o bjectivity and situated k nowledge

1. objectivity and situated knowledge Social Research Methods Amy Hinterberger 2013-14

2. outline • Difference, knowledge and struggle (who is seen as objective, what counts as legitimate knowledge etc). • Objectivity: What is it? How is it defined? How are sociologists objective? • Situated knowledge and location: does the location/place of the researcher matter in conducting research

3. theorizing objectivity in research Difference matters: Correcting false generalizations implicit in much classic thought about social life (e.g. Henry’s ‘Essay on the Rights of Man’ and Wollstonecraft's response) Questioningwhether categories of gender and race , which we often take for granted really have an ‘objective’ and stable meaning (e.g. changing ideas of race in America) Considering the role of ideas of gender and race in structuring society itself (e.g. gender and the public/private sphere).

4. STRUGGLE General points about knowledge and struggle. Knowledge is not given, or fixed, but struggled over and contested. Who is a legitimate social actor? Early feminist ‘s showed how women were excluded from sociological research: Carol Gilligan (1982), Catharine MacKinnon (1987), Strathern (1988) If we think of it this way then: • Knowledge is not neutral, but power-imbued and value-laden • Knowledge is hierarchical and organisational • Knowledge is both object (what counts as knowledge) and effects (its resonance).

5. How do we know this? • More knowledge is not necessarily more power (Sedgwick’s (1990: 4) example of Mitterand and Reagan conversing in English) • Knowledge is not necessarily rationally validated (though it frequently suggests itself as such) • Knowledge that does not reflect dominant interests is frequently ignored

6. Example – ‘sperm and egg ‘ Martin: ‘Egg and sperm’ = A scientific fairy tale The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles, Emily Martin, Signs, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Spring, 1991),.

7. gender theorists • Knowledge is created within power-struggles over gendered meaning (Dorothy Smith 1990) • Knowledge is struggled for by certain groups or individuals who are not assumed to possess knowledge by default (Sandra Harding 1990) • Knowledge should be transformed rather than normative knowledge aimed for (Donna Haraway 1991)

8. feminist epistemology (remember: feminism not a synonym for women) feminist epistemology is an approach to difference and power • To value counter-dominant knowledges • To identify bias in researcher and existing knowledge claims • To transform hierarchical relations that structure knowledge production (e.g. community based/ collaborative work/ not for self-gain and so on)

9. objectivity and validation Descartes - 17th century philosopher: the central task of epistemology is to prescribe methods for establishing objective truth. • Contemporary debates about objectivity occur on two poles with neopositivism at one end and relativism at the other • Neopositivists contend that objectivism and empiricism are the only alternatives to epistemic chaos, pluralism, relativism etc.

10. positivist tradition - objectivity • assesses objectivity exclusively on the basis of what it calls ‘internal’ grounds, namely the relations between the hypothesis and the evidence that tends to support or undermine it. • knowing the social context within which knowledge claims are produced is irrelevant to assessing the objectivity of these claims, since social circumstances are ‘external’ to reason. (Jaggar 2014:377)

11. challenges to this view of objectivity • Other approaches focus on how knowledge has been shaped by social context, including the interests of researchers and funders. • Derive from Marxism, American pragmatism, German critical theory, the philosophy of science and postmodernism. • All share a commitment to investigating how knowledge is actually made, (sociology should be used to study sociology itself!)

12. Rather than seeing objective knowledge as guaranteed by nonperspectival and value-neutral reason, the alternative conception assumes that objectivity is always situated, partial, provisional and incomplete.

13. standpoint • ‘the position of women is structurally different from that of men, and… the lived realities of women’s lives are profoundly different from those of men.’ (Nancy Hartsock, 158) Standpoint is an approach that transforms Marxist thought into feminist materialism, through making real the sexual division of labour. Standpoint emphasizes making peripheral knowledge central (to sociology/feminism) in order to transform social relations.

14. ‘strong objectivity’ Sandra Harding (in required reading this week) argues for ‘strong objectivity’: ‘The problem with the conventional conception of objectivity is not that it is to rigorous or too ‘objectifying,’ as some have argued, but that it is not rigorous or objectifying enough; it is to weak to accomplish even the goals for which is was designed, let alone the more difficult projects called for by feminism and other social movements’ (Harding 1993:51)

15. ‘strong objectivity’ (continued) What is strong objectivity? • Less partial; view from below, not above 2. How do we attain this? Start from marginalized lives as both epistemology and method • Challenge to subject/object distinction in knowledge – why not just strong methodology to correct false objectivity? Because this retains dichotomy which objectivity relies on. • Putting of researchers and researched on the same plane; good practice, so views of marginalized are prioritised.

16. Patricia Hill Collins, ‘black feminist epistemology’ • embraces standpoint theory as an epistemology rooted in practical and everyday life. • introduces a major critique by suggesting that taking the standpoint of women – implicitly, mainly white women – obscures the experience of others, such as black women. • Hill Collins envisions a three fold matric of class, gender and race that are salient to people’s experiences.

17. Haraway: situated knowledges ‘feminist objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges’ (Haraway 1991: 188) Haraway’s‘situated knowledges’ complicates Harding’s perspective by focusing on problems of assuming in advance who produces best knowledge. • There is no such thing as a ‘view from nowhere’ • Embodied nature of objectivity – come back to in location • Accommodating paradox, deconstruction and contestation • Vision: Danger of appropriating or romanticising “vision from below”; instead “standpoints” are not innocent.

18. replace God’s eye view What Haraway calls the god-trick. ‘The only position from which objectivity could not possibly be practiced and honoured is the standpoint of the master, the Man, the One God, whose Eye produces, appropriates, and orders all difference. No one ever accused the God of monotheism of objectivity, only of indifference. The god-trick is self-identical, and we have mistaken that for creativity and knowledge, omniscience even.’ WITH

19. critical theory & standpoint epistemologya selection of key thinkers ‘Humanist’ Marxism • Theodore Adorno & Max Horkheimer (Critical Theory/Frankfurt School) • Raymond Williams & E.P Thompson • Stuart Hall & Cultural Studies Feminist Standpoint Epistemology • Dorothy Smith • Sandra Harding • Patricia Hill Collins (Intersectionality, multiple standpoints) Post-colonialism • Franz Fanon • Edward Said • Subaltern Studies

20. summing up – objectivity in social research Understanding of power in feminist epistemology and critical theory: • Power not imposed only, but negotiated, understood and/or embodied. A range of marginal/central subjects. • There are no a priori determinant power-relations. • One is located not in advance of social and cultural contexts but through those contexts, through one’s actions.

21. epistemological approach • Researcher’s location (as well as researched) is productive of (different) knowledge, but not always in anticipated ways • Since location changes over time, and in context, so too will knowledge claims • Attention to effects of knowledge claims (over time) instead of to their pure validity or otherwise (how is knowledge in turn located and locatable?)

22. thinking about the researcher, not researched A critical approach to objectivity means focusing on the researcher, not just the ‘researched’: • location of researcher is produced through a range of power-indexes (gender, but also other categorical signs – race, class, sexuality – as well as the non-indexical). • In relation to standpoint, the question is not, is this person a woman and therefore oppressed, but how does this person negotiate gender and where does this locate him/her; how is that knowledge embodied?

23. seminar • Critical discussion of the required readings and lecture • Consolidating understanding of standpoint epistemology and strong objectivity approaches to philosophy of social research • Thinking critically about objectivity and situated knowledge in relation to your own project