Engendering Rationalities (original) (raw)

Preface

1. Introduction
Nancy Tuana

I. RETHINKING EPISTEMOLOGY: REALISM, TRUTH, OBJECTIVITY

2. Epistemology Resuscitated: Objectivity as Trustworthiness
Naomi Scheman

3. On Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant?
Linda Martín Alcoff

4. How to Be Really Responsible
Lisa Heldke

5. Beyond Epistemology: From a Pragmatist Feminist Experiential Standpoint
Charlene Haddock Seigfried

II. UNVEILING RATIONALITY

6. Resisting Rationality
Sarah Lucia Hoagland

7. Memory, Suggestibility, and Social Skepticism
Sue Campbell

8. Relativism and Feminist Science Scholarship
Lynn Hankinson Nelson

9. The Bias Paradox in Feminist Epistemology
Richmond Campbell

III. ON THE MATTER OF KNOWING

10. Material Locations: An Interactionist Alternative to Realism/Social Constructivism
Nancy Tuana

11. Participatory Knowledge and the World in Virginia Woolf
Louise Westling

IV. WHOSE STORIES? WHICH BIASES?

12. Rational Imaginings, Responsible Knowings: How Far Can You See From Here?
Lorraine Code

13. The Epistemology of Moral Voice: Displacing Hegemony in Moral/Legal Discourse
Susan Hekman

14. Objectivity and the Role of Bias
Susan E. Babbitt

15. The Struggle to Naturalize Literary Studies: Chicana Literary Theory and Analysis
Judith Richards

16. Epistemological Deliberations: Constructing and Contesting Knowledge in Women's Cross-Cultural Hair Testimonies
Lanita Jacobs-Huey

17. Standpoint Epistemology in the Physical Sciences: The Case of Michael Faraday
Barbara L. Whitten

Bibliography/ Feminist Epistemologies

Contributors

Index

Engendering Rationalities brings together theorists whose work has been foundational to the development of feminist investigations of reason, objectivity, and knowledge with the work of scholars who build up and extend their insights. Contributors not only question standard conceptions of truth, objectivity, and our realist conceptions of the relationships between human knowledge and the world, but also offer rich and exciting alternatives to traditional theories that both arise out of and are compatible with feminist concerns. The book provides more adequate models of rationality that include the epistemic significance of a variety of subjective factors such as our specific cultural and social locations including sex, race, ethnicity, class, etc. , and our personal commitments, desires, and interests.

Nancy Tuana, Director of the Douglas Rock Ethics Institute and Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, is the author of The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman's Nature and Woman and the History of Philosophy, editor of three other books, and coeditor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Sandra Morgen is Director of the Center for Women in Society at the University of Oregon. She is editor of Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching and coeditor of Women and the Politics of Empowerment.

"This is an incredibly rich collection of thoughtful and insightful essays in feminist epistemology and feminist philosophy of science. Tuana and Morgen have assembled a top-notch roster of scholars who address a variety of topics and issues, including feminist considerations of realism, objectivity, truth, rationality, materiality, scientific practice, and epistemic responsibility and credibility. " — Shannon Sullivan, Penn State University