i have had several altercations with my wife where we have really been saying the same thing
her words my lack of understanding
you trying to set me up:D :rolleyes:
i think perception of anothers thought process can be occluded if the recipient has already fixed the window of understanding??
Thanks, Zoe!
I haven’t read The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, from the title of which I gather would be worthwhile for me to examine. When did it come out? I’m a bit off the beaten (and unbeaten) theoretical track since flunking out of grad school almost a decade ago.
First there’s “with rare and silly exceptions” and then there’s ten million essentialists? Which is it?
—And give Carol Gilligan at least half a break.—
I can’t. I’ve been a critic of her work for years. What she did a good job of was not well documenting that women or girls speak “in a different voice,” but rather simply pointing out that Kahlberg’s heirarchy of moral thinking is ranked in a way that is arbitrary and problematic: a moral judgement itself that missed many key features and motivations, not a mere classification of them. That critique was useful, but the science is not, and is in fact embarrasingly bad for her field that it was given so much creedence when it is so weightless.
But simply, you cannot argue that society is shortchanging girls by forcing them into a man’s world, and then turn around and argue that boys are hurt even more by this, without dealing with the question of whether adolescence itself is just plain difficult. The history of her research works like I said: first, looking ONLY at a statistically meaningless group of girls, based largely on interviews interpreted subjectively, not measures for anything with proven validity, she concludes that girls are specially silenced, and thus what is silencing them is an oppresive male dominated culture. Then, when she turns her attention to boys, she uses her already assumed conclusion to interpret results that should, at the very least, question her original thesis.
And all of this based on three studies, the data and underlying methods of which are too “sensitive” to be revealed to the public or wide peer review.
Here’s an article that touches on some of the things I’ve been talking about.
http://www.powells.com/review/2002_07_18.html
It raises the important point that many of Gilligan’s claims rest on the idea that girls and boys are forced by various cultural signals to become “inauthentic.” But what is “authentic” and how does she measure it? Is her judgement paramount? These are not questions of feminist epistemology, but of epistemology in general. It’s not a question of whether women doing feminist studies can do this sort of thing legitimately, it’s about whether anyone can do these sorts of things legitimately.
All right, fair enough. I read her early paper long ago and first, and that no doubt shades my perceptions of her later work. I see your point.
This is not to say that there haven’t been other social scientists who have done good solid work in this area, looking for feminist conclusions and insights.
Indeed, part of my problem with Gilligan is how she dominated the field to exclusion of many other important people and differing views. Considering the methodological frailty of her research compared to her peers, the overwhelmning attention she won was undeserving and highly distorting of the field.
What’s your take on Deborah Tannen?