Feminist Standpoint Theory

Paper Summary:

The paper begins by explaining why the feminist standpoint theory appears to have much in common with the social-science methodology of Michel Foucault. The research sets forth the context in which feminist standpoint theory emerged, and then discusses how Patricia Hills Collins extends the theory to include race and gender factors of analysis and critique.

From the Paper:

"Feminist standpoint theory does not have recourse to Foucault's "structure" terminology, but the location of its beginning point is oppositional to dominant cultural ideology. Feminist standpoint theory, beginning, as the term implies, from the perspective or standpoint of women's relationship to dominant culture, considers the decisive social relationship to be power; and further, does not see women as a group in the position of social power, but rather distinct or different from that position. This implies that the position of social power will be the object of scrutiny from the perspective not of power but of its relative distance from power. Standpoint theory is at least as concerned with social and psychological norms, customs, practices, and attitudes as with physical strength, as far as power's primary indicators and legitimators are concerned. In Foucault's formulation, the power referent has to do not (or not merely) with the power relationships between criminal law and criminals, or even with the encounter between privileged and oppressed classes, but with the whole of ordinary social experience. Power, he says, "produces effects . . . at the level of knowledge" (1980:59). These effects represent factors of feminist analysis."

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