
though alternation of variation and selection. Following Pinch's and Bikjer's perspective, I treat both the
successes and failures of pirate technologies as equally important in their contributions to the
development of technology and technoscience (Bijker 1987)?.

Adas, Michael. 1989. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of
Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Aldrich, Charles Roberts. 1931. The primitive mind and modern civilization, International library of
psychology, philosophy and scientific method. London; New York: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co.; Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk society : towards a new modernity. London; Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage
Publications.
Bijker, Wiebe. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the
Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
Brokensha, David., Dennis M. Warren, and Oswald. Werner. 1980. Indigenous knowledge systems and
development. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.
Clifford, James. 2001. Writing culture the poetics and politics of ethnography ; a School of American
Research advanced seminar. Berkeley [u.a.: Univ. of California Press.
Delbourgo, James, and Nicholas. Dew. 2008. Science and empire in the Atlantic world. New York:
Routledge.
Eglash, Ron. 1999. African fractals : modern computing and indigenous design. New Brunswick N.J.:
Rutgers University Press.
---. 2004. Appropriating technology vernacular science and social power. Minneapolis [u.a.: Univ. of
Minnesota Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1965. Madness and Civilization; a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. 1980. Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings,
1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures; selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
Goodenough, Ward Hunt., Mac. Marshall, and John L. Caughey. 1989. Culture, Kin, and Cognition in
Oceania : Essays in Honor of Ward H. Goodenough. A Special publication of the American
Anthropological Association, no. 25. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
Goonatilake, Susantha. 1998. Toward a global science : mining civilizational knowledge. Race, gender,
and science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Harding, Sandra G. 1998. Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.
Harding, Sandra. 2006. Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Hess, David J. 1995. Science and technology in a multicultural world : the cultural politics of facts and
artifacts. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hutchins, Edwin, and NetLibrary, Inc. 1995. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
Knorr-Cetina, K. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Lansing, John Stephen. 1991. Priests and programmers : technologies of power in the engineered
landscape of Bali. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1926. Crime and Custom in Savage Society, International library of psychology,
philosophy, and scientific method. London; New York: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.;
Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Mannheim, Karl, Louis Wirth, and Edward Shils. 1936. Ideology and utopia; an introduction to the
sociology of knowledge, International library of psychology, philosophy and scientific method.
London; New York: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd.; Harcourt, Brace and company.
Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique : an
experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nader, Laura. 1996. Naked science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge.
New York: Routledge.
Penrose, Jan., and Peter Jackson. 1993. Constructions of race, place and nation. London: UCL Press.
Rosch, Eleanor. 1992. The embodied mind cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge Mass.:
 MIT Press.
Shostak, Marjorie. 1981. Nisa, the life and words of a !Kung woman. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Sillitoe, Paul. 2007. Local science vs. global science : approaches to indigenous knowledge in
international development. Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology, v. 4. New
York: Berghahn Books.
Thomas, Nicholas. 1991. Entangled objects : exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the
Pacific. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Turnbull, David. 2000. Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of
Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge. Amsterdam; Abingdon: Harwood Academic ; Marston.
Weatherford, J. McIver. 1991. Native roots : How the Indians Enriched America. New York: Crown.