Professional Documents
Culture Documents
deals with ideas about social life and human experience from women centered
perspective. It is women centered in three ways. First, its major “object” of investigation
is the situations and experiences of women in society. Second, it treats women as central
“subjects” in the investigative process. Third, feminist theory is critical and activist on
behalf of women (Lengermann & Brantley, 2004, p. 436). Feminist standpoint theory as a
which, as Sandra Harding explains, should act as “a significant indicator of the ‘reality’
against which hypotheses are tested” (Harding, 1991 p. 7). This “reality” is based on “the
perspective of women's lives” rather than on “assumptions and practices that appear
natural or unremarkable from the perspective of the lives of men in the dominant groups”
standpoint theory (Hallstein, 2000, p. 1). Feminist scholars like Sandra Harding and
Patricia Hill Collins also contributed to develop this concept. Standpoint theory deals
with production of knowledge and practices of power. Although there are multiple and
distinct feminist standpoint theories, “they are all grounded in one central and founding
idea: Knowledge is socially located and arises in social positions that are structured by
power relations” (Hallstein, 1999, p.32). Multiple versions of reality exist depending on a
group’s location within largely patriarchal and hierarchical social contexts (Hallstein,
1999). Marginalized people see the world from both their own standpoint and that of
those in power, whereas those in power do not need to consider the standpoint of others
in order to survive (Littlejohn & Foss, 2005). Feminist standpoint theory “places the life
experiences of marginalized groups at the center of the research project. It then directs
the view of the researcher toward the social structures that shape the lives of the group
literature. It gets theoretical impetus from Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels.
show that people know about themselves, others, and society depends on which group
they are in. Following Hegel’s lead, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the
proletarian standpoint. They suggested that the impoverished poor who provide sweat are
society’s ideal knowers, as long as they understand the class struggle in which they are
depends upon, in Sandra Harding's terms, "socially situated knowledge" (Harding, 1991,
p. 138) that is determined by the knower's social position, particularly by the power
relationships that structure his or her life. According to this way of thinking, marginalized
group are not only force to develop their own standpoints from a less privileged position
but they also need to understand the position of dominant group of society. They become,
as Patricia Hill Collins (1986) has said “outsider within”. It imply that even though a
woman, especially woman of color may become influential in a particular field, she may
feel as though she never quite belongs. Essentially, their personalities, behaviors, and
cultural beings overshadow their true value as an individual; thus, they become the
outsider within (Collins, 1986, p. S14).She also recognized differences among women
along the lines of class, race/ethnicity and sexuality (Krolokke & Sorensen, 2006, p. 32).
Feminist standpoint theory asserts that knowledge has four basic characteristics. First, it
is produced from the standpoint of embodied actors situated in differently located social
structure. Second, it is always partial, never total and objective. Third, it is produced in
and varies among groups and, to some degree, among actors within groups. Fourth, it is
theory in the field of communication. She has documented African American women’s
production of knowledge and their communication practices. She claimed that Black
women are at once united and divided by complex circumstances; they have multilayered
experiences and therefore develop multiple tiers of consciousness. Another scholar Julia
Wood (1994) describes her own situation as a white, heterosexual, professional woman
who for nine years took on the consuming responsibility of caring for her infirm parents
until they died. She asserts that gendered communication practices reflect and reinforce
our societal expectation that care giving is women’s job. Communication scholar Sonja
Foss and Cindy griffin incorporate standpoint theory in rhetoric studies. They assert that
from Aristotle on down, the study or practices of rhetoric have been concerned with how
to persuade others and thus gain control over them. They termed it paternalistic bias
(Griffin, 2003, p. 484). They propounded a concept of “offering”, which imply that
“rhetors” tell what they currently know or understand; they present their vision of the
world and show how it looks and works for them” (as cited Griffin, 2003, p. 484). They
consider this concept of offering as an alternative approach to rhetoric that more closely
Janifer Coates (1996) contends that women in her lifetime or even daily
participate in a range of contexts and change their performance accordingly (p.239). She
also mentioned that her informants explore and express different types of femininity:
“The talk we do in our everyday lives gives us access to these different modes of being,
these different versions of femininity” (p. 239). Deborah Cameron (1997) went even
further, suggesting that instead of looking for how women and men express themselves in
and by language, we should look for how we construct gender in and through discourse.
In her seminar essay “Talking Back” (1989), Bell hooks claimed that through language
and communication women of color expressed herself not a mere object rather achieved a
position of subject: “it is the act of speech, of ‘talking back’, that is no mere gesture of
empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject-the liberated
Mary Bucholtz (1996) studied a radio panel discussion and found that two African
American women creatively subverted the norm of that particular context and format.
Through questions and assessments, deixis, vernacular features and backchanneling they
institutional conventions. Bucholtz (1995) also studied mixed race women. She contends
the horizon of the feminist understanding of knowledge. And the debates it generate also
critical in developing its analyses and theories, and to attend more consistently to its
avowed goals of equality and inclusion” (Hirschmann, 1997, p. 74). It is also a useful tool
to understand women’s multiple and fluid identity construction and subverting strategies
Collins, P.H. (1986). Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance