Fighting Science with Social Science: Activist Scholarship in an International Resistance Project

This paper draws on a socio-historic case study of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE) in order to consider the ways in which activists create and develop knowledge in movements around complex emergent technologies. Using documentary and interview data, and an analytic framework drawn from Eyerman and Jamison's cognitive praxis paradigm, the paper outlines certain conditions under which activists may be able to create both social and social scientific knowledge in support of their claims. The paradigm itself is also interrogated, and suggestions made for extending and refining the framework through incorporation of theories of knowledge drawn from science and technology studies.