Alison Wylie Homepage

ALISON WYLIE
Department of Philosophy
University of Washington

M396 Savery Hall, Box 353350
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-5873
aw26@u.washington.edu

PUBLICATIONS,
PRESENTATIONS, &
CURRENT PROJECTS

My areas of specialization are philosophy of the social and historical sciences, specifically archaeology, and feminist philosophy of science. I'm interested in how archaeologists establish knowledge claims about the social and cultural past, and in whether (or in what form) ideals of objectivity can be sustained given feminist arguments for recognizing the central role that contextual values play in the research process. In both cases, I argue, the answers lie in an analysis of evidential reasoning. To explain how evidential constraints operate in archaeology I have developed models of analogical inference, hypothesis testing, and the role of background knowledge. And to explore the epistemic role of standpoint-specific interests and contextual values in the sciences, I am currently engaged in a study of feminist research programs in the social sciences. For a more detailed description of these interests see Research Interests.

News and Current Projects

Leverhulme Visiting Professor - University of Reading: I will be visiting the Reading Archaeology Department as a Leverhulme Professor for six months, January through June 2010. We'll be convening a series of case-based faculty/postgraduate seminars on "evidential reasoning" in the Spring term and a reading group on relevant STS literature in the Winter term. Reading University has just been awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize 2009 for the excellence of its Archaeology Department!

Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy: Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University) and I are the journal co-editors, and Sharyn Clough (Oregon State University) is book review editor, for the five-year term that Hypatia will be hosted by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington (2008-2013).
- for Hypatia news and updates, submission guidelines, special issue calls for papers: Hypatia at UW
- for electronic contents, subscription information, and permissions: Hypatia at Wiley-Blackwell

Feminist Legacies / Feminist Futures: the Hypatia editorial team and local advisors hosted a 25th Anniversary Conference celebrating Hypatia's contributions to feminist philosophy: University of Washington - October 22-29, 2009. The keynote panels will all be available online shortly: news of this when they're up and streaming! Conference website

Science Studies Network: this is an interdisciplinary forum for colleagues at the University of Washington who share interests in science and technology studies, founded in the Fall of 2007. In its first two years we convened a biweekly colloquium, focusing on "Democratizing Science" in 2008-209; this year SSNet is sponsoring a speaker series on "Representations in Science": SSNet

Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable: since its inception in 1998 I have co-organized this annual conference with Paul Roth (University of California - Santa Cruz) and James Bohman (St. Louis University). For current program information, and links to the annual Roundtable Special Issue of Philosophy of the Social Sciences, check the Roundtable website: Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable

Recent Publications

Books, Journal Special Issues, Reports

A More Social Epistemology: Decision Vectors, Epistemic Fairness, and Consensus in Solomon’s Social Empiricism, special issue of Perspectives on Science 16.3 (2008). Project Muse

Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions co-edited with Harold Kincaid and John Dupre, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. OUP website

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist, co-edited with Margaret W. Conkey, special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Volume 14.3 (2007). SpringerLink

Women, Work and the Academy: Strategies for Responding to ‘Post-Civil Rights Era’ Gender Discrimination, co-authored with Janet R. Jakobsen and Gisela Fosado, New Feminist Solutions, Barnard Center for Research on Women, 2007. Conference website / Report PDF

When Difference Makes a Difference: Epistemic Diversity and Dissent: special issue of Episteme: Journal of Social Epistemology 3.1-2 (2006). Episteme website

Thinking From Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology, University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 2002. UCPress website

Articles and Chapters

“The Appropriation of Archaeological Finds,” co-authored with George Nicholas, in The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation edited by James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk, Blackwell, in press (2009).

"Social Constructionist Arguments in Harding's Science and Social Inequality,” Hypatia 23.4 (2008): 201-211.

“Agnotology in/of Archaeology,” Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, edited by Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger; Stanford University Press, 2008, pp. 183-205.

“The Feminism Question in Science: What Does it Mean to ‘Do Social Science as a Feminist’?”, Handbook of Feminist Research, edited by Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Sage, 2007, pp. 567-578.

“Philosophy in/of Archaeology,” in The Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, edited by Stephen Turner and Mark Risjord; volume 14, Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Elsevier Science, 2007, pp. 517-549.

“Socially Naturalized Norms of Epistemic Rationality: Aggregation and Deliberation,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 Supplement (2006): 43-48.

"The Promise and Perils of an Ethic of Stewardship," Beyond Ethics: Anthropological Moralities on the Boundaries of the Public and the Professional, edited by Lynn Meskell and Peter Pells, Berg Press, London, 2005, pp. 47-68.

“Why Standpoint Matters,” in Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology, edited by Robert Figueroa and Sandra Harding, Routledge, New York, 2003, pp. 26-48.