From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpoint_theory
"Standpoint theory is a postmodern method for analyzing inter-subjective discourses. This theory concerns the authority generated by people's knowledge and the power such authority has to shape people's opinions in daily life. Standpoint theory's most important concept is that an individual's own perspectives are shaped by his or her experiences in social locations and social groups. Standpoints always involve more than one factor. For example, if you look at different Hispanic women, their standpoints may resemble one another in terms of race and biological sex categories; however, if their socioeconomic status is different, their standpoints are not completely the same. These perspectives are the core point of view for individuals to see the world. Standpoint theory focuses especially on gender perspectives to see how feminine viewpoints shape women's communication with themselves, others, and the world. Standpoint theory has a huge effect on how people's perceptions change from one thing to another. A standpoint is a place from which one views and sees the world, that determines both what one focuses on as well as what is obscured. Depending on one's situation, one's standpoint may vary from that of another individual who may be of a similar status.
Standpoint theories are said to remind people why a naturalistic conception of knowing is important. Knowledge helps people understand part of the world that they normally tend to not understand. Gaining knowledge occurs only in specific circumstances and has real consequences. These consequences can have an effect on how a person can live his or her life. It matters politically as well as epistemically which concepts are intelligible, which claims are heard and understood by whom, which features of the world are perceptually salient, and which reasons are understood to be relevant and forceful, as well as which conclusions credible.[1]
Standpoint theory supports what feminist theorist Sandra Harding calls strong objectivity, or the notion that the perspectives of marginalized and/or oppressed individuals can help to create more objective accounts of the world. Through the outsider-within phenomenon, these individuals are placed in a unique position to point to patterns of behavior that those immersed in the dominant group culture are unable to recognize.[2] Standpoint theory gives voice to the marginalized groups by allowing them to challenge the status quo as the outsider within. The status quo representing the dominant white male position of privilege.[3]
The predominant culture in which all groups exist is not experienced in the same way by all persons or groups. The views of those who belong to groups with more social power are validated more than those in marginalized groups. Those in marginalized groups must learn to be bicultural, or to "pass" in the dominant culture to survive, even though that perspective is not their own.[4] For persons of color, in an effort to help organizations achieve their diversity initiatives, there is an expectation that they will check their color at the door in order to assimilate into the existing culture and discursive practices.[5]"
"
Local knowledge. Definition- "Knowledge situated in time, place, experience and relative power, as opposed to knowledge from nowhere that’s supposedly value-free." This aspect of standpoint theory focuses on the idea that there is no possible way to have an unbiased perspective or viewpoint of the world. People live in a social hierarchy, and therefore, all have different ways of life and have viewpoints of the world according to one’s place in the world. These viewpoints are based on experiences that one may have compared to someone else in a different part of the hierarchy.[15]
Situated knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is and it is and always will be partial. This type of knowledge however, is seen as being more complete in the minds of those who are subordinate in society compared to those who are of a higher status in society. The belief is that those who come from a lower status community have a more complete knowledge on account of the fact that they endure so many more struggles in their lifetimes. Adding to this knowledge, they also ponder more regularly about how those from higher status communities live on a day-to-day basis. On account of their experiences and their patterns of thought, those who come from lower status communities "experience" more and have a more complete and diverse knowledge of the world. This provides them with a better foundation for their worldviews and their standpoint.[16]
Proletarian standpoint suggests that the impoverished and other members of lower levels of the societal hierarchy are the ideal knowers. This statement is only true if they understand the class system and the struggles that they endure on a daily basis. Feminists often substitute the term "women" for "proletariat" and they have a good foundational claim for their cause.[17]
Strong objectivity. Definition- "The strategy of starting research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups, thus providing a less false view of reality. "This aspect of standpoint theory focuses on the fact that research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups is usually forgotten or intentionally ignored.[16]
Strong objectivity introduces two new ideas to standpoint theory.
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- 1. People who are in a marginalized group have more incentive to understand perspectives other than their own over those who belong to a more powerful group. Those who have power or are in a more powerful group have less reason to understand how those who are in a lesser position than them live or are treated.
- 2. People are in a marginalized group have little incentive to defend the current status quo of the age. They have no reason to keep the status quo as it is because they are at the bottom instead of the top reaping the benefits.[16]
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"Standpoint projects critically engage with natural sciences in two ways. Some
delineate how particular sciences, such as primatology (Haraway 1978/1989)
or biology (Rose 1983), constituted their hypotheses and methods to meet the
sexist and androcentric (and often racist and eurocentric) needs of dominant
social groups, thereby providing distorted and partial accounts of nature's
regularities and underlying causal tendencies and revealing otherwise hidden
features of dominant ways of thinking. These and others also directly analyzed
the inadequacy of sciences' standards for achieving objectivity or good
method, and how the plausibility of these standards has been maintained (see,
for example, Harding 1992b and Keller 1984)."
