December Debates Feminist Academia

Great Debates
161

Does this statement mean…

  1. “There is some scholarship which is not to my taste in it’s presentation or content even though it is perfectly valid research”

Or…

  1. “There is some scholarship, some of which is plainly bad, within womens studies”

If your position is #1 then you really aren’t agreeing with what Truth Seeker has been saying despite your protestation to the contrary. If your position is #2 then could you give me some examples of what studies, in your opinion, are bad scholarship (or are inappropriately referenced, taken out of context, given more importance than warranted, etc.etc.) within womens studies?

[grumble]
I still don’t know what a Feminist Academic Tool is Scylla being strong-armed into a class not withstanding.
[/grumble]

My opinion? There’s no such thing as a “Feminist Academic Tool”. Feminist scholars use the same tools that any other humanities (psychology, sociology, whatever…) professor would. The EXACT same. Data gathering methodology? Statistics use? Survey techniques? They’re all the same. No difference in tools, only a difference in analysis.

Grim

162

Just checking in to say that I too am still following this thread. Mandelstam, you are not talking to yourself.

163

Thanks, Dangerosa.

**Grim_Beaker **:

*"Does this statement mean…

  1. “There is some scholarship which is not to my taste in it’s presentation or content even though it is perfectly valid research”

Or…

  1. “There is some scholarship, some of which is plainly bad, within womens studies”

Actually, it means both since there are not mutually exclusive categories.

“If your position is #2 then could you give me some examples of what studies, in your opinion, are bad scholarship (or are inappropriately referenced, taken out of context, given more importance than warranted, etc.etc.) within womens studies?”

First, I’m not an expert on women studies and even if I were I’d question the ethics of singling out a particular scholar’s work as “bad,” in a public forum, when that person isn’t in a position to defend herself/himself.

Second, bear in mind that work that is “inappropriately referenced” is not likely to be published in a respected journal.

I imagine that a certain amount of work in the social sciences (and the sciences for that matter) that is based on the collection of data will be found at some later point to have been flawed, or questionable, or otherwise unreproducible. (I should add, though, that as I’m not a social scientist, my expertise here is not particularly strong.)

In the humanities, strictly speaking, the determination of what is “bad” is debatable. There are, to be sure, exceptions: if it is plagiarized or, or based on made-up examples, or, as you say, not referenced properly. The chances of such work getting past the review process aren’t great.

But in other respects debates about what is “bad” work in the humanities can be contentious. For example, some philosophers don’t see Nietzsche as as a serious philosopher, while others do. Similarly, scholars can disagree strongly about the value of Foucault’s work; yet for some he is the most important thinker of recent times.

I actually have a lot of very strong opinions on various kinds of work being done in and around my own field. But they are more to do with what is “good,” than with singling out bodies of work as “bad.” I could easily name books and articles that I found tedious, logically flawed, unoriginal, obvious, overblown, etc. I could also point to historical analyses that I just think are wrong. In a loose sense I might think of such work as “bad.” But the people who wrote these works aren’t charlatans, or looneys, or cynics just grinding out work to collect a paycheck.

On the whole, there is so much good work out there, and there are so many opportunities for productive exchange across disciplines that I find myself with more good work to read than I can possibly take on. This is as true of the feminist scholarship I read as of the non-feminist.

"My opinion? There’s no such thing as a “Feminist Academic Tool”…

On the whole, I agree with you. Feminist theory and gender theory are modes of analysis. OTOH, this particular thread has never really been about the tool question.

164

Since you’re indicating it means both and without naming specific studies (since you don’t seem comfortable doing so) what has been the general verdict among feminist scholars regarding poor work?

Truth Seeker’s main beef seems to be that there is an atmosphere within Feminist scholarly circles that bad scholarship is accepted and/or given respect along with the good. In those instances where bad scholarship is present are those studies categorized as such by fellow feminists or are they given equal weight with more respectable research?

