Doing What Comes Naturally? Standpoint Epistemology, Critical Social Research and the Politics of Identity

Abstract

In this chapter I want to address a fundamental concern that has derived out of my own engagement with, and commitment to, doing critical social research. It is a concern that arises most directly from feminist standpoint epistemology and, in essence, is related to the belief that men cannot do meaningful and critical research on women. Men, it is argued, neither have the experience nor the understanding of what it is like to be a woman in a patriarchal society and will, therefore, inevitably offer biased and distorted research accounts. Whilst this is an approach that is also found, albeit to a much lesser extent, within the literature on ‘race’ and racism, there also remains a strong emphasis within this work, as alluded to by Brar (1992) above, on ‘experience’. This emphasis on, and reification of, ‘experience’ within anti-racist research and feminist research more generally, continues to strongly influence methodological debates. It is against this background that I have had to reassess my own role, as a white male, doing an ethnographic study of an inner-city, multi-ethnic primary school, where I have attempted to draw upon feminist and anti-racist theories in research- ing the construction of racialised and gendered cultural identities amongst young children (Connolly, forthcoming).