Fracking - the science "works", but that doesn't mean it applies as such when enacted
"Moreover, standpoint theory
claims that some kinds of social locations and political struggles advance the
growth of knowledge, contrary to the dominant view that politics and local
situatedness can only block scientific inquiry.
"
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history of criticism.. or discussion?
" This is notably
the case for the perennial charges that it is essentialist and relativist, which
are two of philosophers' persistent criticisms. Finally, for some philosophers,
public controversy over a philosophic project is itself a demerit for the project.
Such relevance marks the project as not really philosophic."
Why keep it?
the persisting ability of its central theses to stir up reflection and debate is in
itself an important resource for philosophy of science. This is so for a two-part
reason.
First, standpoint theory on principle does not take sides in central troubling
choices that postmodernism raises, especially for modern science and its
philosophy, which is the exemplar par excellence of modernity's achievements.
Rather, it continually negotiates between and tries to redirect some of the most
powerful energies and directions of modern and postmodern projects.
Variety of stakeholders:
second, the nature and implications of such a move require the broadest
possible examination and reflection by a maximally diverse group of society's
stakeholders
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Rather, the persistence of controversy points to strengths and
powerso f the theory that such interpretationsf ailed to identify or confront. It
is the most plausible and reasonable readings of the theory that are truly unsettling,
for they are less easily defeated, and they conflict with other deeply-held
beliefs and assumptions that we had thought the only plausible and reasonable
ones. It is the most reasonable readings of standpoint theory that articulate
significant ethical and epistemological dilemmas of our era, not to mention
some of the most significant political challenges. It is in engaging with these
aspects of standpoint projects that, I argue here, can make philosophy of science
socially relevant
so, is still contentious, but still exists
valuable sites of controversy
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bad science - led to bad revelations of women
"Thus, much of the early feminist research was understood to have "studied
up," focusing its explanations on dominant social institutions and their ideologies,
rather than to have "studied down" by trying to explain the lives of
marginalizedg roups.9T his is one importantd ifferenceb etween "perspectivalism"
and standpoint theory"
"Such projects require both science and politics, as Hartsock (1983/2003)
put the point. As science, such projects were to see "beneath" or "behind" the
dominant sexist and androcentric ideologies that shaped everyone's lives in
order to identify the actualities of women's everyday lives."
"We need not-indeed, must not-choose between
"good politics" and "good science," standpoint theorists have argued, for the
former can at least sometimes produce the latter, and the latter, at least in some
cases, requires the former."
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" Feminists were interested not just in explaining
how sciences worked, leaving their projects and practices unchanged-as was
the case with the new sociologies and histories of science, as well as with both
traditionala nd postpositivistp hilosophieso f science. Instead,f eministsa imedt o
change scientificp ractice,t o producee mpiricallya nd theoreticallym ores uccessful
research.T he new researchw as needed for public-agendaf eminist struggles
for equal pay and legal protection at work, for an end to violence against women,
for more informeda ttention to women'sh ealth and reproductiveis sues,f or state
support for homemakers, for equitable treatment of women and their children
after divorce, and for many other desired social changes"
" Third World began to
examine the destructive consequences of the imposition in the Third World of
First World scientific and technological assumptions and practices, it became
clear that far deeper and broader changes in scientific practice and philosophies
of science would be required if sciences were to speak also for the 70 percent
or so of the world's most economically and politically vulnerable women, men,
and children (see Braidotti et al 1994; Narayan and Harding 2000)."
Nigeria
Four related features mark standpoint
theory's innovativeness in this respect.
First, as indicated, its goal is to "study
up."I ts concern is not to articulatew omen'so r some other marginalizedg roup's
perspective about the group's lives, though this frequently is an important step
in its process. Rather, it ambitiously intends to map the practices of power, the
ways the dominant institutions and their conceptual frameworks create and
maintain oppressive social relations.
Secondly, it does this by locating, in a
material and political disadvantage or form of oppression, a distinctive insight
about how a hierarchical social structure works. Thus Patricia Hill Collins
(1991) points out how sociology's labeling of Black women's lives as "deviant"
permits blaming Black women rather than a racist and sexist social structure
for the conditions of Blackw omen'sl ives.13D orothyS mith (1987) and Hartsock
(1983/2003) point out in different ways that women are assigned responsibility
for daily life. Then sociologists and political theorists label such childcare and
domestic labor as "natural,"th ereby exalting men'sa ctivities alone as distinctively
human achievements.
Third, it takes more than recording what women
or members of some other oppressed group in fact say or believe to identify
these distinctive standpoint insights
Moreover, standpoint approaches can be insightful even when one
cannot access first-personr eportsb y those from whose lives researchs tarts off
(throught he use of historicalr ecordso f peasants'o r other "subalterna"c tivities,
census data, etc.). So the perspectives of the oppressed cannot be automatically
privileged as articulations of reliable claims.