In a previous post the example was given of some work done by Carol Gilligan. You indicate that Carol’s work has been superceded by more recent research. Assuming that this is the case (even though I’m not convinced that this is the case) that still doesn’t explain why Carol’s work was so widely quoted and accepted by feminist scholars when it was released despite it’s methodological flaws (small sample size, excessive reliance on anecdotal data, her data being unavailable for review, etc.) and shaky conclusions. At the very least I would have assumed that if not condemned as bad scholarship (bad being a relative term and somewhat subjective as you point out) it would have been marginalized by serious feminist scholars and never would have reached such a wide audience. Instead it was considered an influential and respected work. How do you explain this? The explanation can’t have anything to do with more current research superceding it as the methodological flaws in Gilligan’s work were obvious to any serious humanities scholar at the time Gilligan’s work was released. So what’s the explanation?

Just as an FYI, even though you’ve indicated that Gilligan’s work has been superceded I’ve been unable to find any feminist scholar which points out the flaws in her work or which characterizes the studies as anything but a landmark in the humanities. You have indicated that you and many other feminists dispute Gilligan’s conclusions. Could you point me to some scholarly feminist work on the web which does so?

Grim

165

Grim_Beaker, I will do my best to answer your questions but I’d appreciate it if you take the time to look through the thread in its entirety since I’d like to avoid repeating myself if possible. You seem to have missed some very basic features of the discussion thus far–including my expertise on the matter.

“[W]hat has been the general verdict among feminist scholars regarding poor work?”

First, I’m not a social scientist. Hence, for me to tell you what I think is “bad” in my area within the humanities I’d have to detail some very specific disagreements about debatable matters. Even if I felt comfortable doing that, I don’t think you’d be very interested!

Second, I’m in no position to describe any “general verdict among feminist scholars” regarding any subject. More important, I don’t think that anyone is. There are a lot of diverse (and sometimes incompatible) positions within feminism.

Some see sexual difference as a kind of biological and/or philosophical given, and therefore see a need to empower the female perspective. By and large a more recent (and in my estimation, by now, more prevalent view) is that most of what we perceive as sexual difference is cultural rather than biological in its origins and, therefore, subject to historical change.

For me, as for many feminists, the latter implies that one must be careful not to attribute simplistic roles of victim/victimizer to women and men espectively. Often it’s just much more complicated than that. What’s good about gender studies as a mode of analysis is that it is able to facilitate that kind of complexity.

Now, a given feminist may fall into either of the positions I’ve described above, or waver somewhere in between. In addition, he or she will also be trained in a discipline or disciplines. Some may be social scientists doing empirical work (collecting data). Some may be doing interpretive, or theoretical, or historical work in the social sciences. Some, like myself, may be doing work in the humanities: that could mean philosophy, history, literary criticism, film studies, or a cross-disciplinary area such as Latin American studies. This is far from a complete list.

“Truth Seeker’s main beef seems to be that there is an atmosphere within Feminist scholarly circles that bad scholarship is accepted and/or given respect along with the good. In those instances where bad scholarship is present are those studies categorized as such by fellow feminists or are they given equal weight with more respectable research?”

Even if I could answer the latter question, which I can’t, I’d still have problems with Truth Seeker’s position. TS has yet produce substantive evidence of the phenemona he or she alleges. TS seems most preoccupied with science studies but hasn’t yet produced a clear example of a scholar doing “bad” feminist work in this area. As I try to show above, at least one prominent feminist philospher of science doesn’t seem to be doing the kind of work that TS dislikes. My own impression is that the kind of thing TS most dislikes is now considered dated stuff. However, I’m not an expert on the subject.

“You indicate that [Carol Gilligan’s] work has been superceded by more recent research… [T]hat still doesn’t explain why Carol’s work was so widely quoted and accepted by feminist scholars when it was released despite it’s methodological flaws (small sample size, excessive reliance on anecdotal data, her data being unavailable for review, etc.) and shaky conclusions.”

