Therefore Liberal Feminists stress that it is important to focus on the questions relevant to women’s lives. This has often not been the case in the past. This is not just the case in political science.
“..male historians in the past, including Marxists, have grossly neglected the female half of the human race.” (Hobsbawm,1978)
Thus many liberal feminists argue that academic research has been undertaken from a male perspective. It is generally argued that the dominant position of men in senior research positions created this situation. The more recent increase in research focusing on women’s concerns is thus seen as stemming from the increase in women in academia.
The liberal feminist position then is that traditional scientific method in the social sciences is not intrinsically male. Rather it is a value neutral tool that can be applied to different questions. Male bias comes in in the way that research tool is used. Therefore the solution is to do better research and ask the questions relevant to women as well as to men. This position, with its acceptance of traditional scientific method is sometimes called Feminist Empiricism.
Radical Feminism
Radical feminism is usually contrasted with Liberal feminism.
Radical feminism can be seen as having grown out of the second wave of feminism.
This second wave of feminism itself grew out of radical 1960s politics - particularly the radical new left, the civil rights and Black Power movements. Radical feminists describe how they came to realise that these movements did not address the fundamental discrimination suffered by women.
Again like liberal feminism, radical feminism is a loose collection of views rather than a single well defined position.
However there are a number of recognisable themes within the radical tradition. One of these is the focus on lifestyle rather the same focus on direct political involvement that liberal feminists have.
Thus there is an element of radical feminism which rejects the possibility of reforming the political system. This is mirrored by their attitude towards tradtional social research.
Radical feminists argue that the traditional scientific method is intrinsically male. Therefore they reject the possibilities of it being used to end the oppression of women by men.
This radical feminist challenge should be seen as part of of a wider attack on the traditional assumptions of social researchers in the scientific tradition. I will outline the form that attack takes later. But at this point it is useful to revisit their target .
Traditional Scientific Method
What is research about?
Well when we are doing research we are trying to gain knowledge?
But this leads to the question "How do we know what we know?"
For example take these simple statements.
"The earth is round."
"Red sky in the morning is a warning of bad weather."
"Frustration is a cause of aggression."
“People should not lie.”
What grounds do we have for accepting statements such as these?
What do we accept as the final arbiter of what is right and what is real?
Do we accept tradition, religious writing, self reflection, practical reasoning
Science has become the way we decide what we accept and what we do not.
"Certainly the unquestioned authority of the scientific method as the best way to study both natural and social-cultural phenomena has characterised our own time."(JM Neilsen 1990 p2)
So science has come to be accepted as having a better claim than, say, religion or tradition, as giving us grounds for accepting or rejecting statements such as those above.
Note that it is not the sole method. Take for example the question of the creation of the human species or of the creation of the universe. Most of us now accept scientifically based explanations centred on theories such as Darwinian ideas or the Big Bang explanation of the start of the universe. However there are still many people who believe in a religious explanations from Genesis - that God created man in his own image on a certain day etc.
These differences are more fundamental than those of two scientists offering different explanations of, say, the starting point of the universe. They are differences in what are the actual criteria for determining knowledge.
The two scientists can argue by a defined set of rules as to what makes a good explanation - the rules of science.
Those believing in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament take religion to be a superior arbiter of knowledge than science. They are using a different set of rules. Arguments based on science will not affect their arguments as they do not take religion - not science - to be the relevant determinant of what is correct.
Scientific Method
What is science.
Commonly it is defined by subject matter. So for example at school certain subjects - Chemistry, Biology and Physics are seen as science.
However defining science in that way rules out a science of the social world simply by definition. We have to ask why do we call these disciplines science?
Rather science is more correctly defined as a method - or a way of going about things. A set of rules - derived from a set of assumptions - that enable us to distinguish between true and false claims about the world.
So what are the key elements - the key underlying assumptions - within the scientific tradition.
1 - Rationalism - There is a long tradition of logic and reason as a basis for knowledge. This can be traced back to Greek philosophy but more recently through Descartes 17th Century thought.
So for example Descartes' "I think therefore I am" represents an attempt to base knowledge purely on reasoning.
