Introduction: Doing Archaeology as a Feminist

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences

Interdisciplinary Practice

In commenting on the state of affairs in contemporary archaeology, Wylie outlines an agenda for archaeology as an interdisciplinary science rooted in ethical practices of stewardship. In so doing she lays the foundations for an informed and philosophically relevant “meta-archaeology.

Reviews

Suzanne ROMAINE, Language in society. An introduction to sociolonguistic

Methodological Essentialism: Comments on "Philosophy, Sex and Feminism"

In arguing that sex and gender must be taken seriously as areas of philosophical interest, de Sousa and Morgan assume that, if properly practiced, science and philosophy are essentially emancipatory. Several questions are raised about the efficacy and implication of this assumption.Dans leur discussion de l’importance d’inclure le sexe et le genre dans l’étude de la philosophie, de Sousa et Morgan supposent que, dans leur pratique adéquate, la philosophie et les sciences sont primordialement émancipatoires. Plusieurs questions se posent concernant les implications et l’efficacité de leur postulat

Feminist Philosophy of Science: Standpoint Matters

Feminist standpoint theory has a contentious history. It is an explicitly political as well as social epistemologa characterized by the thesis that those who are marginalized or oppressed under conditions of systemic inequity may, in fact, be better knowers, in a number of respects, than those who are socially or economically privileged. Their epistemic advantage arises from the kinds of experience they are likely to have, situated as they are, and the resources available to them for understanding this experience. Feminist standpoint theorists argue that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that makes such an epistemic difference.1 Standard critiques of feminist standpoint theory attribute to it two manifestly untenable theses: that epistemically consequential standpoints must be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that those who occupy them have automatic and comprehensive epistemic privilege. A world structured by hierarchical, oppressive social divisions thus becomes a world of unbridgeable epistemic solitudes. I agree that neither thesis is tenable and I argue that neither is a necessary presupposition of standpoint theory. The anxious philosophical nightmare of corrosive relativism2 does not afflict standpoint theorists any more than it does other varieties of social epistemology and socially naturalized contextualism, and need not be epistemically disabling in any case. My aim here is to offer a systematic reformulation of standpoint theory, and address two questions: What epistemic insights does standpoint theory offer? And what is the scope of its application

Material Evidence

How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence is a collection of 19 essays that take a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring key instances of exemplary practice, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. -/- Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. -/- Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material "things" as objects of inquiry and as evidence – and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer practitioners within archaeology and well beyond

What Knowers Know Well: Women, Work, and the Academy

Research on the status and experience of women in academia in the last 30 years has challenged conventional explanations of persistent gender inequality, bringing into sharp focus the cumulative impact of small scale, often unintentional differences in recognition and response: the patterns of 'post-civil rights era' dis­crimination made famous by the 1999 report on the status of women in the MIT School of Science. I argue that feminist standpoint theory is a useful resource for understanding how this sea change in understanding gender inequity was realized. At the same time, close attention to activist research on workplace environment issues suggests ways in which our understanding of standpoint theory can fruitfully be refined. I focus on the implications of two sets of distinctions: between types of epistemic injustice (and correlative advantage) that may affect marginalized knowers; and between the resources of situated knowledge and those of a critical standpoint on knowledge production

What knowers know well: standpoint theory and gender archeology

Neste artigo, argumento que – ao expor o androcentrismo do sistema referencial de suposições consideradas como óbvias e levantando a questão da confi abilidade de normas entrincheiradas de justifi cação – a arqueologia de gênero é mais bem entendida como uma forma de construtivismo social relutante. Ela expõe inadvertidamente a contingência de compromissos fundacionais, do conteúdo e da prática, que se presumiu serem neutros com respeito aos interesses situados dos praticantes, contextualmente independentes e trans-historicamente estáveis. Mas longe de minar fatalmente a objetividade do empreendimento, argumento que essas implicações mais radicais da arqueologia de gênero ilustram o valor da análise construtivista social como um recurso epistêmico. Deve-se atentar para o papel epistêmico positivo que ela pode ter como catálise para os tipos de crítica transformadora que são essenciais para o bom funcionamento da ciência. Argumento que um compromisso com a análise construtivista em curso deveria ser um componente central das concepções procedimentais da objetividade que levam a sério a necessidade de mobilizar ao invés de marginalizar os diversos recursos epistêmicos dos conhecedores situadosIn this article, I argue that – in exposing the androcentrism of taken-for-granted framework assumptions and calling into question the reliability of entrenched norms of justifi cation – gender archaeology is best understood as a form of reluctant social constructivism. It inadvertently exposes the contingency of foundational commitments, of content and of practice, that had been presumed to be neutral with respect to the situated interests of practitioners, context-independent and trans-historically stable. But, far from fatally undermining the objectivity of the enterprise, I argue that these more radical implications of gender archaeology illustrate the value of social constructionist analysis as an epistemic resource. We should attend to the positive epistemic role it can play as a catalyst for the kinds of transformative criticism that are essential to well-functioning science. I argue that a commitment to ongoing constructionist analysis should be a central component of proceduralist conceptions of objectivity that take seriously the need to mobilize rather than marginalize the diverse epistemic resources of situated knower

Archaeology and Critical Feminism of Science: Interview with Alison Wylie

In this wide-ranging interview with three members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sao Paolo (Brazil) Wylie explains how she came to work on philosophical issues raised in and by archaeology, describes the contextualist challenges to ‘received view’ models of confirmation and explanation in archaeology that inform her work on the status of evidence and contextual ideals of objectivity, and discusses the role of non-cognitive values in science. She also is pressed to explain what’s feminist about feminist research and in that connection outlines her account of feminist standpoint theory and the relevance of feminist analysis to science