Grim, Gilligan’s name was only vaguely familiar to me prior to her entry to this thread (via Apos’s post). I have never read any of her work. Apos’s description struck me as dated; hence, I wasn’t surprised to find that the work had been done twenty years ago. When I asked a friend in women studies, she told me that G. had been superseded for some time now (among other passing remarks). My friend is a very up to date gender studies scholar in a first-rate women studies dept. She is the only person I have consulted on the matter–and only in passing. I don’t know what people involved in education think of Gilligan. Still less can I began to guess the grounds on which the work was admired 20 years ago. (Twenty years ago I was graduating from high school.)

All I can say on the matter of Gilligan is what I have learned from this thread. Apos reports that the work is being vigorously contested by various female scholars, but doesn’t say whether any of the contesters are self-identified feminists.

Hoff-Sommers, the author of the posted Atlantic Monthly article is, I think it’s fair to say, a critic of feminism. She is, I believe, employed by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. I skimmed her Gilligan article when Apos posted it; I’ve also read reviews of her book (a couple of years back). I think it’s safe to say that I have many strong disagreements with Hoff-Sommers.

But to return to the larger issues of this debate: there is a big difference in my mind between saying that 1) studies based on a small sample, and that aren’t found to be reproducible, should not be regarded as having made valid empirical claims and 2) there is no value whatsoever to scholarship in which interpretations are made or analyses offered based on reported experiences.

Based on what I’ve learned while taking part in this thread, it seems that CG’s 1982 results were found to be not reproducible. But I hardly think that means that no scholar can do valuable research based on interviews with adolescent girls or boys. Apparently Gilligan seems to think, now, that both adolescent boys and girls experience difficulties in education. Knowing as little as I do about her work, then and now, I can hardly say what I think about her latest claims. But I have no trouble believing that our society can do better by children and adolescents of both sexes. Anyone who walks down the aisles of Toys R Us can see the difference in how boys and girls are socialized–to the detriment of both IMO.

The issue that seems to concern Hoff Sommers is whether boys or girls are doing better in school. From my view, as someone who teaches in higher ed, this is a distraction. The problem for me is not a boy vs. girl problem; the problem as I see it is that young people of both sexes are under-educated. They are raised to be consumers rather than educated citizens. Classrooms are too big and that’s not good for boys or girls. A related problem is that boys and girls grow up thinking they can’t communicate across the divide of their sexual difference. And that just stinks. But it helps to market a lot of products suited to special boy/girl needs.

“The explanation can’t have anything to do with more current research superceding it as the methodological flaws in Gilligan’s work were obvious to any serious humanities scholar at the time Gilligan’s work was released. So what’s the explanation?”

I hope by now you understand Grim, that a humanities scholar doesn’t collect data and therefore isn’t in a position to evaluate the methodology of empirically grounded work in the social sciences. (At least, no more than any other well-educated person.) Social scientists, then and now, would be the ones to consider methodological questions in their own area. I would add that it’s by no means clear to me that the problems in CG’s methodology, such as they are, were “obvious.” To the contrary, I do not know any of the specifics of CG’s methodology; or of the specific empirical claims she made. Do you?

“I’ve been unable to find any feminist scholar which points out the flaws in her work or which characterizes the studies as anything but a landmark in the humanities. You have indicated that you and many other feminists dispute Gilligan’s conclusions. Could you point me to some scholarly feminist work on the web which does so?”

Is Gilligan seen as a landmark in “the humanities”? I’d be curious to know because I’m not clear on what her background is. Psychology, if that’s CG’s disciplinary background, is a social science.

To be clear, I have never indicated that I “dispute Gilligan’s conclusions.” I cannot “dispute” what I have not read.

As to the web. You may have noticed that I have had to type in all of my citations. The truth is is that the very best scholarly work is copyrighted by the university presses that publish the top journals and the top books. Some of it is online, but only available to users who can log into a library that has paid for access to such journals. These presses have to cover their expenses by selling subscriptions to libraries and individuals. That’s how they can afford to be so fussy about what they publish :wink:

My impression was that my friend’s meaning of “superseded” was in the sense I’ve emphasized here again and again: the shift towards a gender studies approach. The next time I call her, I’ll ask if she knows of any feminists who’ve articulated this position in print.