So scientific method rules out both of two contradictory statements to be true.
Descartes instructed us that analytic reasoning:
"requires us to divide each of the difficulties...encountered into as many parts as possible as might be required for easier solution."
It should be noted that this tradition is not universal.
"The decompositional conception of reasoning which we, as descendants of Descartes, take for granted as the basis of good and adequate science stands in stark contrast to the holistic assumptions of Confucian thinking."
2 - Empiricism - The process of observing the social and natural world.
There is within the scientific tradition a tradition that hypotheses should be open to testing against observation data.
This is at least one form of what is called Positivism, a term often linked to the scientific method in social research.
"Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge availabel to humankind is that of science grounded in observation." (P Halfpenny, Positivism and Sociology, 1982)
A key element of scientific knowledge is that it is objective. It is this that gives it the status of arbiter of what is right and correct. I
Traditionally social research is based on assumptions that the social world is knowable and can be known by observation.
Such observation data represents an objective source of evidence. In other words it is not dependent on the observer but exists independently.
From this objectivity follows another key element of the scientific tradition. That is that knowledge should be cumulative and progressing towards and objective truth.
These underlying themes have underpinned the development of the scientific tradition within social science.
Where does scientific method come from?
A good starting point is the work of the Parisian Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte formulated a Positivist philosophy which he argued was the basis for the understanding and improvement of society. His philosophy was Empiricist, Naturalistic and Progressivist.
"Empiricist because human knowledge was the arbiter of knowledge."
Naturalistic "because all the sciences, natural and human, can be unified into a system of natural laws."
Progressivist because the crisis of civilisation could be solved..by re-establishing a scientifically based supra-individual moral order to relace the deposed authority of the Catholic Church." (see P Halfpenny, Positivism and Sociology, 1982)
The scientific tradition in social science then, goes back some way.
One of the next siginificant names in the development of the scientific method is Emile Durkheim.
At the end of the last century Durkheim set out his Rules Of Sociological Method.
Durkheim brought together nineteenth-century Comtean social philosophy and the actual collection and analysis of quantified social facts.
Durkheim regarded the social sciences of his day as akin to alchemy before the rise of the natural sciences.
He argued for rigorous empirical enquiry in order to come up with social laws. This is illustrated by his study of suicide. In this he pioneered the use of statistical analysis in social science.
It should be noted that this statistical tradition within social science was not something that Durkheim drew form Comte. Indeed Comte was actually opposed to the use of statistics in research.
These kind of ideas were not unchallenged.
In the 1890s there was a philosophical revolt against positivism which swept even Britain, the bastion of empiricism.
“It took the form of a resurgence of idealism and romanticism, vehemently opposed to empiricism and naturalism. The human world, it proclaimed, is quite different from the natural world, being pervaded by meanings which must be studied in ways remote from those applicable in the sciences of nature.” (Halfpenny 1982)
So for example sociology began to evolve towards using anthropological techniques in moder societies. This was later develoed by the Chicago school of sociology and their urban ethnographies in America.
Marxism also became a serious candidate for the natural science of society. However in general in the Anglophone world it was the positivistic assumptions drawn from Comte and by Durkheim amongst others that came to establish themselves as the science of society and of politics.
At this time there was great optimism amongst social scientist about the prospects for their new methods. Witness for example Durkheim’s belief that old social science to new social science would be like alchemy was to modern science.
In other words the advances of science were seen as being due to the methodology. Apply the same methodology to society and similar advances should be possible.
In 1925 Merriam argued that new methods made it possible to:
"bridge the gap between art and science and bring us to more precise methods of political and social control than mankind has hitherto possessed." (Charles Merriam, 1925)
The idea of a science of politics concentrating not on simple description or on normative prescription but on explanation was taking shape.
The 1950s saw the start of what is known as the Behaviouralist Revolution in political science. This was strongest in the USA and is still the model that many political scientists work within.
Behaviouralists are positivistic in their inclinations. They accept the existance of an existing social reality of which objective knowledge can be gained. The methods for so doing are those of science.
