Race, Gender, Difference I: Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins

1. Race, Gender, Difference I:Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins Wednesday, April 18, 2012 Instructor: Sarah Whetstone

2. Confronting “Difference” in Sociology • Roots: anti-colonial revolutions, civil rights struggles, women’s movements and development of feminism, gay rights movements • Social categories were publicly tied to shared identities, experiences, or struggles • Shared identities became bases of claims for political and social recognition • Sociologists began to theorize difference in new ways

3. Objectives for Theorizing Difference • Correct false generalizations implied in classical sociological theories and establish the limits of existing theory. Bring categories of difference back in! • Question whether social categories (gender, race) really have objective, stable meanings. Ask how these categories are historically produced and applied, and how they naturalize human difference. • Biological theories of race are unsound--- race is an historical invention • Sex vs. gender– Biology is implicated in reproductive difference, but gender is a social construct • Ask how gender and race have structured society itself. • Essentializing women as emotional, men as rational contributed to the division of public and private spheres, and to our understanding of how the state functions

4. Debates in Theorizing Difference • Essentialism vs. Constructionism • Does identity exist first as a “real” category, or did identity-based movements and other social processes create identity categories? • Gender, race, and other identities are social constructs, but they are also powerful and shape our lives whether or not we choose them ourselves. • Positivist objectivism vs. Subjective knowledge • Is it possible to hold the “view from nowhere?” • Many sociologists argue that all knowledge is situated– it comes from some particular perspective that shapes the production and meaning of the knowledge itself

5. Epistemology From the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge, truth and belief. Concerns the justification of knowledge claims: How can we know what we know? Epistemological positions: empiricism, positivism, pragmatism, Black feminist thought, etc. Fundamentally a political question: What counts as truth, by what criteria, and who gets to determine it?

6. Dorothy Smith: “The Conceptual Practices of Power” • Canadian sociologist, born in 1926 in England • Studied social health and survey methods, gender • Best known for pioneering “feminist standpoint theory” • Main Concepts: • Everyday world as problematic– a thing to be explained • Critiques the objectivism of positive social science as a male-centric endeavor • Situated knowledges • Bifurcated consciousness • Standpoint theory

7. Dorothy Smith: Discuss Groups 1-5: • What are the “two difficulties” Smith describes at the beginning of the piece? • What is the role of sociology in governing, and how does this shape the content and practice of sociology? • Smith argues that women are excluded from the “governing conceptual mode.” What does she mean by this, and how does it happen? Give specific examples. • What is the concept of “bifurcated consciousness?” How is the concept similar to Marxist notions of “alienation?” Groups 6-10: • What does Smith mean by “situated knowledge,” and how does this concept constitute a critique of objective science? • Explain Smith’s concept of “standpoint theory.” How does this offer a potential solution to the problems identified? • What does Smith argue we must do after we start theory from situated knowledge? (324-325)

8. Exclusion of women from the “governing conceptual mode…” • All knowledge begins with concrete, sensory experience • Elite men get to pass “beyond the local,” and transcend their bodies, into the conceptual order • Women and other dominated groups are confined to menial tasks, and remain fixed in local, practical knowledge

9. Situated knowledge, Standpoint theory, Critique of sociology… • Current sociology creates abstractions which are useful for governing, but objectivity is an illusion produced by the artificial separation of knowledge from realm of local • Instead, we need situated knowledge– which starts and ends with local, practical experience • Standpoint theory– offers a way for women to produce knowledge rooted in experience of everyday world • Abstractions must be rooted in situated knowledge– practical and local– to be correctly informed • But, abstraction is still necessary because the local is shaped by conditions beyond our comprehension and control

10. Patricia Hill Collins: “Black Feminist Epistemology” • Born 1948 as a factory worker’s daughter, became president of the ASA • Began career as a schoolteacher– concerned with critical theories of education and knowledge production • Draws on Smith’s standpoint theory, but highlights the unique experiences of Black women in the US • Main Concepts: • Critique of standpoint theory • Development of Intersectionality • Black feminist epistemology

11. Patricia Hill Collins: Discuss Groups 1-5: • Describe Collins’ basic critique of positive science. • What are the “dominant knowledge validation processes?” Give examples of how knowledge is usually coded as “legitimate.” • What is “subjugated knowledge?” How is Black women’s knowledge subjugated? What dilemmas do Black women face even after they attain positions of authority in academia? Groups 6-10: • How does Hill Collins both build on and critique Smith’s concept of standpoint theory? • What responses have Black feminist scholars made to the positivist dilemma? • According to Collins, what are the most important contributions of Black feminist thought within and outside its own constituency?

12. Dominant knowledge validation process, or how knowledge gets created Elite “gatekeeping institutions legitimize knowledge and grant credentials “Science” Truth claim Positivist standards: Distancing of subject from object Absence of emotions Absence of political or ethical agenda Advance through adversarial debate

13. Dominant knowledge validation process, or how knowledge gets created Elite “gatekeeping institutions legitimize knowledge and grant credentials “Science” Truth claim Black women “make it,” but now face new problems: Tokenism Incompatibility of BFT with other epistemologies, esp. positivism Black FeministThought: Historically blocked from literacy, credentials, and academic power

14. Subjugated knowledges • All social groups have their own kinds of knowledge– own map of how world works– including unique insights produced from the social conditions in which they live • But the knowledges of groups excluded from education and the dominant public sphere is submerged or subjugated– covered up and buried, not acknowledged. • This makes it harder to investigate– so we must move outside formal expertise and listen to voices in marginal spaces.

15. Intersectionality • Cross-cutting forms of oppression (Kimberle Crenshaw) • We cannot understand the standpoint of a person by looking at only one form of oppression (critique of Smith’s standpoint theory) • Forms of oppression which structure society intersect to shape each other and to shape experience • Eg- Gender hierarchies shape the nature of racial discrimination, and vice versa gender race class nation sexuality age