FEMINIST THEORIES
Read: Appelrouth & Edles 581-621
Feminist Theory – the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles and lived experience, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, psychoanalysis, economics, literary criticism, and philosophy. While generally providing a critique of social relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on analyzing gender inequality and the promotion of women's rights, interests, and issues. Themes explored in feminism include art history, and contemporary art, aesthetics, discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchy.
Dorothy Smith – In recognition of her contributions in "transformation of sociology", and for extending boundaries of "feminist standpoint theory" to "include race, class, and gender", Dr. Smith received numerous awards from American Sociological Association, including the American Sociological Association's Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999) and the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993). In recognition of her scholarship, she also received two awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association: the Outstanding Contribution Award (1990) and the John Porter Award for her book "The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology." (1990).
Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People (2005), Mothering for Schooling -- with Alison Griffith (2004), Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations (1999), The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (1990), Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (1990), The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987), Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go (1977), Women Look at Psychiarty: I'm Not Mad, I'm Angry -- Collection edited by Smith and David (1975) Press Gang Publishing.
Relations of ruling – includes not only forms such as “bureaucracy, administration, management, professional organization and interpenetrate, and coordinate” them. Smith maintains that behind and within the “apparently neutral and impersonal rationality of the ruling apparatus” is concealed a “male subtext.” Women are “excluded from the practices of power within textually mediated relations of ruling.” Thus, for instance, official psychiatric evaluations replace the individual’s actual lived experience with a means for interpreting it; the individual becomes a case history, a type, a disease, a syndrome, and a treatment possibility (587).
Bifurcation of consciousness – Smith uses this term to refer to a separation or split between the world as you actually experience it and the dominant view to which you must adapt (e.g., a masculine point of view). The notion of bifurcation of consciousness underscores that subordinate groups are conditioned to view the world from the perspective of the dominant group, since the perspective of the latter is embedded in the institutions and practices of that world, while the dominant group, on the other hand, enjoys the privilege of remaining oblivious to the worldview of the Other, or subordinate group, since the Other is fully expected to accommodate them. The “governing mode” of the professions, then. Creates a bifurcation of consciousness in the actor” “It establishes two modes of knowing, experiencing, and acting—one located in the body and in the space that it occupies and moves into, the other passing beyond it (587).”
Institutional Ethnography – – is a method of elucidating and examining the relationship between everyday activities and experiences and larger institutional imperatives. Interestingly, the very term “institutional ethnography” explicitly couples and emphasis on structures of power (“institutions”) which the microlevel practices that make up everyday life (“ethnography”). Smith’s point, of course, is that it is in microlevel, everyday practices at the level of the individual that collective, hierarchical patterns of social structure are experienced, shaped, and reaffirmed. For instance, in one passage you will read, Smith explains how the seemingly benign, everday act of walking her dog actually reaffirms the class system. As Smith “keeps an eye on her dog” so that it does its business on some lawns as opposed to others, she is, in fact, “observing some of the niceties of different forms of property ownership” (renters versus owners); she is participating in the existing relations of ruling (588).
Standpoint Theory – Smith uses the notion of standpoint to emphasize that what one knows is affected by where one stands (one’s subjective position) in society. We being from the world as we actually experience it, and what we know of the world and the “other” is conditional upon the location. Smith’s argument is not that we cannot look at the world in any way other than our given standpoint. Rather, her point is that (1) no one can have complete, objective knowledge; (2) no two people have exactly the same standpoint; and (3) we must not take the standpoint from which we speak for granted. Instead, we must recognize it, be reflexive about it, and problematize it. Our Situated, everyday experience should serve as a “point of entry” of investigation (585).
Patricia Hill Collins – Collins draws on black women's experiences and voices to explain concepts that have been obscured institutionally, philosophically, and ideologically. Collins's interdisciplinary methodology employs a "both/and" analytical approach to domination and subordination. Collins rejects oppositional thought because "either/or thinking categorizes people, things, and ideas in terms of their differences from one another" which requires objectification and subordination.
Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities, ISBN 0807000183, 2009, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, ISBN 1-59213-092-5, 2006, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, ISBN 0-415-93099-5, 2005, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, ISBN 0-8166-2377-5, 1998, Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, ISBN 0-534-52879-1, co-edited w/ Margaret Andersen, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, ISBN 0-415-92484-7, 1990, 2000.
Standpoint Epistemology – Collins philosophic viewpoint that what one knows is affected by the standpoint (or position) one has in society. Collins extends the critical/phenomenological feminist ideas of Dorothy Smith by illuminating the particular epistemological standpoint of black women. Yet, Collins does not merely add the empirical dimension of “race” to Smith’s feminist, critical/phenomenological framework. Rather, taking a poststructural/postmodern turn, Collins emphasized the “interlocking” nature of the wide variety of statuses—for example, race, class, gender, nationality, sexual orientation—that make up our stand of domination, there are also potential sites of resistance (607).
