%0 Journal Article
%T Boundary
%A Maria do Mar Pereira
%J Science, Technology, & Human Values
%@ 1552-8251
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0162243918795043
%X Although the STS literature on boundary-work recognizes that such work unfolds within a ¡°terrain of uneven advantage¡± vis-¨¤-vis gender, race, and other inequalities, reflection about that uneven advantage has been strikingly underdeveloped. This article calls for a retheorizing of boundary-work that engages more actively with feminist, critical race, and postcolonial scholarship and examines more systematically the relation between scientific boundary-work, broader structures of sociopolitical inequality, and boundary-workers¡¯ (embodied) positionality. To demonstrate the need for this retheorization, I analyze ethnographic and interview data on scientific boundary-work in the natural and social sciences in Portugal, showing that scholars¡¯ gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the success of their boundary-work. I suggest, therefore, that in unequal societies where credibility is unevenly distributed, the conditions are not in place for some scholars¡¯ boundary-work to work. I draw on Sara Ahmed (and J. L. Austin) to argue that we must conceptualize scientific boundary-work as always potentially performative, but not always successfully so, and explicitly interrogate the actual conditions of performativity. Recognizing the links between inequality, embodiment, and non-performativity in scientific boundary-work will enable STS to better understand, and hopefully transform, the relations between contingent struggles over scientificity and entrenched structures of power
%K academic disciplines and traditions
%K expertise
%K epistemology
%K genders
%K justice
%K inequality
%K protest
%K other
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243918795043