In the early twenty-first century, scholars are beginning to argue that the emergent challenge for cultural studies of science is no longer to insist that science is open to critique because of its hegemonic agendas, but rather to develop procedures to defend the “reality” of scientific claims about such things as global warming, environmental degradation, evolution, the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV, and the putative tie between abortions and breast cancer (Latour 2004). As these and other well-established scientific claims come increasingly under attack by industry, right-wing religious groups, and anti-sex, anti-feminist, and homophobic conservatives in government, “social construction” has come to seem a tool that can be used effectively against many of the same groups it was developed to defend. As Haraway has been arguing for many years, perhaps what we need are simply more modest claims for science, acknowledging that it is not the knowledge but a knowledge, avoiding the hubris of the “god’s-eye view,” but nevertheless taking seriously the value of replicable, evidence-based claims.

This is an excerpt from Laura Briggs’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 208).