"Can a white, heterosexual tone-deaf, middle aged, middle class,
Male Biologist Really Study the Reproductive Behavior of
Trumpeter Swans?" Teaching the Issues of 'Women in Prison:'
Jim Thomas / Sociology / Northern Illinois University
(16 June, 2001)
Comments prepared for the St. Thomas Univeristy Critical Ethnography
Workshop, June 16-17, 2001)
Abstract
This paper examines the "privileged knowledge thesis," in which
the views and claims of insiders are presumed to be more credible
than those of outsiders. Focusing on the specific questions of
whether the standpoint of white, privileged males can study or
teach about disempowered women prisoners, I argue in the
affirmative by defending standpoint "theory" from a Mannheimian
perspective.
The issues then expand to: a) Knowledge for what, b) the problems
of the outsider looking in, c) the problem of "privileged
knowledge," and c) the role of experience/ideology in shaping
research and teaching about others' standpoints.
==========================
Smith (1987: 211) observes that "sociological texts
characteristically relate us to others and even to ourselves as
objects." Criminologists, perhaps more than other social
scientists, find themselves "on the outside looking in, making
objects of our subjects in courts, criminals, gangs, deviant
groups, or prisons, among out topics. This paper, part of a
larger project, centers on the question: Can white, middle-age,
non-incarcerated, middle-class male academics be taken seriously
in researching and teaching mostly black, lower-class,
uneducated, young, female prisoners? Here, the primary theme is
not so much criminological as it is philosophical and
methodological. But, the implications have reasonable import on
teach our findings.
When I first posed this topic to colleagues, many rolled their
eyes, chuckled, and asked why I would bother with such a
seemingly simplistic question, which would inevitably lead to a
simplistic paper. My simplest response is simply that this is a
question that I'm occasionally asked, and it's the type of
question that arises periodically when "outsiders" attempt to
make claims about alien populations.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Why do I ask this question? First, I do ethnographic prison
research as an outsider looking in. How can I transform my
subjects into what Smith (1987: 112) calls my "puppets who speak,
see, and think the words, sights and thoughts" that I attribute
to them? Second, the people with whom I talk are demographically
quite dissimilar to me. What answer do I have to the
essentialist argument that only "identity groups" can understand
their culture? Third, I teach racially, ethnically, and
economically diverse group of students. What obstacles subvert my
credibility when attempting to speak about and to their culture
and their experiences from my own biographical and experiential
standpoint? Finally, with a female collaborator, I am co-editing
a volume on "heterogendering in women's prisons." What
credibility issues do I face when translating their stories into
my own?
Questions of credibility come also from variants of several
experiences that recur with some regularity, typified by several
examples. Once, many years ago, I submitted an NSF grant
proposal for an ethnographic study of prisoner culture. I listed
my graduate student as an assistant investigator. In a short
negative critque, one reviewer argued that a young, female
outsider could not possibly be competent to interview male
prisoners, and her data would be suspect because women are easily
manipulated by, and fall under the charismatic influence of, male
prisoners.
A second example, actually a set of examples, occurs in
post-presentation conference discussions, casual conversations
with colleagues, or with leftist ideologues who doubt whether
prisoners of any stripe would provide "valid" or "reliable"
ethnographic data. Even if they did, they asked whether I, as an
outsider, able to understand, interpret, or communicate it,
because I obviously lacked sufficient cues because of my own
seemingly dissimilar background. This resurrects Wittgenstein's
adage that "If lions could speak, we'd have nothing to say to
them."
Third, with a colleague, I'm co-editing a volume on gender and
social control in women's prisons. I've just reviewed two journal
manuscripts on women's experiences with courts and crime, and
have been invited to review a book on women. How does my own
biography as a male influence my reading of such texts?
I recall Dorothy Smith's (1987: 112) insider-outsider experience
when watching a "family of indians" on a rail platform in Canada.
In conceptualizing this "family" of "indians" and in describing
their activity, she summarized the problem of outsiders looking
in:
The passing of the train provides a metaphor for a kind of
distance between observer and observed in which the observed
are silenced (Smith, 1987: 112).
