What's Life Look Like From Where You Stand?

"People are situated in specific social locations; they occupy different places in the social hierarchy based on their membership in social groups (poor, wealthy, men, women, European American, African American, Latino, uneducated, well educated, and so forth). Because of these social locations, individuals view the social situation from particular vantage points. Those vantage points formed in opposition to those in power, resisting the social definition given to them by those in power, become standpoints. No standpoint allows a person to view the entire social situation completely—all standpoints are partial—but people on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy do see more than their own position."

-- Richard West

We all belong to a community. Some of us are members of a culture with a long history in the United States. Others of us belong to cultures that have recently found prominence in this country. The term culture has many different meanings. There are various interpretations and issues pertaining to culture and human behavior. 

When it comes to communication, a person’s standpoint often determines how he or she composes, analyzes and relays messages. A woman who speaks bluntly, for instance, is often viewed negatively in certain environments by members of both sexes. Though her message may be clear and direct, social hierarchies and norms that expect women to exercise tact and restraint can prevent her straightforward disclosure from achieving the desired outcome. Knowing this, many women hedge their speech with adverbs, conditionals and passive phrases in order to appear warmer, more inclusive and less threatening. Women also have different criteria than men for evaluating expert knowledge.

Certain theories represent a cross-section of what it means to be a member of a cultural community. Each of these theories takes into consideration what happens when we communicate with people who come from different cultural backgrounds with different cultural expectations. For example, Standpoint Theory states that people view the world according to their positions in life. So the theory considers socioeconomic class
and its application to a variety of marginalized populations, including women, the poor, gay men and lesbians, and many racial and ethnic communities.

Feminist Standpoint Theory rests first on a few general beliefs that characterize the theory: 1) Sex or gender is a central focus for the theory; 2) sex or gender relations are viewed as problematic, and the theory seeks to understand how sex or gender is related to inequities and contradictions; 3) sex or gender relations are viewed as changeable; and 4) feminist theory can be used to challenge the status quo when the status quo debases or devalues women.

Standpoint Theory rests on five specific assumptions about the nature of social life:

1. Material life (or class position) structures and limits one’s understandings of social relations.
2. When material life is structured in two opposing ways for two different groups, the understanding of each will be an inversion of the other. When there is a dominant and a subordinate group, the understanding of the dominant group will be both partial and harmful.
3. The vision of the ruling group structures the material relations in which all groups are forced to participate.
4. The vision available to an oppressed group represents struggle and an achievement.
5. The potential understanding of the oppressed (the standpoint) makes visible the inhumanity of the existing relations among groups and moves us toward a better and more just world. 

Individuals’ location in the class structure shapes and limits their understandings of social relations. Feminist Standpoint Theory assumes that all standpoints are partial, but those of the ruling class can actually harm those of the subordinate group. This point leads naturally to an assertion that the ruling group structures life in such a way as to remove some choices from the subordinate group. In the United States people have very little choice about participating in a market economy, which is the preferred mode for the ruling class. As Hartsock (1997) comments, “The vision of the rulers structures social life, and forces all parties to participate in this structure. Truth is, to a large extent, what the dominant groups can make true; history is always written by the winners.” Furthermore, the ruling class promotes propaganda that describes the market as beneficial and virtuous.

The subordinate group has to struggle for their vision of social life. This struggle results in a clearer, more accurate vision for the subordinate group than that possessed by the ruling class. With this clear vision, the subordinate group can see the inherent inhumanity in the social order and can thus attempt to change the world for the better. At the end of the day, although all standpoints are partial, the standpoint of an oppressed group is formed through careful attention to the dominant group. This isn’t true in reverse. Thus, members of oppressed groups have a more complete standpoint than do members of dominant groups.

Standpoint Theory embodies a set of beliefs about knowledge and knowledge gathering:

• All knowledge is a product of social activity, and thus no knowledge can be truly objective.
• Cultural conditions “typically surrounding women’s lives produce experiences and understandings that routinely differ from those produced by the conditions framing men’s lives.” These different understandings often produce distinct communication patterns.
• It is a worthwhile endeavor to understand the distinctive features of women’s experience.
• We can only know women’s experience by attending to women’s interpretations of this experience. 

Knowledge is not an objective concept but rather is shaped subjectively by knowers. This suggests an approach to knowing that is much different from that suggested by a belief in objective truth. Also, different social locations that men and women inhabit in the United States exists even when they work and live in what seem to be similar situations.

Standpoint Theory rests on several key concepts: standpoint, “situated knowledges,” and sexual division of labor. The central concept of the theory, standpoint, is a location, shared by a group experiencing outsider status, within the social structure, that lends a particular kind of sense making to a person’s lived experience.

A standpoint is not simply an interested position (interpreted as bias) but is interested in the sense of being engaged. The concept of engagement is amplified by researchers who distinguish between a standpoint and a perspective...it is easy to confuse the two, but there is a critical difference. A perspective is shaped by experiences that are structured by a person’s place in the social hierarchy. A perspective may lead to the achievement of a standpoint but only through effort. Standpoints are only achieved after thought, interaction, and struggle. Standpoints must be actively sought and are not possessed by all who have experienced oppression. Standpoints are achieved through experiences of
oppression added to active engagement, reflection, and recognition of the political implications of these experiences. Furthermore, standpoints are not free of their social and political contexts.

Standpoints are “socially mediated.” Because standpoints are defined by specific social locations, they are by necessity partial, or incomplete. The location allows only a portion of social life to be viewed by any particular group. In addition, the political aspect of standpoints stresses that individuals go through a developmental process in acquiring them. Developing a standpoint requires “active, political resistance to work against the material embodiment of the perspective and experience of the dominant group. Standpoints are political because they are achieved in collaboration and dialogue with others rather than in isolation.

“Situated knowledges,” meaning that any person’s knowledge is grounded in context and circumstances. The notion of “situated knowledges” reminds us that what we know and do is not innate but rather is the result of learning from our experiences.

“Feminist Standpoint Theory” rests on the notion that men and women engage in different occupations based on their sex, which results in a sexual division of labor. Not only does this division simply assign people to different tasks based on sex, but it also exploits women by demanding work without providing wages while making “women responsible for the unwaged maintenance and reproduction of the current and future labor force.” Furthermore, the inequities women suffer in the workplace when involved in labor for wages are linked to their responsibility for unwaged domestic work. A feminist standpoint “enables women to identify the activities they perform in the home as ‘work’ and ‘labor,’ productive of ‘value,’ rather than simply the necessary and essential byproducts of ‘nature’ or the function of biology which women experience.” Standpoint Theory highlights the exploitation and distortion that result when labor is divided by sex.


Standpoint Theory presents us with another way of viewing the relative positions, experiences, and communication of various social groups. It has
a clear political, critical bent, and it locates the place of power in social life.
It has generated much controversy as people find it either offensive to or compatible with their views of social life.

How might Standpoint Theory be identified with a political ideology?

If there is no objective truth, how do we reach agreement among people with different standpoints?

Thoughts?