Harding - method question

 19
"O ver the last two decades the moral and political insights of
the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists
to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have
explained gender, sex, and relations within and between the social and
natural worlds. From the beginning, criticisms of traditional research
methods have generated speculations about alternative feminist
methods. Is there a feminist method of research that can be used as
a criterion to judge the adequacy of research designs, procedures and
results? Is there a distinctive method that should be taught to students
wanting to engage in feminist inquiry? If so, what is it?"

avoid preoccupation with methods

- "what is it that makes some of the most
influential feminist-inspired biological and social science research of
recent years so powerful? I begin by indicating some variants of the
method question and their diverse origins.'"

20
issues of methods - men asking men about women
moral development in women - psychology - problematic

"Moreover, it is not just particular research methods that are the target
of feminist criticisms, but the fetishization of method itself. The practice
in every field of choosing research projects because they can be
completed with favored methods amounts to a kind of methodolatry
(in Mary Daly's memorable phrase) that sacrifices scientific explanation
and increased understanding to scientistic fashions in research
design (Daly 1973, 11)."

Psychology - legitimacy - blind imitation of "wrong" scientific methods!

scientisms

alternative feminist methods -
consciousness  raising (leaves researchers puzzled about what to do differently) - biology
21

specially feminist historical materialism - conflate Marxism and methodology, theory and epistemology? How does one go about figuring all of this out?

phenomenological approaches -

 They appear to argue that
feminist method is whatever is the opposite of excessive empiricism or
of positivist strains in social research. In particular they focus on the
virtues of qualitative vs. quantitative studies, and on the importance
of the researcher identifying with, rather than objectifying, her (women)
subjects (e.g., Stanley and Wise 1983). These critics draw attention to
misogynistic practices and scientistic fetishes in social inquiry that frequently
have had horrifying consequences for both theory and public
policy. However, the prescription of a phenomenological approach as
the feminist method ignores many of the well-known problems with
such ways of conducting social research. (These are problems also for
approaches to social inquiry labelled intentionalist, humanistic or
hermeneutical.) For example, there are things we want to know about
large social processes-how institutions come into existence, change over
time and eventually die out-that are not visible through the lens of
the consciousnesses of those historical actors whose beliefs and activities
constitute such processes.

22
Confusion - what is the feminist method?
As one sociologist protested, there are only
three methods of social research: listening to what people say (in
response to questions or in spontaneous speech), observing what they
do (in laboratory situations or in the field, collectively or individually),
and historical research. Therefore, she argued, there can't be a
feminist method of inquiry. And yet she would admit that the problem
of eliminating androcentric results of research appears to require more
than simply having well-intentioned individuals conduct research, since
we know that individual intent is never sufficient to maximize objective
inquiry.

Stasis - define some of these terms!

23
" How unique to feminism
are the techniques of evidence gathering used in the most widely acclaimed
examples of feminist research? Is it to these techniques that
we can attribute the great fecundity and power of feminist research in
biology and the social sciences?Different ways of gathering info Carol Gilligan listens to what women
say when presented with familiar examples of moral dilemmas-a traditional
method of inquiry, according to the sociologist cited earlier. But
she uses what she hears to construct a powerful challenge to the models
of moral development favored by Western psychologists (and
philosophers) (Gilligan 1982)"
Other research -
"Obviously some of the most influential
feminist researchers have used some very traditional methods. Of
course they do begin their research projects by listening more skeptically
to what men say and more sympathetically to what women say; they
observe both men and women with new critical awarenesses; they ask
different questions of history."

24

" on in feminist
inquiry than new methods of research? The "less" is that it is hard
to see how to characterize what is new about these ways of gathering
evidence in terms of methods. The "more" is that it is new
methodologies, epistemologies and other kinds of theories that are requiring
new research processes."


25
"Feminist researchers have argued
that these theories have been applied in ways that make it difficult to
understand women's participation in social life, or to understand men's
activities as gendered (vs. as representing "the human"). They have
transformed these theories to make them useful in such neglected
projects."





Methodologies? Theories? differentce? Calls positivism distorting

Epistemology


"For one thing, the mainstream Anglo-American tradition
has sharply distinguished epistemology from philosophy of science. The
former is construed as analyses of the nature and scope of "ordinary"
knowledge. The latter is construed as analyses of the nature and scope
of explanation for the natural sciences in general and/or for particular
sciences. Insistence on this rigid distinction shields both fields from the
kinds of epistemological questions arising from feminist scientific
research."

"Feminist epistemologies are responses to at least three problems arising
from research in biology and the social sciences. In the first place,
if scientific method is such a powerful way of eliminating social biases
from the results of research, as its defenders argue, how come it has
left undetected so much sexist and androcentric bias? Is scientific
method impotent to detect the presence of certain kinds of widespread
social bias in the processes and results of inquiry? In the second place,
is the idea of woman as knower a contradiction in terms? The issue
here is not the existence of individual women physicists, chemists,
astronomers, engineers, biologists, sociologists, economists, psychologists,
historians, anthropologists, etc. There have been many of these
throughout the history of science, and they have made important contributions
to this history (Alic 1986; Rossiter 1982). Instead, the issue
is that knowledge is supposed to be based on experience; but maledominance
has simultaneously insured that women's experience will be
different from men's, and that it will not count as fruitful grounds from
which to generate scientific problematics or evidence against which to
test scientific hypotheses. Feminist research in biology and the social
sciences has "discovered""

Finally, the more objective, less
false, etc. results of feminist research clearly have been produced by
research processes guided by the politics of the women's movement.
How can the infusion of politics into scientific inquiry be improving
the empirical quality of the results of this research? ("Think of
Lysenkoism! Think of Nazi science!")

