Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Standpoint theory re-emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a feminist critical theory of the relations between knowledge and power, and also as a guide to improving actual research projects–as a methodology. Standpoint theory authors argued that existing relations between politics and the production of knowledge were far from the scientifically and socially progressive ones claimed by economic, governmental and legal, medical, health, education, welfare, scientific and other dominant institutions and the research disciplines that serviced them. When it came to understanding and accounting for gender relations, the prevailing philosophies of science and the research projects they legitimated were politically regressive, philosophically weak, and scientifically less than maximally effective.Evidence for such claims appeared in the increasing documentation of sexist and androcentric results of research in biology and the social sciences. Standpoint theorists analyzed causes of the gaps between actual and ideal relations between knowledge and power, and reflected on causes of the successes of feminist research in the social sciences and biology. Such work led to prescriptions in some of these writings for how to produce empirically and theoretically more successful research. Even though such research was guided by feminist political goals, such epistemic and scientific successes were possible ... log in or subscribe to read full text