Received: from pioneer.nevada.edu (pioneer.nevada.edu [131.216.1.95]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.4/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p-nh) with ESMTP id QAA04463 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 16:20:19 -0700 (MST) Received: (phillipj@localhost) by pioneer.nevada.edu (8.8.5/8.6.4) id PAA31324; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 15:20:15 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 15:20:14 -0800 (PST) From: Jaime Phillips To: Sociology Graduate Students -- International Subject: Re: Standpoint Theory In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19971025100532.006d6134@udel.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 25 Oct 1997, Jill McCorkel wrote: > At 06:14 PM 10/22/97 -0400, you wrote: > > > >As my limited understanding goes, standpoint theory holds that > >people's perceptions of society differ because they have different > >perspectives. > > > >That strikes me as a commonsensical observation, ambiguously > >conceptualized, and of little explanatory value in an analysis > >of any logical rigor. > > This is a very poor understanding of standpoint, indeed. A number of good > cites have already been posted but I would refer you to Sandra Harding's > book Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? and Dorothy Smith's The Everyday World > as Problematic. I would certainly enjoy explaining standpoint to you but, > unfortunately, I have neither the time or energy. Standpoint is a complex > theory of knowledge and power--to best comprehend it, one must have at > least a basic understanding of feminist theory and the sociology of knowledge. Both of the above are books which I also was going to recommend. I must say I am in agreement with the tone of the response quoted above - the original message seemed to me the equivalent of saying "I hear Marxism has something to do with people having different sorts of jobs, which seems of limited utility for analysis. Can anyone explain it to me?" Ignorance of feminist standpoint theory is not the issue, but rather the attacking of it when one's understanding of it is obviously and admittedly poor. -- Jaime Phillips phillipj@nevada.edu http://www.nevada.edu/home/9/phillipj/page