4. Finally, standpoint theory is more
about the creation of groups' consciousnesses than about shifts in the consciousnesses
of individuals. An oppressed group has to come to understand that
each member is oppressed because she or he is a member of that group-Black,
Jewish, women, poor, or lesbian-not because he or she individually deserves to
be oppressed. The creation of group consciousnesses occurs (always and only?)
through the liberatory political struggles it takes to get access to and arrive at
the best conception of research for women or other oppressed groups, among
the other goals of such struggles. Thus, feminist standpoint projects are always
socially situated and politically engaged in pro-democratic ways.14
THis is awesome!!
"7B ut
whose "problems"g et to count as scientific ones? Philosophy of science has
largely ignored the context of discovery since the failed efforts of Norwood
RussellH anson (1958) to develop a "logico f discovery."'"
RENEWABLES?! Support at a University
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Fascinating
"Perhaps those committed to the complete social neutrality of science are
still enthralled by a conflicting rhetoric with which Hanson's (1958) project
always had to contend. This rhetoric denied the desirability of identifying any
such "logic," and thus being able to demand any kind of accountability from
the context of discovery.1T9 his rhetoric expresseda principledd isinterest in
the origins of scientific problems, and stressed the importance of serendipitous
discovery, the banishment of any kind of constraints that might restrict development
of the insights of geniuses, and the virtues of the pursuit of truth for
truth's sake. From the perspective of such ideals, requiring any procedures of
accountability in the context of discovery, which the desired rationality of a
logic of hypothesis production could make possible, would constrain processes
and tendencies crucial to the advance of scientific knowledge"
" arts. Scientific
achievements were represented as being like the rationally inexplicable
feats of literary or artistic inspiration by great poets and painters. This rhetoric
distanced itself from-even opposed itself to-accounts of how the sciences routinely
responded to the practical needs of military conquest, national defense,
industrialization, European expansion ("Voyages of Discovery," "third world
development")c, ontrol of diseases,a nd the like. This humanisticr hetoric,w ith
its focus on the necessary liberty of individual scientists to obey no masters but
their own intuitions, still is highly influential in the natural sciences and their
public relations projects, if less often overtly articulated by philosophers. Yet
the disregardfo r accountabilityi n the context of discoverya ligns contemporary
philosophies of science with the older humanistic vision."
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S tandpoint theory focuses on how the choice and control
of research agendas are in the hands of research disciplines and the public
institutions that they service, not in the hands of the rational hypothesis evaluators
who are the imagined origins of and authorities on scientific projects in
conventional philosophy of science accounts. To put the issue another way,
standpoint theory extends
"For example, Donna Haraway (1978/1989) uses a standpoint approach to
show how in the United States and Europe the formation of primatology as a
field of study was shaped by conventional racist and sexist assumptions about
ideal reproductiveb ehavior and by the desires of administratorso f militaries,
prisons, and industries to control the populations whose lives they managed." Blah. But good for her.
1. philosophy of science reduced to epistemology?
2. role of group consciousness in the production of knowledge.
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"The feminist project
denies that a cognitive, technical core of modern Western science could itself
be immune to social influences, as did the "externalist"M arxian accounts no
less than the "internalist" accounts they criticized. Rather, this core is itself
shaped and legitimated through the kinds of activities in which its sponsors,
funders, and creators engage."
Makes me think of biocentrism
3. Reasonable constructionism
"By now, such studies seem to have undermined
any possible grounds to maintain that any aspect of the cognitive, technical
core of science exists that can escape such demonstration of its integrity with
its historic era.
Central here are studies of scientific method (Schuster and Yeo 1986), of
standardsf oro bjectivitya nd neutrality( Novick 1988, Proctor1 991,S hapin and
Schaffer 1985), the search for and standards of truth (Shapin 1994). Even standards
for mathematical proof have been shown to be tied to particular practical
projects (Kline 1980). Yet scholars using standpoint methods of "starting from
the lives of the oppressed" have expanded the range of such projects. They
have studied gender influences on theory choice in chemistry (Potter 2001),
the constitution of fields of study such as primatology (Haraway 1978/1989),
and the parasitic relation between the advance of modernity for some and the
insistent retention of pre-modernityf or others in the "transfer"o f FirstW orld
sciences, technologies, and their rationalityt o the "underdevelopedw" orld( see
Braidotti et al. 1994 and Shiva 1989)."
4. Should Philopsophy of Science Seek social relevance?
"I suggest.
In the first place, it must have the conceptual resources to recognize a full
array of ways in which the sciences, including their cognitive, technical cores,
participatei n social relations.S econdly,i t musth ave such resourcest o recognize
how it, too, is fully participant in the social relations of the day. Philosophy of
science, too, has a "political unconscious.""
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