Objectivity and Positionality
Objectivity is seen as a male characteristic that has allowed the dominance of men to continue in all major areas, especially in science (Abu-Lughod, 1990, Haraway, 1988). Haraway, (1988), states that female work is not seen as important as the work men do. This brings in a capitalistic argument that women’s work is seen as inferior to men’s work as it does not generate any revenue or provide a meaningful contribution to society. Therefore men’s work is given a higher status compared to the knowledge that is produced from women’s work, as the position people have in society, determines the knowledge they have and are allowed to produce (Haraway, 1988).
This leads on to the idea of objectivity and if one can …show more content…
There is a want to understand the ‘other’ in society, but without giving them a voice. There is a power imbalance which leads to the distortion of truths. It is usually white men writing about what and who they consider alien to themselves, usually other men. This can lead to missing knowledge being produced as they will not be aware of the full extent of the issues that their subject faces as they come from a place of power and privilege. Abu-Lughod (1990), mentions ethnographies written by the wives of trained anthropologists, who used different methods and were more aware of their position as an outsider and their privileges which produced a drastically different way of looking at the same issues that men had previously talked about. If anthropologists are honest and clearer about the positions they come from and the power they hold and by challenging objectivity, there will be able to create a more representative and by default more, a feminist discipline of anthropology.
If all knowledge comes from a place of power, which is defined by white, middle class, men, there is a problem with our reality as the knowledge is not representative (Butler, 1990). A universal anthropology should be a feminist anthropology which will give a voice to those that are currently unrecognised and bring into the foreground a wide range of previously invisible experiences. The following section will …show more content…
Women are rarely talked about outside these submissive and subordinate roles. There is a need to show the actual contribution of women so this patriarchal view, one which had continued to place women under men (Howell and Melhuus, 1993), can be eradicated. There is more that can define the experiences of women. This can be done by looking beyond them in relation to men and start looking at women as having agency of their own. With their own truths and views of the world that are shaped by many intersectional factors that have been discussed in previous sections of this essay. The final section of this essay will look to provide a critique of Levi-Strauss and the binary approach of structuralism and the role that has played in ignoring the important work that women
Objectivity is seen as a male characteristic that has allowed the dominance of men to continue in all major areas, especially in science (Abu-Lughod, 1990, Haraway, 1988). Haraway, (1988), states that female work is not seen as important as the work men do. This brings in a capitalistic argument that women’s work is seen as inferior to men’s work as it does not generate any revenue or provide a meaningful contribution to society. Therefore men’s work is given a higher status compared to the knowledge that is produced from women’s work, as the position people have in society, determines the knowledge they have and are allowed to produce (Haraway, 1988).
This leads on to the idea of objectivity and if one can …show more content…
There is a want to understand the ‘other’ in society, but without giving them a voice. There is a power imbalance which leads to the distortion of truths. It is usually white men writing about what and who they consider alien to themselves, usually other men. This can lead to missing knowledge being produced as they will not be aware of the full extent of the issues that their subject faces as they come from a place of power and privilege. Abu-Lughod (1990), mentions ethnographies written by the wives of trained anthropologists, who used different methods and were more aware of their position as an outsider and their privileges which produced a drastically different way of looking at the same issues that men had previously talked about. If anthropologists are honest and clearer about the positions they come from and the power they hold and by challenging objectivity, there will be able to create a more representative and by default more, a feminist discipline of anthropology.
If all knowledge comes from a place of power, which is defined by white, middle class, men, there is a problem with our reality as the knowledge is not representative (Butler, 1990). A universal anthropology should be a feminist anthropology which will give a voice to those that are currently unrecognised and bring into the foreground a wide range of previously invisible experiences. The following section will …show more content…
Women are rarely talked about outside these submissive and subordinate roles. There is a need to show the actual contribution of women so this patriarchal view, one which had continued to place women under men (Howell and Melhuus, 1993), can be eradicated. There is more that can define the experiences of women. This can be done by looking beyond them in relation to men and start looking at women as having agency of their own. With their own truths and views of the world that are shaped by many intersectional factors that have been discussed in previous sections of this essay. The final section of this essay will look to provide a critique of Levi-Strauss and the binary approach of structuralism and the role that has played in ignoring the important work that women