26
"from a kind of "externalist" understanding of epistemologies that raises
skeptical questions about the adequacy of philosophers "internalist"
understandings-to borrow a contrast from the history of science. The
sociologists argue that epsitemologies are best understood as historically
situated strategies for justifying belief, and that the dominant ones in
mainstream philosophy of science fail to consider important questions
about the "scientific causes" of generally accepted beliefs, including
those in the history of science (Bloor 1977; Latour 1987; Latour and
Woolgar 1979). They criticize the assumption that only false beliefs have
social causes, and they call for accounts of the social conditions
generating historically situated true beliefs as well as false ones. These
sociologies of knowledge have all the flaws of functionalist accounts;
they implicitly assume as grounds for their own account precisely the
epistemology they so effectively undermine; and they are bereft of any
hint of feminist consciousness.4 Nevertheless, one can recognize the
value for feminist theorists of an approach that opens the way to
locating within history the origins of true belief as well as false belief,
and also epistemological agendas within science. Justificatory strategies
have authors, and intended and actual audiences. How do assumptions
about the gender of audiences shape traditional epistemological agendas
and claims?"

"This is perhaps the best place to point out that there have been at
least three main epistemologies developed in response to problems, such
as those identified earlier, arising from the feminist social science and
biological research. Each draws on the resources of an androcentric
tradition and attempts to transform the paternal discourse into one
useful for feminist ends.
What I have called "feminist empiricism" seeks
to account for androcentric bias, women as knowers, and more objective
but politically guided inquiry while retaining as much as possible
of the traditional epistemology of science.

What their authors call the
"feminist standpoint epistemologies" draw on the theoretically richer
resources of marxist epistemology to explain these three anomalies in
ways that avoid the problems encountered by feminist empiricism. But
postmodernist critics argue that this epistemology founders on the
wrecks of no longer viable enlightenment projects.
Feminist forms of
postmodernism attempt to resolve these problems, in the process revealing
flaws in their own paternal discourse. I have argued that the flaws
in these epistemologies originate in what they borrow from their nonfeminist
ancestors, and that in spite of these flaws, each is effective
and valuable in the justificatory domains for which it was intended
(Harding 1986).
28

Has impacted science:
"Epistemologicaclo ncernsh aven ot only arisenf rom feministr esearch
in biologya ndt he socials ciencesb ut also generatedit . So we havet raced
whati s distinctivein feministr esearchb ackf romt echniqueso f evidence
gathering, to methodologies and theories, and now to new hypotheses
about the potency of scientific method, about the scientific importance
of women's experience, and about the positive role some kinds of
politics can play in science."

29
1. Discovery of Gender and consequences
"However, it is indeed novel to analyze gender. The idea of a
systematics ocial constructiono f masculinitya nd femininityt hat is little,
if at all, constrained by biology, is very recent. One might even
claimt hat contemporarfye minismh as "discovered"g enderi n the sense
that we can now see it everywherei,n fusingd ailyb eliefs and behaviors
that wereh eretoforet houghtt o be gender-neutraIl.n boardr oomsa nd
bedrooms, urban architecturea nd suburband evelopments,v irtually
everywhere and anytime we can observe, the powerful presence and
vast consequences of gender now appear in plain sight."

gender as a viable analytic category
30
2.
"Women's Experiences as a Scientific Resource. Reflection on this
"discovery" of gender leads to the observation that gender-masculinity
as well as femininity-has become a problem requiring explanation
primarily from the perspective of women's experiences. A second
distinctive feature of feminist research is that it generates its problematics
from the perspective of women's experiences. It also uses these
experiences as a significant indicator of the "reality" against which
hypotheses are tested. It has designed research for women that is intended
to provide explanations of social and biological phenomena that
women want and need (Smith 1979). The questions that men have
wanted answered all too often have arisen from desires to pacify, control,
exploit or manipulate women, and to glorify forms of masculinity
by understanding women as different from, less than, or a deviant
form of men."

Down with this:

"On the other hand, I have been arguing that there is no good reason
to appropriate under the label of method every important feature of
the scientific process. How hypotheses arrive at the starting gate of
"science proper" to be tested empirically turns out to make a difference
to the results of inquiry. Therefore, this process must be critically examined
along with everything else contributing to the selection of
evidence for or against the maps of the world that the sciences provide."


" A Robust Gender-sensitive Reflexivity Practice. A third feature contributing
to the power of feminist research is the emerging practice of
insisting that the researcher be placed in the same critical plane as the
overt subject matter, thereby recovering for scrutiny in the results of
research the entire research process. That is, the class, race, culture and
gender assumptions, beliefs and behaviors of the researcher her/himself
must be placed within the frame of the picture that she/he paints. This
does not mean that the first half of a research report should engage
in soul searching (though a little soul searching by researchers now and
then can't be all bad!). Indeed, a more robust conception of reflexivity
is required than this"




Not really a "feminist" method - seems very feminist to me.