166

Grim_Beaker, I will do my best to answer your questions but I’d appreciate it if you take the time to look through the thread in its entirety since I’d like to avoid repeating myself if possible. You seem to have missed some very basic features of the discussion thus far–including my expertise on the matter.

“[W]hat has been the general verdict among feminist scholars regarding poor work?”

First, I’m not a social scientist. Hence, for me to tell you what I think is “bad” in my area within the humanities I’d have to detail some very specific disagreements about debatable matters. Even if I felt comfortable doing that, I don’t think you’d be very interested!

Second, I’m in no position to describe any “general verdict among feminist scholars” regarding any subject. More important, I don’t think that anyone is. There are a lot of diverse (and sometimes incompatible) positions within feminism.

Some see sexual difference as a kind of biological and/or philosophical given, and therefore see a need to empower the female perspective. By and large a more recent (and in my estimation, by now, more prevalent view) is that most of what we perceive as sexual difference is cultural rather than biological in its origins and, therefore, subject to historical change.

For me, as for many feminists, the latter implies that one must be careful not to attribute simplistic roles of victim/victimizer to women and men espectively. Often it’s just much more complicated than that. What’s good about gender studies as a mode of analysis is that it is able to facilitate that kind of complexity.

Now, a given feminist may fall into either of the positions I’ve described above, or waver somewhere in between. In addition, he or she will also be trained in a discipline or disciplines. Some may be social scientists doing empirical work (collecting data). Some may be doing interpretive, or theoretical, or historical work in the social sciences. Some, like myself, may be doing work in the humanities: that could mean philosophy, history, literary criticism, film studies, or a cross-disciplinary area such as Latin American studies. This is far from a complete list.

“Truth Seeker’s main beef seems to be that there is an atmosphere within Feminist scholarly circles that bad scholarship is accepted and/or given respect along with the good. In those instances where bad scholarship is present are those studies categorized as such by fellow feminists or are they given equal weight with more respectable research?”

Even if I could answer the latter question, which I can’t, I’d still have problems with Truth Seeker’s position. TS has yet produce substantive evidence of the phenemona he or she alleges. TS seems most preoccupied with science studies but hasn’t yet produced a clear example of a scholar doing “bad” feminist work in this area. As I try to show above, at least one prominent feminist philospher of science doesn’t seem to be doing the kind of work that TS dislikes. My own impression is that the kind of thing TS most dislikes is now considered dated stuff. However, I’m not an expert on the subject.

“You indicate that [Carol Gilligan’s] work has been superceded by more recent research… [T]hat still doesn’t explain why Carol’s work was so widely quoted and accepted by feminist scholars when it was released despite it’s methodological flaws (small sample size, excessive reliance on anecdotal data, her data being unavailable for review, etc.) and shaky conclusions.”

Grim, Gilligan’s name was only vaguely familiar to me prior to her entry to this thread (via Apos’s post). I have never read any of her work. Apos’s description struck me as dated; hence, I wasn’t surprised to find that the work had been done twenty years ago. When I asked a friend in women studies, she told me that G. had been superseded for some time now (among other passing remarks). My friend is a very up to date gender studies scholar in a first-rate women studies dept. She is the only person I have consulted on the matter–and only in passing. I don’t know what people involved in education think of Gilligan. Still less can I began to guess the grounds on which the work was admired 20 years ago. (Twenty years ago I was graduating from high school.)

All I can say on the matter of Gilligan is what I have learned from this thread. Apos reports that the work is being vigorously contested by various female scholars, but doesn’t say whether any of the contesters are self-identified feminists.

Hoff-Sommers, the author of the posted Atlantic Monthly article is, I think it’s fair to say, a critic of feminism. She is, I believe, employed by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. I skimmed her Gilligan article when Apos posted it; I’ve also read reviews of her book (a couple of years back). I think it’s safe to say that I have many strong disagreements with Hoff-Sommers.

