The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism*

Hartsock, Nancy C. M.

doi:10.4324/9781315251196-32

Cited by 59 publications

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“…Institutional Ethnography differs from other standpoint theories ( e.g. Harding 1993Harding , 2007Collins 2004;Hartsock 2004) in that it starts from a subject position within a complex of social relations. The 'epistemic privilege' assigned to junior female academics, whose standpoint I take in this article, is not an automatic one (Smith 2004b).…”

Section: Institutional Ethnography Standpoint and Data Productionmentioning

confidence: 90%

The social organisation of boasting in the neoliberal university

Lund

2018

Gender and Education

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This article unpacks the social construction of the "ideal academic" in the context of major shifts in the governance of academia that have introduced managerial practices, standardised notions of excellence and accounting logics with the aim of increasing the efficiency and quality of higher education and academic knowledge production. More specifically it explores how the enacting of this ideal involves practices of boasting and explores how people are differently positioned in that regard. Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study at Aalto University in Finland the article shows how boasting involves the (re)production of gendered and classed social inequalities. I draw on the resources of Institutional Ethnography which enables me to analyse social relations of gender and class and show how culturally and situationally specific forms of boasting, become textually recognised and encouraged as appropriate behaviour for the "ideal academic".

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Section: Institutional Ethnography Standpoint and Data Productionmentioning

confidence: 90%

The social organisation of boasting in the neoliberal university

Lund

2018

Gender and Education

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“…This account suggests that one's class position within a capitalist system—that is, whether one is a member of the capitalist or the laboring class—is relevant to what one is in a position to know. As Nancy Hartsock writes, “material life (class position in Marxist theory) not only structures but sets limits on the understanding of social relations,” such that one's relationship to labor can be expected to have consequences for knowledge (Hartsock , 286).…”

Section: Something Old: Materials Readings Of (S)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Feminist‐material accounts, rather than examining the relationship between knowledge and one's social class (under capitalism), instead shift their analysis to the relationship between knowledge and gender (under capitalist patriarchy) (Smith ; Hartsock ; Jaggar ; Harding ). Feminist‐material accounts accuse historical‐material accounts of neglecting to attend to the unique ways in which women's labor—which is often unrecognized as such—is central to the system of reproduction (Young ; Hartsock ).…”

Section: Something Old: Materials Readings Of (S)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Broadly speaking, standpoint epistemology is committed to the thesis that some nonepistemic features related to an agent's social identity make a difference to what an epistemic agent is in a position to know (Hartsock ; Haraway ; Harding ; Wylie ; Kukla ; Rolin ; Intemann ; Crasnow ). Precisely which features of an epistemic agent's social identity are of concern, and the way in which those features make a difference to what a person knows, is what I aim to explore further in this article.…”

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confidence: 99%

“… Defenses of the epistemic privilege thesis can be found in Hartsock ; Collins ; Wylie ; and Rolin . The achievement thesis has been discussed in Ruth ; Harding ; and MacKinnon , to name but a few. …”

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confidence: 99%

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From Standpoint Epistemology to Epistemic Oppression

Toole¹

2019

Hypatia

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Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge-acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend. This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression.The landscape of epistemology is changing. Epistemologists are no longer concerned solely with questions regarding what conditions are necessary for knowledge or how knowledge is transmitted; they have instead shifted their attention to concerns regarding our epistemic practices and how those practices might oppress. Epistemic oppression, the unwarranted exclusion or obstruction of certain epistemic agents from the practices of knowledge-production (Dotson 2012, 2014), has been the focus of much work produced by feminist epistemologists in the last decade, and rightly so. If the aim of epistemology is to bring us closer to truth, then any practice that threatens to subvert this aim ought to be thoroughly investigated. 1 In this article, I argue that in order to understand, address, and eliminate epistemic oppression, we must appeal to the conceptual tools made available by standpoint epistemology.Broadly speaking, standpoint epistemology is committed to the thesis that some nonepistemic features related to an agent's social identity make a difference to what an epistemic agent is in a position to know (Hartsock 1983;Haraway 1988;Harding

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Beyond poto mitan: Challenging the “Strong Black Woman” archetype and allowing space for tenderness

Dubuisson

Schuller

2021

Feminist Anthropology

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In this article, we contend that the “strong Black woman” archetype constricts expressions of Black womanhood and girlhood and thus limits individual and collective liberation. We maintain that strength need not preclude tenderness, highlighting two forms: wounded tenderness—a raw and aching feeling pointing to the vulnerability of human beings—and liberated tenderness, a practice of meeting woundedness with embodied awareness and gentleness. We foreground the concept of poto mitan to illustrate how the “strong Black woman” archetype upholds virtues of strength at the expense of tenderness, thus taking up Faye Harrison's call to theorize from “ex‐centric sites.” Translated as “center posts,” poto mitan describes the architecture of spaces for traditional ancestor worship and conventionally refers to Haitian women's central role as pillars of the family and community. We begin this article by discussing the limits of this discourse within feminist scholarship and activism. Second, we examine how this discourse both engenders and limits liberation for Haitian rural women. By concluding with “tenderness as method,” we argue that feminist anthropologists working with Black women must not only attune themselves to how discourses and performances of strength may occlude liberation but also call on our own vulnerability to allow space for liberated tenderness.

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The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism*

Cited by 59 publications

References 0 publications

The social organisation of boasting in the neoliberal university

The social organisation of boasting in the neoliberal university

From Standpoint Epistemology to Epistemic Oppression

Beyond poto mitan: Challenging the “Strong Black Woman” archetype and allowing space for tenderness

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