The insider-outsider problem for teachers is nicely illustrated
by bell hooks's (1994: 3-7) experiences of the differences when
taught by white instead of Black instructors, especially Black
instructors who were integrated into the family community of
students. Changes in educational goals, communication styles, and
biographical and cultural baggage that reinforced tacit forms of
racism dampened her enthusiasm for learning. She illustrates her
point by describing her experience in a black history course
taught be a white professor:
Although I learned a great deal from this white woman
professor, I sincerely believe that I would have learned
even more from a progressive black professor, because this
individual would have brought to the class that unique
mixture of experiential and analytical ways of knowing--that
is, a privileged standpoint (hooks, 1994: 90).
We should not dismiss this question out of hand. First, in my
experience, the question often enough comes from good-faith
attempts to understand how outsiders can conduct research on
insiders. To these questions, a simple explanation is an
opportunity to teach them about how we, as social scientists,
conduct research. Methodology students are a second group who
asks this question. They are sensitive to the problems of
outsiders looking in, but are also aware of the proscription by
some ethnographers (eg, Spradley, 1979: ?) that researchers
should not study cultures in which they are members, because
their "insider knowledge" risks empirical myopia. Third, another
methodological issue centers on how we design our research select
informants, establish rapport and interact, gather the data,
interpret it and disseminate it. Fourth, whose knowledge and
whose interpretations should be privileged in our research?
Fifth, our research, especially when part of a larger corpus,
"credentials" our interpretations, conferring upon it a
credibility that derives from outsiders, not from insiders (e.g.,
Bourdieu, 198?). Finally, we should care because attention to
these issues improves our scholarship.
Therefore, I'm not convinced that the question is quite as
simplistic as it seems, because there is a long history of
insiders (and others) challenging the credibility of claims made
by those on the outside looking in. In the 1960s and 1970s,
there was a feeling among many activists and academics that
African Americans were better situation to research and teach the
experiences of African Americans than Euro-Americans. In the
1970s and 1980s, many feminists challenged the phallo-centric
dominance of classes taught by and research conducted by males.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of postmodernism, identity
politics, and various revisions (or perversions) of "standpoint"
perspectives further eroded the credibilty of outsiders speaking
for or about their research subjects.
The belief that a culture is best-studied by insiders, or that
the claims and interpretations of insiders about their culture
should be given more credence (or "privileged") than the
observations of outsiders, contributed to the academic
"ghettoization" of some topics. "Black/minority studies" and
"women's studies," are examples of disciplines in which
substantive issues where compartmentalized confined to their
section of the academic borough and disproportionately taught by
cultural "natives" perceived to be best able to speak on cultural
issues than non-natives. This further led to what Raskin (1972)
in a different but related context called "colonized knowledge,"
or the fragmentation of ideas, theories, and scholarship into
distinct areas with somewhat impermeable boundaries. This has
led to marginalization and decreased credibility, the expansion
of what many traditional scholars see as the proliferation of
esoteric specialized journals, and occasionally unpleasant tenure
decisions.
In penology, the "celebration of the subject" emerged in part
with conflict theorists (cite some) and interactionists
(Sutherland, etc), who began to give voice to the targets of
social control to express their motivations and view of the
world. This provided an antidote to the dominant voices of the
controllers. More recently, the emergence of "convict
criminology" (Stephens, 2001) has mobilized a cadre of
ex-offenders and others who have experienced the "dark side of
the law" to present what is perceived as an alternative to
conventional corrections scholarship.
The point? STANDPOINT MATTERS!
STANDPOINT MATTERS
The "Standpoint theory/epistemology/perspective" has been
resurrected in the past two decades, especially by feminist
scholars (1983 - Harstock, Harding, Smith, 1987). Some of the
excesses (eg, Harstock, 199?) have discredited the perspective,
but the approach has a long pedigree:
The problem is to show how, in the history of thought,
certain intellectual standpoints are connected with certain
forms of experience, and to trace the intimae interaction
between the two in the course of social and intellectual
change (Mannheim, 1937: 81).
For Mannheim, "standpoint" was not a form of relativism, in which
all perspectives are of equal value with view transcedent rules
to sift out the meritorious claims from those less so. He put
forth what he called "relationism," or knowledge seen in the full
context of the historically and socially shaped ideologies that
shaped it:
Relationism signifies merely that all of the elements of
meaning in a given situation have reference to one another
and derive their significance from this reciprocal
interrelationship in a given frame of thought (Mannheim,
1937: 86).
Unfortunately, the growth of "identity politics" has shifted the
original "standpoint" perspective, and the more recent (and quite
similar) standpoint positions of Smith, hooks, Harding, and
others, to an approach that, instead of challenging entrenched
dogma, simply replaces one for of certainty with another.