But to return to the larger issues of this debate: there is a big difference in my mind between saying that 1) studies based on a small sample, and that aren’t found to be reproducible, should not be regarded as having made valid empirical claims and 2) there is no value whatsoever to scholarship in which interpretations are made or analyses offered based on reported experiences.

Based on what I’ve learned while taking part in this thread, it seems that CG’s 1982 results were found to be not reproducible. But I hardly think that means that no scholar can do valuable research based on interviews with adolescent girls or boys. Apparently Gilligan seems to think, now, that both adolescent boys and girls experience difficulties in education. Knowing as little as I do about her work, then and now, I can hardly say what I think about her latest claims. But I have no trouble believing that our society can do better by children and adolescents of both sexes. Anyone who walks down the aisles of Toys R Us can see the difference in how boys and girls are socialized–to the detriment of both IMO.

The issue that seems to concern Hoff Sommers is whether boys or girls are doing better in school. From my view, as someone who teaches in higher ed, this is a distraction. The problem for me is not a boy vs. girl problem; the problem as I see it is that young people of both sexes are under-educated. They are raised to be consumers rather than educated citizens. Classrooms are too big and that’s not good for boys or girls. A related problem is that boys and girls grow up thinking they can’t communicate across the divide of their sexual difference. And that just stinks. But it helps to market a lot of products suited to special boy/girl needs.

“The explanation can’t have anything to do with more current research superceding it as the methodological flaws in Gilligan’s work were obvious to any serious humanities scholar at the time Gilligan’s work was released. So what’s the explanation?”

I hope by now you understand Grim, that a humanities scholar doesn’t collect data and therefore isn’t in a position to evaluate the methodology of empirically grounded work in the social sciences. (At least, no more than any other well-educated person.) Social scientists, then and now, would be the ones to consider methodological questions in their own area. I would add that it’s by no means clear to me that the problems in CG’s methodology, such as they are, were “obvious.” To the contrary, I do not know any of the specifics of CG’s methodology; or of the specific empirical claims she made. Do you?

“I’ve been unable to find any feminist scholar which points out the flaws in her work or which characterizes the studies as anything but a landmark in the humanities. You have indicated that you and many other feminists dispute Gilligan’s conclusions. Could you point me to some scholarly feminist work on the web which does so?”

Is Gilligan seen as a landmark in “the humanities”? I’d be curious to know because I’m not clear on what her background is. Psychology, if that’s CG’s disciplinary background, is a social science.

To be clear, I have never indicated that I “dispute Gilligan’s conclusions.” I cannot “dispute” what I have not read.

As to the web. You may have noticed that I have had to type in all of my citations. The truth is is that the very best scholarly work is copyrighted by the university presses that publish the top journals and the top books. Some of it is online, but only available to users who can log into a library that has paid for access to such journals. These presses have to cover their expenses by selling subscriptions to libraries and individuals. That’s how they can afford to be so fussy about what they publish :wink:

My impression was that my friend’s meaning of “superseded” was in the sense I’ve emphasized here again and again: the shift towards a gender studies approach. The next time I call her, I’ll ask if she knows of any feminists who’ve articulated this position in print.

167

Apologies for double post. The board was ultra-slow today.

168

::Smacks forehead:: Gah! I seem to have conflated humanities with social science. My apologies. Yes, I realize that you work in the humanities and that Gilligans work was based in the social sciences. I was under the mistaken impression that you were defending feminism in academia in it’s entirety not just the humanities. My complaint with academic feminism today isn’t so much with some of the examples you described (i.e. discovering overlooked but talented female writers, re-examining womens place in history, research on the subcultural experience of women who have lived in the past, etc.). Rather with dishonest social science, revisionism and propaganda that (it seems to me) has become commonplace.

This is true. It’s not that I think Gilligan’s work is worthless it’s that I believe her empirical claims were given undue validity despite the fact that her studies were not reproducible. My perception is that there is a lack of critical peer review within feminist social sciences. I realize that this is quite a different topic from the humanities focus of this thread so I’ll stop here. If another thread is started regarding feminism which seems more appropriate to my objections then I’d be happy to contribute.

