ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by very briefly sketching the structure of debates about the so-called 'demarcation problem' and offers a proposal for a theory of epistemic status, weaving together feminist epistemology, science and technology studies, and the work of Michel Foucault. A Foucauldian theorisation of power as productive enables an analysis of this generative role of negotiations of epistemic status. Code is especially interested in analysing women's 'positions of minimal epistemic authority', 'women's underclass epistemic status' and the structural blocks to the acknowledgement of women's contributions to knowledge. The chapter utilizes the concept of boundary-work as it is set out in Thomas Gieryn's later writing on boundary-work, which attempts to theorise a 'cartographical' approach to the study of the production of science's and scientists' credibility. It analyzes the spatial and cartographical metaphors, the concept of epistemic climate and the notion of negotiation.
