Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:23:22.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory's Controversiality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Sandra Harding
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Feminist standpoint theory remains highly controversial: it is widely advocated, used to guide research and justify its results, and yet is also vigorously denounced. This essay argues that three such sites of controversy reveal the value of engaging with standpoint theory as a way of reflecting on and debating some of the most anxiety-producing issues in contemporary Western intellectual and political life. Engaging with standpoint theory enables a socially relevant philosophy of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Feminist Science Studies , Winter 2004 , pp. 25 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barad, Karen. 1996. Meeting the universe halfway; realism and social constructivism without contradiction. In Feminism, science and the philosophy of science, ed. Nelson, Jack and Nelson, Lynn Hankinson. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Blauner, Robert, and Wellman, David. 1973. Toward the decolonization of social research. In The death of white sociology, ed. Ladner, Joyce A.New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Bloor, David. 1977. Knowledge and social imagery. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bracke, Sarah, and de La Bellacasa, Maria Puig. Forthcoming. Building standpoints. In The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies, ed. Harding, Sandra. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi, Charkiewicz, Ewa, Hausler, Sabine, and Wieringa, Saskia. 1994. Women, the environment, and sustainable development. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Campbell, Marie, and Manicom, Ann, eds. 1995. Knowledge, experience, and ruling relations: Studies in the social organization of knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castells, Manuel. 1997. The power of identity. Vol. II of The information age: Economy, society, & culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Caws, Peter. 1967. Scientific method. In Encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Edwards, Paul. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Collins, Harry. 1983. An empirical relativist programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In Science observed, ed. Knorr‐Cetina, Karin and Mulkay, Michael. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 19911999. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowement. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Elam, Mark, and Juhlin, Oskar. 1998. When Harry met Sandra: An alternative engagement after the science wars. Science as Culture 7(1): 95–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figueroa, Robert, and Harding, Sandra, eds. 2003. Science and other cultures: Issues in the philosophies of science and technology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gross, Paul R., and Levitt, Norman. 1994. Higher superstition: The academic left and its quarrels with science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, Norwood Russell. 1958. Patterns of discovery. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1978. Animal sociology and a natural economy of the body politic, Pts. 1 and 2. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1981. In the beginning was the word: The genesis of biological theory. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 6(3): 469–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1983. We think, therefore we are. The Women's Review of Books 19(2): 3–5.10.2307/4019439CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspectives. In Simians, cyborgs and women. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_witness@second_milIenium: Femaleman_meets_Oncomouse™ New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1986. The science question infeminism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Ptess.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1992a. After the neutrality ideal: Politics, science, and strong objectivity. In The politics of western science, 1640–1990, ed. Jacob, Margaret. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1992b. Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is “strong objectivity?” In Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Alcoff, Linda and Potter, Elizabeth. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1998. Is science multicultural? Postcolonialisms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 2003. A world of sciences. In Science and other cultures: Issues in philosophies of science and technology, ed. Figueroa, Robert and Harding, Sandra. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 2003. The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 19832003. Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. 2nd ed. Dordrecht, Nethetlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 19832003. The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science, 2nd ed., ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill B.Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy 1998. The feminist standpoint revisited. In The feminist standpoint and other essays. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine. 1993. Constrained constructivism: Locating scientific inquiry in the theater of representation. In Realism and Representation, ed. Levine, George. Madison: University of Wiscons.Google Scholar
Hekman, Susan. 1997. Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revisited. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22(2): 341–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, David J. 1995. Science and technology in a multicultural world: The cultural politics of facts and artifacts. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschmann, Nancy. 1997. Feminist standpoint as postmodern strategy. In Politics and feminist standpoint theories, ed. Kenney, Sally J. and Kinsella, Helen. New York: The Haworth Press.Google Scholar
Jaggar, Alison. 1983. Chapter 11. Feminist politics and human nature. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. 1988. History and class consciousness as an unfinished project. Rethinking Marxism 19(1): 49–72.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1984. Reflections on gender and science. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kenney, Sally J., and Kinsella, Helen, eds. 1997. Politics and feminist standpoint theories. Binghamton, N.Y.: The Haworth Press, Inc.Google Scholar
Kline, Morris. 1980. Mathematics: The loss of certainty. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 19621970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ladner, Joyce. 1971. Tomorrow's tomorrow: The black woman. Garden City, N.Y.: Douhleday Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1988. The pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen. 1993. Feminist standpoint theory and the problems of knowledge. Signs: journal of Women in Culture and Society 19(1): 201–12.Google Scholar
Lukacs, Georg. 19231971. History and class consciousness. Trans. Livingstone, Rodney. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
May, Tim. 1998. Reflexivity in the age of reconstructive social science. Social Research Methodology. 19(1): 7–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Uma, and Harding, Sandra, eds. 2000. Decentering the center: Philosophy for a muticultural, postcolonial, and feminist world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Lynn Hankinson, guest ed. 1995. Feminism and science. Synthese: An International journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science 104(3).Google Scholar
Nelson, Lynn Hankinson, and Nelson, Jack, eds. 1996. Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novick, Peter. 1988. That noble dream: The “objectivity question” and the American historical profession. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pels, Dick. 2003. Strange standpoints, or: How to define the situation for situated knowledge. The Intellectual as stranger. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Potter, Elizabeth. 2001. Gender and Boyle's law of gases. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Proctor, Robert. 1991. Value‐free science? Purity and power in modern knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Hilary. 1983. Hand, brain, and heart: A feminist epistemolgy for the natural sciences. Signs: journal of Women in Culture and Society 9(1): 73–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Hilary. 1984. Is a feminist science possible? In Love, power, knowledge: Toward a feminist transformation of the sciences. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Hilary, and Rose, Steven. 1976. The incorporation of science. In Ideology of/in the natural sciences, ed. Rose, Hilary and Rose, Steven. Cambridge: Schenkman.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew, ed. 1996. Science wars. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouse, Joseph. 1996a. Engaging science: How to understand its practices philosophically. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rouse, Joseph 1996b. Feminism and the social construction of scientific knowledge. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science, ed. Nelson, Lynn Hankinson and Nelson, Jack. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. The traffic in women: Notes on the “political economy” of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. Reiter, Rayna Rapp. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Schuster, John A., and Yeo, Richard R., eds. 1986. The politics and rhetoric of scientific method: Historical studies. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, Steven 1994. A social history of truth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, Steven, and Schaffer, Simon. 1985. Leviathan and the air‐pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shiva, Vandana. 1989. Staying alive: Women, ecology and development. London: Zed.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: A sociology for women. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1990a. Texts, facts, and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1990b. The conceptual practices of power: A feminist sociology of knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1997. Comment on Hekman's “Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revisited.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22(2): 392–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1999. The ruling relations. In Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Linda Tuhiwahi. 1999. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George, ed. Forthcoming. The politics of method in the social sciences: Positivism and its epistemological others. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Walby, Sylvia. 2001. Against epistemological chasms: The science question in feminism revisited. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26(2): 485–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westkott, Marcia. 1979. Feminist criticism of the social sciences. Harvard Educational Review 49: 422–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Michael. 1991. Unnatural doubt: Epistemological realism and the basis of skepticism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 1987. The philosophy of ambivalence: Sandra Harding on “The Science Question in Feminism.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 13: 59–73.Google Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 2003. Why standpoint matters. In Science and other cultures: Issues in philosophies of science and technology, ed. Figueroa, Robert and Harding, Sandra. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wylie, Alison, and Okruhlik, Kathleen. 1987. Philosophical feminism: Challenges to science. In Resources for Feminist Research 16: 12–15.Google Scholar