Heckman (1997: 341), for example, argues that standpoint
"provides the justification of the truth claims of feminism whil
also provding it with a method with which to analyze reality."
While some might judge her own position to be subverted by her
attempt to integrate standpoint with the conventional theorizing
of Max Weber and pluralism, as Smith (1997: 392) observes, the
fundamental problem is in the belief that standpoint is a "new
theoretical enclave."
However, standpoint does have critical importance:
Identity politics emerges out of the struggles of
oppressed or exploited groups to have a standpoint on which
to critique dominant structures, a position that gives
purpose and meaning to struggle (hooks, 1994: 88-89).
But, hooks (1994: 91) expressed some discomfort with the term
"authority of experience," because of its potential to silence
and exclude other voices.
Now, the bulk of these writers focus on feminist issues. But
substitute "women" with "other" in the following:
Locating the standpoint of women in the everyday world
outside the text (in which the text is written and read)
creates a whole new set of problems to be solved, problems
of the relationship between text and reader, problems of how
to wite texts that wil not transcribe the subject's
actualities into the relations of ruling, texts that will
provide for their readers a way of seeing further into the
relations of organizing their lives (Smith, 1987: 47).
SOLUTIONS? ENGAGEMENT
What are some solutions to this problem of "standpoint?" For
(prison) researchers, I offer two: Critical ethnography and
participant research. For teaching, "engaged pedagogy."
CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY
Critical ethnography is "ethnography with an attitude" (Thomas,
(Thomas, 1993), and it begins by recognizing the emancipatory
potential of cultural critique. Integrating our
respondents/informants in our research helps sensitize us to
their culture and how they interpret it.
One way to synchronize the needs of people and the goals
of ethnography is to consult with informants to determine
urgent research topics. Instead of beginning with
theoretical problems, the ethnographer can begin with
informant-expressed needs, then develop a research agenda to
relate these topics to the enduring concerns within social
science (Spradley, 1979: 14).
Critical ethnography is a type of reflection that examines
culture, knowledge, and action. It expands our horizons for
choice and widens our experiential capacity to see, hear, and
feel. It deepens and sharpens ethical commitments by forcing us
to develop and act upon value commitments in the context of
political agendas. Critical ethnographers describe, analyze and
open to scrutiny otherwise hidden agendas, power centers, and
assumptions that inhibit, repress, and constrain. Critical
scholarship requires that common-sense assumptions be questioned.
Critical ethnography is not just criticism, which is a
complaint we make when our eggs are too cold. Nor is it to be
confused with Critical Theory, associated with the Frankfurt
School, which is a theory of capitalist society. Critical
ethnography is conventional ethnography with a political purpose.
Critical ethnography is more than just the study of
obviously oppressed or socially marginal groups, because
researchers judge that all cultural members experience
unnecessary repression to some extent. Critical ethnographers
use their work to aid emancipatory goals or to negate the
repressive influences that lead to unnecessary social domination
of all groups. Emancipation refers to the process of
separation from constraining modes of thinking or acting that
limit perception of and action toward realizing alternative
possibilities. Repression is the condition in which thought and
action are constrained in ways that banish recognition of these
alternatives. Critical ethnography is simultaneously
hermeneutic and emancipatory.
PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH
Participatory research and addressing the needs of people. Why
participatory research? Participatory research, developed
especially by adult educators, is explicitly radical. If
Bourdieu and Passeron (1979: 4) are correct in arguing that
pedagogic authority is the power to sanctify cultural meanings,
then PR's opposition to the primacy of the researcher in
establishing and guiding the research agency and challenges what
Collins (1979: 202) has called "credentialing." Credentialing is
the practice of officially certifying competence, and those
so-certified are given more power and influence in imposing
their own preferred view of the order of things on others. By
removing the criterion of credentials as a passkey into the realm
of inquiry, participatory researchers aim to eliminate the
"property of positions" (Collins, 1979: 203) that allows
researchers in conventional research to monopolize knowledge
production because of their status. PR proceeds from an
attempt to generalize a process of research instead of its
outcome.
