Primate Visions:Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science
What counts as nature in the late twentieth century? How do we create scientific disciplines and histories of science? How are the issues of race and gender written into the ways we imagine the natural world? Why do we study animals? These fundamental questions are at the heart of primatology - the study of monkeys and apes - in the twentieth century. In Primate Visions historian of biology Donna Haraway builds the primate story - our scientific understanding of apes, monkeys, and humans - and explains its multi-cultural roots, its myths, its relation to gender and race.
Reviews
Primate Visions is an original and important book in the history of science. We have not been here before.
After my third reading of this book I remain stunned by the depth, precision, and innovation of her analysis.
Primate Visions is a genuine tour de force, uniquely combining intellectual history and the sociology of knowledge. It contains enough sheer insight and represents enough historical digging to fuel several scholarly careers. We leave the text genuinely enlightened on the changing boundaries between nature and culture, and on our own historical trafficking in these myriad forms of otherness.