Grim

169

Grim, this thread has never been exclusive to the humanities–and Truth Seeker’s arguments crossed both humanities and social science. The Kabeer book and the Eichler study I referenced are certainly not humanities scholarship. If you perceive “a lack of critical peer review within feminist social sciences,” by all means say more about it. Perhaps you’ll want to be more forthcoming than TS has been about your professional experience, perhaps not. In either case, I’d be happy to consider the evidence for your perception.

By all means, tip out the contents of your beaker, let it be ever so grim ;).

170

Truth seeker: “Area of Specialization: Philosophy of Food (and Other Position Descriptions That Never Appear in Jobs for Philosophers)”

Ever heard of the Dining Philisopher’s problem? :slight_smile:

(lame comp sci joke)

171

I think there is a pretty clear record by this point as to whether or not I’ve offered any evidence to support my thesis or whether I’m “unbalanced” and my ideas “are based on no factual evidence whatever.”

I do, however, want to clarify one point and make a couple of comments on Mandelstam’s most recent posts.

First, the quotation from Prof. Gilligan was not made in a letter to the editor in 2000. It was made at an academic conference in 1986. Once again, the quote was,

**
Let me paraphrase this in plain English. “I didn’t follow any of the normal research protocols when I wrote my hugely influential book. It’s actually completely worthless as an indicator of the state of teenage girls in America.”

In most disciplines, an admission like this would have resulted in a tremendous scandal and would have wrecked Gilligan’s carreer. It didn’t. Despite suggestions to the contrary, Gilligan is not a washed-up has-been, nor is she treated as an embarrassment to feminist academia.

As for your suggestion that valid analysis can be “based on reported experiences” perhaps we ought to leave that alone since that would likely take us into some technical areas. I’ll just comment that the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out,” applies here. If your data isn’t representative and, therefore, can’t be generalized, any analysis you do on it won’t say anything at all about anything other than your sample itself.

Moving on, you seem to be suggesting that while there is some bad scholarship out there, it isn’t published in “respected” journals. Surely you recognize that this is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. Everyone who submits a paper to a journal will tell you that that particular journal is “respected.” By the same token, no one who publishes a journal will tell you that their journal is a haven for sloppy hacks trying to pump up their CVs.

You also seem to be suggesting that any bad scholarship is “dated,” e.g. Gilligan, feminist vegetarianism, etc. Are you saying that ten or fifteen years ago, feminist academia was a cesspit of preposterism but that it has since transformed itself into a citadel of academic integrity?

**
I’m puzzled by this. This is exactly the kind of thing the essay I orginally offered was decrying. This stuff isn’t bad in a “loose sense,” it’s just bad. Why is it published, then?

**
Mandelstam, I know you want this to be true, but how do you know this is true? Isn’t the alternative that these authors are well-meaning but incompetent?

**
I find this indicative of the very attitude we’ve been discussing. You may recall I observed earlier that there is a climate in which “criticism becomes stigmatized as rudeness.”

Ideas don’t belong to the scholar who publishes them. Once someone publishes their work, in most disciplines, publicly criticizing it is not only ethical, it is meritorious. Saying a piece of work is “bad” is an attack on the work, which must stand on its own. We can – and ought – attack (or defend) the work of Lomberg or Hawking or Dworkin or Paglia or anyone else who puts their work forward as worthy of consideration. If a particular work can only be criticized when the author is around to defend it, the work should never have been published in the first place.

**
No doubt. I doubt you understand the nature of all postmodernist critiques, either. I doubt anyone does. Nonetheless, I do understand the particular critique we are discussing. You complain that the cite regarding the impact of feminist postmodernism on science is “truncated.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link for this. However, it is quite clear and quite explicit as to how some feminist scholars view science. I can parse the thing out, if you really want.

:confused:

Ludovic
Haven’t you read, Only a Geek Eats With Both Hands: Class and Gender in Information Sciences.

172

Umm… can I offer a point of reference for “better” “more advanced” ??

