The concept of standpoint epistemology is to use the socially situated nature of knowledge claims being the basis for maximizing objectivity (Durham, 1998, p. 127). Standpoint theories claim to represent the world from a particular perspective laying claims to epistemic privilege or authority. These theories are post modern methods which analyzes inter subjective discourses. They support ‘strong objectivity’ or the notion that the perspectives of the disadvantaged individuals can be of help in the creation of more subjective accounts of the world (Wikipedia, 2007).
Based on this approach, the standpoint is a place from which the world is viewed by human beings. As such, these standpoints influences the way by which people socially constructs the world. The creation of standpoints may differ due to the existing inequalities of different social groups. Furthermore, standpoint is not merely the spontaneous thinking of a person or the category of individuals. It is the combination of all resources in a specific context wherein the construction of understanding takes place. The idea of standpoint can be illustrated with the analysis of the standpoints of the capitalists and workers. The predominant notion of power in the culture constructs it as a quality of the individual expressing the capitalist standpoint. The standpoint of the wage laborer on the other hand sees such quality as a form of domination. Because of the sexual division in labor that leaves women to their domestic labors, the women’s standpoint can be resources for the development of the notion of power (Hayes & Sprague, 2000).
Standpoint theories become controversial when claims of epistemic privileges over socially and politically contested topics are made. These claimed privileges consist of the characters, causes and consequences of the social inequalities which define the group in question. Three types of epistemic privileges over the dominant groups’ standpoint are claimed by this type of standpoint theory. First is the claim of offering deep over surface knowledge of the society. The basic regularities driving the phenomena in question are revealed from the standpoint of the disadvantaged whereas the surface regularities are captured by the standpoint of the privileged.
Secondly, claims of superior knowledge of the modes of surface regularities and human potentialities are offered. Existing inequalities are represented as natural and necessary by the standpoint of the privileged. The standpoint of the disadvantaged represent them on a different sense as socially contingent but capable of being overcome. Thirdly, they claim to offer the representation of the social world whilst relating it to human interests. Social phenomena are represented from the standpoint of the privileged only in relation to the interests of the privileged class and therefore misrepresent the interest as relating to the universal human interests(Anderson, 2003).
Marxist Standpoint Theory
The classic model of standpoint theory is offered by Marxism in which epistemic privileges over the fundamental questions of economics, sociology and history are claimed on behalf of the proletariat’s standpoint. Initially, the workers do not have the standpoint. Such is attained after they acquire consciousness of their role in the capitalist system. Epistemically privileged perspectives on the society are attained from the social situations of the workers. In the central mode of the capitalist production, workers experienced oppression. As a result of their oppression, they are given the objective interest on the truth regarding whose interests are best served by the capitalist system they are in. The understanding of workers as future agents of the universal class may lead them to communism where everyone has the same class status. It entails the representation of social world in relation to the human interest and not in relation to the specific interest of a class as in the perspective of the capitalist system. The collective insight of the common predicament and the need to overcome it lead to a revolutionary action that generates self understanding.
Feminist Epistemology
The feminist epistemology was theorized by Nancy Hartsock in 1983 drawing analogy with the Marxist epistemology. It has been argued by Hartsock that the feminist standpoint can be built on the understanding of experience and the criticisms of patriarchal ideology manifested in Marxian analysis. With this, the feminist standpoint is necessary in examining the oppressions in the society that devalue the knowledge of women (Wikipedia, 2007).
The feminist standpoint theories are focused on the differences in gender as well as the differences on situations between men and women that give a scientific advantage to those capable of using those differences. Such approach originated from the master and slave relationship of Hegel and the developments of these perceptions into proletarian standpoint by Marx. In this sense, the proletariat’s notions were translated to feminist terms.
Hartsock argued that the oppression of women in western capitalist society is a potential criticism for domination. Hence, human activity is asserted to set limitations on human understanding. This means that what people do is what shape and constrain what they know. Hartsock argued that the in structuring of human activity in two opposing ways such that of men and women, each is likely to represent an inversion of the other. The rulers then will have partial and perverse vision of the systems of domination (Harding, 1991, p. 120).
Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith offered a major rethinking of this theory. She referred to the social texts and discourses as ‘ideological practices and procedures which conceals the underlying relations’ of power in the society (as cited in Durham, 1998, p. 127). The central to Smith’s criticisms are the political basis of supposed objective method by which knowledge is accounted. It is argued that such accounting of knowledge is a result of the relations of the ruling. An alternative to this androcentric science is the sociology that started from the women’s standpoint. As such, the epistemology is built on the experiences of women taking into consideration the split between their lives and the society’s dominant discourses (Durham, 1998, p.127)
The feminist theory was further developed into more complex theories making an account of the constraints lived by the marginalized, oppressed or dominated groups. Among the theorists who advanced the standpoint epistemology was Sandra Harding. Here, she scrutinized the tensions and contradiction between feminism and the Western science. The feminist philosophy of science offers a rich account of the world where people live in. Procedures that maximize objectivity must therefore be focused on the social situations being the direct object of observation. On the other hand, the reflection must be focused on the observers and the scientists and the larger society. The maximum study of the scientists as well as their communities can be taken from the perspective of people who have been marginalized by such communities (Durham, 1998, p. 128).
Taking a variety of perspectives, it can be concluded that the concept of women and knowledge, that is socially legitimated knowledge, has opposing construction in the Western societies. Women are not given the voice of authority to state their conditions or to assert how such can be changed. The attempt to remedy this situation paved the way for the articulation of several feminist epistemologies (Harding, 1991, p.106).
Deaf Epistemology
Deafness clearly inflicts a barrier between the mind eagerly waiting to be filled in and the external sources of knowledge. The deaf people can arrive at a different understanding of the world as compared to those hearing people. This will be possible only if the people believed that deafness can enable people to view the world in a different manner and be able to actively construct knowledge. Learners are not seen as empty vessels or even mere recipients of words. Because they are not marginal beings that needed to be saved, they can be viewed as members of the large family of oppressed (Brueggemann, 2004, p. 159).
With respect to therapy, epistemologic matching is an essential factor. This is particularly crucial when a therapist of the hearing culture (majority) is treating a member of the deaf (minority). In a macro level analysis, there may seem to be a wall between these two groups of people. This is because the therapist and the client are from two antagonistic groups in the sense that the deaf culture is a minority group which is oppressed by the majority group or the hearing culture. Sue (1987) suggested that the minority groups elicit a different view of the world which has been shaped by their status as subordinate groups (as cited in Harvey, 1989, p.138). Each group view and understand the world in different ways. Furthermore, there is the tendency of each group affectively or negatively reacting to how each other view the world.
Deaf persons has in one way or another experienced being ostracized, ridiculed and denigrated by non disabled children during their childhood. On the micro level, the therapist must observe the epistemologies of deaf clients as they offer possibilities to guide the questioning of the client (Harvey, 1989, p.138).
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