Standpoint Theory - History

History

Standpoint Theory was more theory based in the beginning, but now communication scholars, especially Nancy Hartsock, are focusing on looking at communication behaviors. Standpoint theory began when Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, studied the different standpoints between slaves and masters in 1807. He analyzed that the master-slave relationship is about people's belonging positions, and the groups affect how people receive knowledge and power. Karl Marx also discussed that the position of a work shapes his or her knowledge. From these two scholars' studies, Nancy Hartsock examined Standpoint Theory by using relations between men and women. From this view, Nancy Hartsock published "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism." The theory was similar to a combination of Marxist theory and feminism. Then, Hartsock put Hegel's ideas of masters and slaves and Marx's ideas of class and capitalism into issues of sex and gender. She refers to sex as a biological category and gender as a behavioral category. Therefore, Nancy called this theory "Feminist Standpoint Theory" in 1983. The focus of this theory is women's social positions, such as race, class, culture, and economic status. "Developed primarily by social scientists, especially sociologists & political theorists; it extends some of the early insights about consciousness that emerged from Marxist/socialist feminist theories and the wider conversations about identity politics. Standpoint Theory endeavors to develop a feminist epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that delineates a method for constructing effective knowledge from the insights of women's experience." The theory arose amongst feminist theorists, such as Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Alison Wylie, and Patricia Hill Collins.

According to this approach:

• A standpoint is a place from which human beings view the world.
• A standpoint influences how the people adopting it socially construct the world.
• A standpoint is a mental position from which things are viewed
• A standpoint is a position from which objects or principles are viewed and according to which they are compared and judged
• The inequalities of different social groups create differences in their standpoints.
• All standpoints are partial; so (for example) Standpoint feminism coexists with other standpoints.