Science and Inequality: A Political Sociology

Science and technology produce a wide range of benefits in society but they also create harm, both of which are unequally distributed across social groups and geographic regions. This incisive book provides a set of analytical tools to understand how inequality relating to science and technology is produced, and how the field can be reorganized to make good on its promise to improve life for all.

Using a range of evidence and examples, Frickel and Moore show that science and technology are closely bound up with social inequalities, including linked problems of poor health, environmental degradation, racism, and sexism. They use the frame of scientific inequality formations to investigate the technoscientific sources of unequal power relations in society, examining issues such as the underdevelopment of non-profitable technologies, how laws and markets direct scientific advances, and the exclusion of certain social groups from the creation of knowledge and solutions relevant to their lives. This timely book illuminates interventions that redirect science and technology toward more equitable ends with the potential to be more widely distributed, charting a path to a more just future.