The group or community level of the cultural context created by race, class, and gender is vital to Collin’s conceptualization of Black Feminist Thought, which like all specialized thought reflects the interest and standpoint of its creators. Collins locates black feminist thought in the unique literary traditions forged by black women such as Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, as well as in the everyday experience of ordinary black women. In addition, black feminist through is rooted in black women’s intellectual tradition nurtured by black women’s community. Collins maintains: When white men control the knowledge validation process, both political criteria (contextual creditability and evaluation of knowledge claims) can work to suppress Black feminist thought. Therefore, black women are more likely to choose an alternative epistemology for assessing knowledge claims, one using different standards that are consistent with black women’s criteria for substantiated knowledge and with our criteria for methodology adequacy (608).
Matrix of Domination – to underscore that one’s position in society is made up of multiple contiguous standpoints rather than just one essentialist standpoint. Thus in contrast to earlier critical accounts that assume that power operates form the top down by forcing and controlling unwilling victims to bend to the will of more powerful superiors. Collins asserts that “depending on the context and individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed… Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and provided from the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyone’s lives (608).
http://www.cynthiagilligan.com/sociology/smith~collins.doc
Edward Said
With the publication of Orientalism (1978), Said was catapulted to international academic fame. The book presented his ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction Conrad, and in the post-structuralist theory of Foucault, Derrida and others, Said's Orientalism (1978) and other works proved pioneering in literary theory and criticism, and continue to influence that and several other fields in the humanities. Orientalism affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East. Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.
Immanuel Wallerstein
Wallerstein began as an expert of post-colonial African affairs, which he selected as the focus of his studies after an international youth conference in 1951, and which his publications were almost exclusively devoted to until the early 1970s, when he began to distinguish himself as a historian and theorist of the global capitalist economy on a macroscopic level. His early criticism of global capitalism and championship of "anti-systemic movements" have recently made him a gray eminence with the anti-globalization movement within and without the academic community, along with Noam Chomsky and Pierre Bourdieu.
Anthony Giddens
Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews has contributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sciences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheoretical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. Finally, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach: he has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently, political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of his life's work as a form of 'grand synthesis' of sociological theory.
Pierre Bourdieu
Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.
Michel Foucault
Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His work on power, and the relationships among power, knowledge, and discourse has been widely discussed. In the 1960s Foucault was associated with Structuralism, a movement from which he distanced himself. Foucault also rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels to which he was often later attributed, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity rooted in Kant. Foucault is particularly influenced by the work of Nietzsche; his "genealogy of knowledge" is a direct allusion to Nietzsche's genealogy of morals.
Jean Baudrillard
Baudrillard was a social theorist and critic who is best known for his analyses of the modes of mediation and of technological communication. His writing, although consistently interested in the way technological progress affects social change, covers diverse subjects — from consumerism to gender relations to the social understanding of history to journalistic commentaries about AIDS, cloning, the Rushdie affair, the first Gulf War and the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
Dorothy Smith
In recognition of her contributions in "transformation of sociology", and for extending boundaries of "feminist standpoint theory" to "include race, class, and gender", Dr. Smith received numerous awards from American Sociological Association, including the American Sociological Association's Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999) and the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993). In recognition of her scholarship, she also received two awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association: the Outstanding Contribution Award (1990) and the John Porter Award for her book "The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology." (1990).
Patricia Hill Collins
Collins draws on black women's experiences and voices to explain concepts that have been obscured institutionally, philosophically, and ideologically. Collins's interdisciplinary methodology employs a "both/and" analytical approach to domination and subordination. Collins rejects oppositional thought because "either/or thinking categorizes people, things, and ideas in terms of their differences from one another" which requires objectification and subordination.
C. Wright Mills
Mills is often seen as a "closet Marxist" because of his emphasis on social classes and their roles in historical progress and attempt to keep Marxist traditions alive in social theory. Just as often, however, others argue that Mills more closely identified with the work of Max Weber, whom many sociologists interpret as an exemplar of sophisticated (and intellectually adequate) anti-Marxism and modern liberalism.
Jurgen Habermas
Habermas's works resonate within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realization of the human potential for reason, in part through discourse ethics. While Habermas has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project," he argues it should be corrected and complemented, not discarded. In this he distances himself from the Frankfurt School, criticizing it, as well as much of postmodernist thought, for excessive pessimism, misdirected radicalism and exaggerations.
Peter Berger
Berger was a fervent student of religion. He continuously contemplated his own Christian beliefs and spent a “very happy” year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he studied to be a minister. Indeed, Berger is just as well known for his work in the sociology of religion as in phenomenology and the sociology of knowledge. His now-classic Invitation to Sociology (1963) continues to be one of the most acclaimed and inspiring introductions to the discipline of sociology today.
Thomas Luckman
Luckmann is a follower of the phenomenological school of sociology, established by the German-American scholar Alfred Schütz. In his works, he has developed a theory, known as social constructionism, which argues that all knowledge, including the most basic common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions.
Peter Blau
Blau's sociological specialty was in organizational and social structures, in particular bureaucracy. He produced theories with many applications within social phenomena, including upward mobility, occupational opportunity, heterogeneity, and how population structures can influence human behavior.
Erving Goffman
Goffman was at the forefront of important movements within sociology, for instance, doing ethnomethodology before the ethnomethodologist and exploring the central role of language in social life (the "linguistic turn") well ahead of most of his sociological brethren.
Robert K. Merton
Theories include - deviance, drug addiction, friendship formation, medical education, technology, media, and the history of science.