Reading notes of “The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader”

This book assembled a series of articles written by different researchers who positioned themselves as readers of Feminist Standpoint Theory, and it elaborated the consensus and controversies among these researchers. Overall, the editor Sandra Harding made it an introductory book to learn standpoint theory, the feminist standpoint, and the values and limitations of such a standpoint.

• Book Summary

Sandra outlined four chapters “The Logic of a Standpoint,” “Identifying Standpoints,” “Controversies, Limits, Revisionings,” and “Modern or Postmodern? Natural or Only Social Sciences?” Incorporating a wide range of research articles offered contentions of feminist standpoint from diverse perspectives using multifaceted justifications, the overlaps among these articles sometimes yielded feelings of lengthy and repetitive as the reader become clearer of the main concepts. Thus, I unfolded these concepts and the main arguments here.

The first chapter was designated to answer what is a standpoint and why does a standpoint matter.

“Standpoint theory emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a feminist critical theory about relations between the production of knowledge and practices of power. It was intended to explain the surprising successes of emerging feminist research in a wide range of projects… it was proposed not just as an explanatory theory but also prescriptively, as a method or theory of method (a methodology) to guide future feminist research” (Harding, 2003, p1). 

It denied the conventional assumption that the production of knowledge was politics-free and objective, without which the criteria of “modern science” such as generalizability and reproducibility can’t hold. It asserted that political ideation, especially the engagement with marginalized populations was beneficial to science, not merely as a surplus but as an innovative contribution to new possibilities for creating knowledge. As was summarized by the editor,

“Standpoint epistemologies have long counted among the most powerful challenges to the conventional view that true knowledge is value-free, disinterested, situationally transcendent.” (Harding, 2003, p37).

The second chapter identified the feminist standpoint from materialistic analysis borrowed from Marxism. The basic logic is to distinguish the materialist conditions of females from that of the males. One article inherited Marxist method to analyze females’ relationships with natural environment, substance production, mundane practices, work situations, and income, based on which the ideological, psychological, economic and social situations of females are systematically differentiated with those of males. The analysis is similar to how Marx compared the situations of bourgeois and proletariat.

The third and fourth chapters critically evaluated the standpoint theory and the feminist standpoint in terms of the controversies, limits, and revisionings, with a special focus on its relationships with and inspirations to postmodernism. There were two main criticisms to feminist standpoint. Many researchers critiqued the claimed feminist standpoint was white, bourgeois, and educated female elites, which directly fostered the emergence and development of Black feminism later. The second criticism centered on the lack of attention on the differences and diversities among females worldwide. This criticism reflected the conflicting responses of females to feminism that contended universally creating a single feminist standpoint mostly emphasized the commonalities of females and neglected their differences.

Overall, I summarized the values of the feminist standpoint theory as follows: (1) it is an epistemology resonates with “situated knowledge”, (2) it opposes to the assumptions of modern science and inspires discussions around the objectivity of knowledge; (3) it identifies the “margin” and “third person perspective” as positions to generate knowledge; (4) it expands the applications of Marxist materialistic analysis to women and other marginalized communities; (5) it strengthens the postmodernist and postcolonial contentions on power, oppression, and resistance. Although the last chapter implies its relationships with natural science, I did not see related discussions.

• Personal Reactions

This book raised my interest in incorporating critical theory into my future research. I personally agree with standpoint theory as an epistemology as well as a methodology. I went through a shift of methodology from the positivist approach to the naturalistic approach with a blur sense that there was something wrong with and something missing in the quantitative measurement and statistical analyses that I conducted during my undergraduate research projects, but I was unable to give a name of my concerns and feelings at that time. It was the first semester of my Ph.D. program when I took the qualitative method course when I learned the epistemologies and ways of gaining knowledge behind these two approaches, finally being able to make sense of my suspicion of quantitative methods. While the course confirmed and enhanced my belief in quantitative methods, I still lacked a structural understanding of the history, evolution, and controversy around the qualitative research. This book situated the standpoint theory as in the historical backgrounds of the feminism activities in the 1970s and explained why standpoint theory can support the arguments of feminism.

One major difference of qualitative methods compared with quantitative methods is that qualitative methods acknowledge the influence of researchers on the results of research projects and implement reflexivity into research to elaborate on and tease out these influences, while quantitative methods deem the results as purely objective, unbiased, and reproduceable. Feminism standpoint provides a case that the objectivity presumption of science could be wrong, thus it is not only a field where researchers investigate the situations of females in family and society, but a frontline of reflecting on and critiquing the well-established criteria as well as perceptions of science and knowledge as objective.

The articles in this book were controversies among professionals in this field, making the discussions mostly theoretical and abstract, which were difficult for me to read not knowing the terms, vocabulary, and basic knowledge of sociology theories. I am still unclear of the how did the previous researchers use feminism standpoint theory to guide specific research projects since there were few examples. I know critical theories, which are the closely related to feminism standpoint theory, have been implemented in quite a few HCI projects and I think I can start with these papers to learn about this.

Standpoint theory values the tensions around the “margins”, where previously marginalized populations and perspectives struggle to enter the central area. It is in this process where the resistance of the marginalized groups thrives, and the problems of the structure become visible. The standpoint theory inspired me to pay more attention to the cultural, historical, economic, social, and technological positions of the marginalized young adults and trace the direct and indirect influences of them on their mental health help-seeking practices and characteristics. These findings are crucial to the discussions of how technology can empower people in an accessible and equitable way and how technology may have narrowed or expanded the gaps among different strata.

Reference

Harding, S. G. (Ed.). (2003). The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. Psychology Press.