–Condencing the time, space and/or energy required for desire fulfillment. shrug–

-Justhink

173

Sorry … “required to achieve desire fulfillment”

174

Truth Seeker,

I was in a Women’s Studies class around 1988. Someone (a student) brought up Gilligan’s work. The prof brought up pretty much the points made here “ancedotal, small sample, intuitive - which does not mean its conclusions are wrong, just that they are currently unsupported.”

I took another Women’s Studies class on African American writers where the prof referred to Alice Walker (considered by many people to be untouchable on the Feminist and African American fronts ) as “nearly talentless.” This may have been the first time I heard the phrase “plot hole big enough to drive a bus through.”

I don’t know if comments like this were making it into the written discourse in the late 1980s - but they were certainly being talked about on campus by the professors. Nor do I know if these comments were being made outside the close circle of Women’s Studies classes (the African American lit class I took had eight students, which made it pretty informal - no men and I was the only white person, another woman was Asian).

175

Dangerosa, I am shocked by your inconclasm! :wink:

Truth Seeker: I’d promised you the last word so I’ll try to confine myself to new issues only.

I increasingly see the differences between us in terms of your (apparent) grounding in the social sciences (or sciences) and mine in the humanities.

In your latest remarks you argue that Gilligan’s characterization of her argument as “interpretive” rather than “statistical” constitute (in your own words) “an admission” that should “have resulted in a tremendous scandal and would have wrecked Gilligan’s carreer.”

Now once again, I have no specific knowledge of Gilligan’s claims or methodology. However I do want to point on that if every scholar who claimed to be offering interpretive vs. statistical analysis were automatically considered to be a scandalous fraud, most scholars in the humanities, and quite a few in the social sciences, would, under these circumstances, be seen as scandalous frauds.

The perceived importance of interpretive work will depend, of course, on numerous factors. One of these will certainly be how much one believes that the issues in question can be empirically measured–and there is certainly room to argue that, say, the state of mind of young men, can’t be comprehensivelyly measured by multiple choice questionaires and the like.

IIRC Hoff-Summers refutes Gilligan partly by pointing out that more women now attend college than men. That’s something I’ve read about in the Times and, IIRC, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. What Hoff-Summers doesn’t mention (unless I missed it in my hasty skim through her article), is that the data looks very different once you break it down by race. Without noting race it appears that slightly more than 50% of college grads are women whereas more than a decade ago they were about 40% (again, this is from memory). Once race is noted, however, it becomes clear that there is a great disparity–and I don’t recall the exact numbers–in rates of college attendance between African-American men and women. So if its true that boys are being let down with respect to girls, it’s African-American men who are being let down with respect to African-American girls, and to white kids of both sexes. Yet I don’t think that was Hoff-Summers’s point.

My point therefore is that statistical data can be deceptive. I’m not against statistics; in my own life I pay attention to them and, from time to time, use them in my work. But whatever the merits of Gilligan’s 1982 work–and I hope not to say another word about it since I know so little–I think it would be helpful, Truth Seeker, if you would acknowledge the difference between statistical and interpretive work, and cease to imply (as you do above), that any and all work of the latter type will be risible or scandalous.

Now you give us some indication of your thoughts on the matter of interpretive work here:

“If your data isn’t representative and, therefore, can’t be generalized, any analysis you do on it won’t say anything at all about anything other than your sample itself.”

Perhaps not. OTOH, I do believe that there are social phenomena that can’t easily or comprehensively be measured as quantifiable data. If girls are demoralized by, for example, the beauty obsessions that Naomi Wolf wrote about, that is not necessarily something that will show up in a statistical analysis of girl vs. boy performance in grade school or college. And even if one considers performance in school to be the only important indicator of human wellbeing (and I certainly do not) there is nothing to say that teenage girls’ performance might not be adversely impacted by beauty obsessions, while boys’ performance is adversely impacted by something else entirely (e.g., time spent in front of a video game screen).