Influenced especially by Friere's theory of radical education as
a means of social change in third world countries, participatory
researchers follow his adage that oppression is domesticating,
but through reflection and action the world can be transformed
(Friere, 1972: 36). In the U.S., this has commonly taken the
form of organizing and "re-awakening the weakest sections of our
society" (Tandon, 1981: 23) in economically or socially
depressed urban areas in ways that empower through literacy
while simultaneously producing research that stimulates political
action (Castellanos, 1985; Derrida, 1990; Heaney, 1983). Other
examples of integrating research, research subjects, and direct
action include Maguire's (1987) application of PR to feminism,
Smith's (1990) studies of police raids on gay baths and the
management of AIDS in Toronto, and Davenport's (1990) analysis of
grassroots training for educational activism in low-income
Chicago neighborhoods. Street's (1992) study of Australian
nurses is an excellent example of how critical ethnography
integrates empirical analysis, theoretical conceptualization,
and critical insights. With subtle irony, she illustrates how
those charged with healing others employ shared meanings to
create a culture in which the power/knowledge relationship
renders them powerless, oppressed, and vulnerable.
ENGAGED PEDAGOGY
In challenging what he saw as the then-conventional view that
universities are not intended to solve problems, but instead
provide students with a "liberal education," Lynd (1939) asked,
"knowledge for what?"
The failure of the social sciences to think through and
integrate their several responsibilities for the common
problem of relating the analysis of parts to the analysis of
the whole constitutes one of the major lags crippling their
utility as human tools of knowledge (Lynd, 1939: 9).
Engaged pedagogy, a term floating around since the sixties,
involves shifting the primary goal of education from one
primarily of information transfer to one that empowers students
by providing them with intellectual and other skills to transform
their lives. Drawing from Friere (1993), the "critical
pedagogists" of the 1960s (cite) and later (giroux & ??), and
"transgressive teaching" (hooks, 1994), engaged pedagogy is a
critical approach to teaching (Thomas, et. al., 198?) that
answers the "knowledge for what" question with "knowledge for
emancipation:"
Making the classroom a democratic setting where
everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is the
integral goal of transformative pedagogy (hooks, 1994: 39).
CONCLUSION
Simmel once asked: must we be Caeser to KNOW Caeser?
Replied Weber (1965: 90), No, but it helps.
It depends, of course, on whether we speak AS our subjects (which we
cannot do), for our subjects (by giving voice to marginal populations
that are silenced), or about our subjects (which we can easily do by
looking at documents, statistics, or other data sources).
Toward the end of my corrections classes, I often ask the question:
"How would this class be different if taught by a female
professor? i How about by a prisoner?" Most students recognize
that a female instructor likely wouldn't relegate women's issues
to the inevitable single chapter in the middle of the text, would
integrate women's issues throughout the other chapters, and would
address in more detail the shared issues both of men and women.
They also recognize the a text written by prisoners would likely
focus less on the meaning of topics from the standpoint of the
keepers, and focus instead on how the kept would frame them.
Connell (1987: 17) reminded us that "personal life and collective
social arrangements are linked in a fundamental and constitutive
way." His point was that theoretical integration of each are
necessary in the process of understanding our collective and
individual social existence and transforming that understanding
into practice.
POINTS TO MAKE
--Stories/story telling
--Begins with dialogue as a way to understanding
--It ends with dialogue
Multiple audiences (or stakeholders) present the challenge of
multiple standpoints on both ends of the teaching/research
continuum. The trick is to recognize the dialectical process
that privileges not the claims of one audience over another, but
the PROCESS of dialog, of what Habermas calls "universal
pragmatics," a dialectical process between all participants. As
hooks (1994: 130) observers:
To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can
begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross
boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by
race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of
other differences.
And that's how we do research as outsiders looking in.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender & Power. Stanford (Calif.): Stanford
University Press.
Freire, Paulo. 1993. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York:
Continuum.
Heckman, Susan. 1997. "Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint
Theory Revisited." Signs, 22(Winter): 341-365.
hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the
Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Lynd, Robert S. 1939. Knowledge for What: The Place of Social
Science in American Culture. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton
University Press.
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and World.
Raskin, Macus. 1971. Being and Doing. New York: Random House.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1997. "Response to Heckman." Signs, 22(Winter):
392-398.
_____. 1990. The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist
Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
_____. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist
Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Spradley, James P. 1979. The Ethnographic Interview. New York:
Holt, Rinhart, and Winston.
Stephens, Richard. 2001. Convict Criminology. Belmont
(Calif): Wadsworth.
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