Collaboratory in Critical Security Methods
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies is an ESRC funded project (RES-810-21-0072)
Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective (Haraway, 1988)
This article confronts at least one dimension of the situated question, and that is our own situatedness, initiating an important discussion on the possibility/necessity of objectivity in our research. Haraway is concerned with recovering the potential of scientific practice from radical constructivist feminism, and raises a number of relevant questions and problematics for those attempting to negotiate and situate their own knowledge production.
Jef Huysmans says
I like the arguments Haraway makes about only partial perspectives and conversation (instead of detachment)promising objective vision. Since vision is not passive (p. 583) objectivity cannot be reached by adopting a detached, neutral point of view, one that erases the active work situated vision does. For her a detached, disembodied, unmediated point of view reflects the position of the dominant, the master. She mirrors in her situated epistemology the Marxist critique of neutral knowledge being precisely the knowledge of the dominant bourgeois class. It implies that neutrality reproduces dominant categories of understanding and positioning. Objectivity can therefore only be reached through situated knowledges which treat the world, the object of knowledge as an actor and not a screen, ground or resource (p. 592).
This is an excellent comment on the idea that objectivity can only be reached through un-situating the observer through strict adherence to particular methodological principles. Haraways position opens up towards a methodological orientation that focuses on the situatedness of everything without this necessarily having to result in subjective knowledge. I like her epistemological recapturing of objectivity. I am less clear on how to go about setting this at work in relation to specific situations. What does it mean to take the world as agent, to not look at a situation as a screen or resource but as an actor, as something doing things? I can think of several ways of turning this general epistemological position into a more specific conceptual and methodological framework (Boltanski & Thevenot being one; Latourian cartographies of controversies being another;...), but Haraway herself does not offer us much on this, at least no in this article.
In our discussions, I feel a need to start moving more quickly through the general epistemological arguments and start gearing our discussion towards methodologies giving body to situatedness.
Haraway does bring out an important issue about criticality: a situated methodology is for her a necessary move towards the critique of the dominant and the structuration of domination in knowledge which is vested in seeking the neutrality and detachement of knowledge from situations.
2 August 2010, 22:50
Hannah Hughes says
I too enjoyed this piece by Haraway. I am always interested in tackling the question of the researcher’s vantage point, the vision it generates and its effect on the world we write. And I think this article goes to the heart of any discussion on situated knowledge – in particular the cluster’s interest in the researcher’s own situatedness – even if, as Jef suggests, it does not readily lend itself to the assembly of a particular methodology.
In the article, Haraway lays out her “doctrine of objectivity”, which as Jef outlines, stresses the particularity and embodiment of one’s view of the world, or what she identifies as “partial perspective” (582-3). Thus the scientists’ eye is not merely a lens through which the world is observed and recorded in scientific description, but an active vision with the power to (re)mould its objects: “all eyes, including our own organic ones, are active perceptual systems, building on translations and specific ways of seeing, that is, ways of life” (584). Haraway then calls upon us to accept the situatedness of our particular view, which not only makes us responsible and accountable for the knowledge we produce, but brings into focus the importance of considering the situation of others (583).
As Jef mentions, Haraway does not provide any methodological tools or discuss the implications of situated knowledges on research and its design. However, her doctrine of objectivity brings to the fore the issue of orientation and how as researchers we orientate ourselves to the world and what we produce about it, which clearly has methodological implications. Haraway asks us to confront the position, situation and complexity of ourselves and the objects we study, and to translate, interpret and attempt to connect in order to produce “better accounts of the world” (590). I think this provides a good starting point from which to begin designing research and assembling tools, as well as offering a checklist of manoeuvres such tools could enable, and a good testing point to return to measure their success. In relation to ourselves as researchers, I would suggest that the self-reflection or reflexivity required to evaluate our own situatedness and achieve some degree of objectivity (as envisioned by Haraway), can be considered a method in itself - although there may be many different routes to achieving this. The importance and means for confronting our situatedness is increasingly recognised in IR, as demonstrated by a recent forum on autoethnogarphy in the Review of International Studies.