Although I’m not a social scientist and don’t mean to indict the importance of social science, I do want to point out that I’ve come across plenty of “studies” that claim to be empirically valid, while having all kinds of loose assumptions built into them. I’ve seen, for example, studies that purport to measure complex states of mind by recourse to some simple quantifiable variable. Studies of this kind may well be able to reproduce their results again and again. But that will not necessarily mean they measure what they purport to measure.

"Everyone who submits a paper to a journal will tell you that that particular journal is “respected.” "

Yes but there are reliable objective criteria of various kinds for journals: e.g., how many libraries subscribe to them? how many papers are submitted and how many published? what press publishes them? There is, IME, a very big difference between publishing in a top journal and publishing in an obscure and little-read journal.

" Are you saying that ten or fifteen years ago, feminist academia was a cesspit of preposterism but that it has since transformed itself into a citadel of academic integrity?"

I would say that the influence of postmodernist/poststructuralist philosophy reached a peak some time ago and is now being productively integrated in the manner exemplifed by the scholarship I’ve cited. I would also say that an “essentialist” position with respect to sexual identity is on the wane (which is a good thing in my view); and that the limits of identitarian analysis have been and continue to be responsibly assessed.

I should make clear that I would not want to see the latter trend go too far as I think it’s very important to look at criteria such as race, gender and class. There are, IMO, many problems with universalist assumptions which is what justified postmodernist and other critiques in the first place. That’s why I think the best work–in both humanities and the social sciences–takes both perspectives into account. And I believe that is happening more and more in the areas I’m most familiar with. Hence, I’m very optimistic about the present climate :slight_smile:

Re: what I think is “bad” - I’d said “tedious, logically flawed, unoriginal, obvious, overblown, etc.”
“I’m puzzled by this. This is exactly the kind of thing the essay I orginally offered was decrying. This stuff isn’t bad in a “loose sense,” it’s just bad. Why is it published, then?”

Well, as I’ve said, in my field its badness will be debatable. I also don’t feel that such work is anything like the majority; I also feel that the best journals publish very little of this bad stuff; and, most relevant, I also don’t feel that such problems are in any sense exclusive to feminist work.

“Isn’t the alternative [to these authors being looneys, cranks or cynics] that these authors are well-meaning but incompetent?”

Well, some of the time. However, sometimes, perhaps, I just see things very differently. For example, you and I see a number of things very differently and it’s increasingly apparent to me that the reason is at least partly to with disciplinarization. If adopted your terms, though, I’d have to say that because I feel so strongly that you’re unfairly evaluating feminist work, you’re either you’re a looney, crank or cynic, or you’re well-meaning but incompetent. To be honest, I’d be disappointed with myself if I started calling you names, or treating you this condescendingly. And I’m pleased to see you extending the same courtesy to me. More important, our debate would be unconstructive were we to drop to these level.

Re: my unwillingness to name scholars whose work I don’t like when they can’t respond themselves

“I find this indicative of the very attitude we’ve been discussing. You may recall I observed earlier that there is a climate in which “criticism becomes stigmatized as rudeness.” …Once someone publishes their work, in most disciplines, publicly criticizing it is not only ethical, it is meritorious. …We can – and ought – attack (or defend) the work of Lomberg or Hawking or Dworkin or Paglia or anyone else who puts their work forward as worthy of consideration.”

Yes, but Hawking and Paglia are famous people who know that their names are being bandied about in cyberspace. By contrast, I, like you, choose to preserve my anonymity in this forum (I’m not, btw, implying that in RL I’m famous; thank heavens, no). When I publish in a journal I expect my work to be carefully considered by others with my interests; not held up to ridicule by some anonymous stranger on a message board who claims to be a better scholar than I am. If it happens, it happens. But I don’t see that as professional conduct.

You must take my word for it, Truth Seeker, that in my published work I say my piece and without fear of stigma.

On top of all this, I see no value in providing specific examples of what I think is bad. I can easily describe it and have done so.

“You complain that the cite regarding the impact of feminist postmodernism on science is “truncated.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link for this. However, it is quite clear and quite explicit as to how some feminist scholars view science. I can parse the thing out, if you really want.”

Is it part of a book?