Feminist Studies 

About: Feminist Studies is an academic journal published by Feminist Studies. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Feminism & Sociology. It has an ISSN identifier of 0046-3663. Over the lifetime, 1257 publications have been published receiving 48695 citations. The journal is also known as: F.S. & FS.

Situated Knowledges : The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

Abstract: Recent social studies of science and technology, for example, have made available a very strong social constructionist argument for all forms of knowledge claims, most certainly and especially scientific ones. Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see. The alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledges sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology. “Passionate detachment” requires more than acknowledged and self-critical partiality. Positioning is, therefore, the key practice in grounding knowledge organized around the imagery of vision, and much Western scientific and philosophic discourse is organized in this way. Situated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals. The only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular.

Is Female to Male as Nature Is To Culture

Abstract: Much of the creativity of anthropology derives from the tension between two sets of demands: that we explain human universals, and that we explain cultural particulars By this canon, woman provides us with one of the more challenging problems to be dealt with The secondary status of woman in society is one of the true universals, a pan-cultural fact Yet within that universal fact, the specific cultural conceptions and symbolizations of woman are extraordinarily diverse and even mutually contradictory Further, the actual treatment of women and their relative power and contribution vary enormously from culture to culture, and over different periods in the history of particular cultural traditions Both of these points – the universal fact and the cultural variation constitute problems to be explained

Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference : or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism

Abstract: That feminism needs theory goes without saying (perhaps because it has been said so often). What is not always clear is what that theory will do, although there are certain common assumptions I think we can find in a wide range of feminist writings. We need theory that can analyze the workings of patriarchy in all its manifestations – ideological, institutional, organizational, subjective – accounting not only for continuities but also for change over time. We need theory that will let us think in terms of pluralities and diversities rather than of unities and universals. We need theory that will break the conceptual hold, at least, of those long traditions of (Western) philosophy that have systematically and repeatedly construed the world hierarchically in terms of masculine universals and feminine specificities. We need theory that will enable us to articulate alternative ways of thinking about (and thus acting upon) gender without either simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them. And we need theory that will be useful and relevant for political practice. It seems to me that the body of theory referred to as poststructuralism best meets all these requirements. It is not by any means the only theory nor are its positions and formulations unique. In my own case, however, it was reading poststructuralist theory and arguing with literary scholars that provided the elements of clarification for which I was looking.