13 September 2010, 03:27
Hannah Hughes says
I had another thought about the importance of situating perspective as I rode the bus yesterday, so I thought I’d throw it into the forum to highlight the relationship between situated knowledge and accounts of the world peculiar to where you are sitting (and its implications on stories of security).
I am in southern California at the moment interviewing scientists as part of the empirical component of my thesis. I have been in California many times and was feeling pretty sad about the place as I walked along streets lined by huge tires and sprinkler-fed lawns. Things were getting me down, like the talking, the smiling and the amount of choice on the menu, even if I was aware that my British habitus was shaping this perception. Then I took the highway bus 101. I have taken the bus before, but this time I was in the bus, riding it with the people around me. Now I do not know what the other passengers were seeing, but I am pretty sure it was not the same over-sized, over-consumptive, soulless highway that I’d been bemoaning the day before. The people were a different colour, a different demeanour and how they interacted was not quite the same as those queuing for a half-and-half vanilla iced mocha. Their thoughts travelled along synapses and had the same chemical composition as my own, but did the images, thoughts and emotions generated as they travelled through the same time and space, bare any resemblance? Sitting there on the bus, I was suddenly experiencing Haraway’s words: we may indeed all be looking at the same landscape, but we are not all necessarily seeing the same thing. The 'landmarks' that stand out to us are probably not of our choosing, our situatedness or habitus may well dictate what we lay our eyes on when we open them.
As this thought sunk in, I thought about the security line-up Xavier had mentioned at our first meeting and it occurred to me how different the world appeared to airport officials, trained to identify danger, compared to passengers attempting to get through security as quickly as possible. Does the security official's world of possible threats bare any real resemblance to the world of the passenger who they believe in protecting? There is of course work done through posters, videos and news clips to harmonise world views, but when I am on my way through security, the official and I are not seeing the same danger in bags or people carrying them (and when I do find myself thinking about others in that way I ask myself whether I am racist). The security guard's job depends on believing in dangers - otherwise what is their point and why do they exist? I do not have to believe in danger and it is probably best I don't if I wish to have a pleasant flight. This surely matters. How do we think and write about situations where security is being practiced, if everyone is not seeing or having the same thoughts, fears and insecurities? Where seeing a bag on the floor is for some a possible bomb scare, others an inconvenience, and invisible for those in a rush? How does this impact on how we think and write about situations of security? If we are going to develop methods for studying situations when and where security is thought to be at play, then I would prefer tools that help us identify such differences and particularities in sight and the outward expression and performance they generate.
15 September 2010, 16:02
Jef Huysmans says
Hannah: seeing things differently is one way of approaching situatedness. It would probably lead to the study of perceptions and diversified belief systems. The latter than requires some understanding of why certain perceptions or beliefs matter and other don't in terms of what you are interested in.
There is an alternative to studying perceptions however: studying practice as process - i.e. focus not on what people see but rather on what they do and how their doings create and are embedded in relations. Then the question becomes how to study situated practices rather than understanding situatedness through difference in perceptions.
Just a thought triggered by your reflections.
Jef
27 September 2010, 21:56
Hannah Hughes says
Although I emphasised perception in what I wrote above I did this in order to illustrate its relation to where one is situated, and in particular to highlight that what we are seeing and what we think about what we are seeing is not necessarily of our making, but is carved by where we are situated (in a given field, in a given location and through the habitus that this generates). I therefore wasn't suggesting that perceptions should become the object of our study, not others perceptions at any rate. And like you Jeff, I would take practice as the more useful point of departure, after all - to continue the example I gave above - the bag has become a threat to the security official and is practiced as such. This illustrates the relationship between situation and perception, the perception itself seems to become irrelevant - it is practiced as such, which makes it such, and must continue to be practiced as such otherwise what would be the point or meaning of that particular security "practioner"?
However, whilst I don't think that the peception of our subjects should be what our methods aim to "uncover", I do think that taking our own perception as object is vital. If we are seeing what we are trained to see then how much space is there for us to really "know" anything other than what our discipline trains us to look for? I think our own situatedness is an important component of our research otherwise we risk producing knowledge that tells us more about the situation in which it arose than the object it claims to have the authority to know. I suppose this comes down to whether we just want to "practice" our discipline or whether we want to "see" something that hasn't been viewed like that before.
20 October 2010, 15:43