Last week I sat in my first lecture for a module I have to take as a refresher on quantitative methods for the social sciences - that is, mostly statistical analysis. A few slides into the presentation there are a few bullet points on categorical variables - those that can be divided into discrete categories. Option one was binary variables and surprise, surprise the example read e.g. Sex male/female. Now the lecturer clearly sensed the discomfort with what he was proposing as he was met with affronted and quizzical looks and whispered comments. At least a half dozen students in the room are doing specifically feminist research. He moved swiftly on.
Whilst I acknowledge that there are varying interpretations of both sex and gender as a binary, trinity or continuous spectrum, it seems lazy and ill thought out to include it as an absolute in a lecture when it can easy be anticipated that the students will have varying positions. It's incidences like these that make me uneasy with the use of quantitative methods as supposedly objective research. To me it is clear that categorising any data is done on the basis on personal bias and subjectivity, just in a more hidden and sometimes socially accepted way than more qualitative methods of research.
This morning I was reading an article by Grayson Perry in the New Statesman - about the "default man". You can read it at http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/grayson-perry-rise-and-fall-default-man. Perry identifies this as an identity group which dominates politics and big business. He also uses the phrase "objectivity is male subjectivity" which I believe is extremely applicable to academia.
Whilst there is a growing visible presence of research that seeks to break down patriachical norms that I've come across, I think there is still a fair way to go before the notion of objectivity and a white straight male bias no longer dominate research across all disciplines.
1 comment:
Interesting post... I have been thinking about the idea that when the focus is on whether something is A or B, then the different kinds of relationships and positions between A and B become ignored... faintly swept under the carpet. And then objectivity becomes assumed rather than tested, so one can just say "i am being objective" because I am la la la.... but the assumption of the boxes ignores the space between them, which is the interesting thing in society. So when Grayson Perry says he is interested in the interaction with an audience.... it is the space outside the boxes that become the space of art. A bit like buildings... some of the best spaces are verandahs or atriums, loggias, courtyards...and the wall between inside and outside is most engaging when the glass, wall, shading, structure is pulled apart so that the interplay between these elements become visual and experiential in a more tangible read way. I think Jonathon Coe was the writer Perry is quoting on male subjectivity. Which makes me think one of the problems of feminism is that it fixes a category of female in opposition to male rather than focusing on their interactions, which I think is one of the reasons people take an interest in Perry's work. Pottery is a container, but his work always transgresses boundaries, producing a paradox that is not easy to define.
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