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nroman

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I found a passage in James C Scott's Seeing Like a State that shifted me a little closer towards agreeing with intersectionality.

I think that a "woman's eye," for lack of a better term, was essential to Jacobs's frame of reference. A good many men, to be sure, were insightful critics of high-modernist urban planning, and Jacobs refers to many of their writings. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine her argument being made in quite the same way by a man ... The eyes with which she sees the street are, by turns, those of shoppers running errands, mothers pushing baby carriages, children playing, friends having coffee or a bite to eat, lovers strolling, people looking from their windows, shopkeepers dealing with customers, old people sitting on park benches ... A concern with public space puts both the interior of the home and the office as factory outside her purview. The activities that she observes so carefully, from taking a walk to window-shopping, are largely activities that do not have a single purpose or that have no conscious purpose in the narrow sense
-Seeing Like a State (p.138)

This passage, and the book in general, provided some concrete examples of 'different ways of knowing' that I could wrap my head around. Going forward, I will take claims to the importance of researcher identity a bit more seriously in certain fields (ie urban planning and agriculture, but not in mathematics and CS).

This seems to point to a weaker form of intersectionality/identity-focused theories that makes a lot more sense: 'researcher identity has distinct effects on research in complex and/or culturally charged fields' vs the orthodox strong form, 'researcher identity is the primary lens through which research must be judged in all fields.'

I experienced a similar nudge reading David Chapman, who insists on the importance of early postmodern philosophers such as Foucault. I previously dismissed both groups out of hand, now I take a moment to assess individual claims and expect that some have validity.

Has anyone experienced similar nudges, or have particular comments on this subject?

5nroman6y

Good points. Perhaps 'intersectionality' isn't the right term. I also considered 'positionality,' trying to refer to ' ideology that emphasizes identity over reasoning.' Or maybe I'm thinking of the 'motte' form, so that [whatever the Scott quote represents] is a weaker form of motte!intersectionality is a weaker form of bailey!intersectionality. Though I think the Scott quote represents something stronger than 'paying attention to identity X's perspective'. It looks more like 'identity X may provide information and insights in unpredictable ways.' This is not compatible with reflexively applying a narrative to an identity group, as so often happens. If identity X's insights line up perfectly with your preexisting beliefs, there's something else going on. Perhaps more specifically, I newly endorse the proposal, "Identity has distinct and unpredictable effects on research," but not the more extreme proposals: "Identity group members are replaceable." "Identity groups have a 'correct' position." "Problems must be examined first in relation to identity groups." I'm personally coming into this with a heavy bias against intersectionality and critical theory, so I'm trying to steelman where possible.

4Viliam6y

Considering that anyone can provide an unpredictable insight, and you can't invite everyone to the debate, so you need to use some heuristic to get maximum insight per number of people invited... the social justice heuristic (focusing on gender, race, sexual orientation) is actually quite good. It can be further improved by also considering social class and religion/politics.

I hadn't considered that angle. Still, that heuristic assumes

a) that the field is one where those differences are salient (I maintain mathematics at least is exempt) and

b) that the people you're inviting have sufficient background to make meaningful contributions, contra the orthodox intersectional considerations you mentioned before.

I'm tempted say that this heuristic (diversity of identity) is strictly less effective than diversity of thought/ideology, but that seems to be what Scott runs against. It would indicate that there are insights not available j... (read more)

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