The position is synthesised into 7 points by one of its one time leading proponents David Easton. The key points are as follows:
1 - Regularities - There are discoverable regularities in political behaviour.
2 - Verification - In principle the validity of generalisations must be testable by reference to relevant behaviour. This equates to the hypothetico-deductive theory testing view of science covered earlier in the course.
3 - Techniques - Means for acquiring data are problematic. In other words methods have to follow proper scientific procedure. For example researchers keeping an objective distance from their subjects.
4 - Values - Ethical evaluation and empirical explanation involve different kinds of propositons and should be kept distinct. In other words normative theory is a separate subject.
5 - Pure Science - The understanding and explanation of political behaviour logically precede and provide the basis for the utilisation of that knowledge to solving the practical problems of society. Again understanding politics and practicing politics are distinct - although the purpose of understanding is to improve the practice.
OK so that is a sketch of traditional scientific method in social science. It must be said that it is something of a stereotyped view. In a sense a straw man set up to be attacked. However it is a view that much social science research is influenced by.
First attack.
The first line of attack is an old one. It has developed alongside the idea of applying scientific method to social science.
It is the argument that scientific method is unsuited to social science - because explanations of human behaviour are different in kind to explanations of the behaviour of physical objects.
The origins of this position trace back to Max Weber.
Weber requires that explanations of social phenomena be not only causally adequate, in the Humean sense of there being a regular connection between 2 events, but also adequate at the level of meaning, in the sense that the observed correlation must be supplemented by identifying the actors’ mental states that generate their motives.
In other words the difference between human behaviour and behaviour of physical objects is the element of intention. So to causation can be explained by simple correlation in the physical sciences, but in the social sciences there is a deeper level of meaning.
EXAMPLE
So if we want to explain why paper is blown on to the floor if I leave a window open we can do that using observation. It may take repeated observation but eventually we can come to an understanding.
BUT if I drop a piece of paper on the floor we can not fully understand that action by observation. Nobody can know exactly why I have done that simply by observation. Rather we need access to my intentions - in this case a demonstration. So a social explanation is different in kind.
This is sometimes knokwn as the interpretative position or sociological explanation. IT leads us away from simple observations and surveys towards other methods such as in depth interviewing and participant observation. In other words methods which help us get access to the understandings our subjects have of the world.
Second Attack
The interpretavist or sociological explanatory position still maintains the distinction between subjective and objective. There is still a world independent of the researcher of which it is the goal of the researher to find out about.
However more recently a body of arguments knkown collectively as post-empirical, post-behavioural or post-modernist have questioned the possibility of gaining objective knkowledge.
The radical feminst critique of traditional scientific method falls within this body of argument. We ahve talked about these arguments in the seminar and there is not time on this course let alone in this lecture to fully do them justice.
They argue that any view of the wolrd is necessarily from a particular standpoint. There is no such thing as an objective distancing that researchers can use to look at phenomena from a neutral position.
Rather what we call objectivity or neutrality is in fact a postion of male bias.
"Its point of view is the standard for point of viewlessness, Its particularity the meaning of universality." (MacKinnon)
The radical feminist critique then draws on these arguments that we all view the world from a particular standpoint. However - the standpoint that is dominant is a male one. This is often to the extent that women are unable to view the world from their appropriate perspective - and see that they are oppressed.
For the radical feminists these women are oppressed but suffer false consciousness.
Now as I say this is a very partial view of this position but it leads us to some understanding of feminist research from a radical feminist perspective.
Radical feminists see consciousness raising as a research method. This may be done through a variety of methods. So for example Reinharz lists a number of methods inclusding group discussion, drama, and diaries to raise the consciousness of women as to their true status as victims of oppression. The rationale for calling such techniques research methods is that they are being used to uncover the proper societal perspectives of the women, information that otherwise would not be accessible to the researcher.
As things stand the attacks on traditional assumptions of scientiic method are gaining ground. Very few people now hold on to the stereotyped model of social research I outlined as the scientific method. However its influence is still the dominant one in actual research. However research practice should catch up with the theory of research. However as of yet the hopes of the early social scientists for their discipl;ine in terms of becoming a successful tool of social change have not been fulfilled.
END