Griffin Summary: Different locations within the social hierarchy affect what is seen. The standpoints of marginalized people provide less false views of the world than the privileged perspectives of the powerful. Strong objectivity requires that scientific research start from the lives of women, the poor, gays and lesbians, and racial minorities.
Individual experiences, knowledge, and communication behaviours are shaped in large part by the social groups to which they belong. Standpoint provides a well-structured framework for understanding how social groups affect our life.
How do we know reality? How do we know truth? We know from the production of knowledge. But who creates knowledge?
Harding and Wood were concerned with who was producing language.
Differing Viewpoints
- Historical and scientific stories typically fashioned by the ‘standpoint’ of privileged male authors
- Viewpoint of someone who is privileged: The Empire civilized the ‘primitives’ (the barbaric people)
- Viewpoint of someone who experienced it (or oppressed): The Empire denied ‘people’ traditional ways of life and brought oppression
Partial views
- All views of the world are partial.
- Need to consider individual’s standpoint – place from which they view the world. Who is writing and what is their interest?
- Social hierarchies privilege some voices over others
- Status quo supports social hierarchy
- What people know depends on the group they live in
Marginalized View
- ‘Weak provide more powerfully objective view of life than powerful’ (Griffin, 483)
- Greater motivation to understand more powerful
Example from gender
- Men want autonomy; women connectedness
- Men use language to assert self accomplish tasks, and gain power
- Women – build relationships, include others, show responsibility
- ‘Gendered communicating practices reflect and reinforce our societal expectation that care giving is women’s work’. (Griffin, 490)
No fully unified standpoint
Not all women share the same standpoint, nor do men
Everyone’s voice of reality is distorted not because of their social placement but because of the complexity of language (Griffin, 492)
