A two-tiered analysis of the outsider within's relationship to the construction of race
Loading...
Links to Files
Permanent Link
Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2007
Type of Work
Department
Philosophy
Program
Bachelor's Degree
Citation of Original Publication
Rights
Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.
Abstract
I argue that Patricia Hill Collins’ outsider-within standpoint is both unnecessary
and insufficient for the prospect of rearticulating paradigmatic sociological methods in
order to more precisely describe the sociological conditions of the typically oppressed
and underrepresented. Collins points out that Black feminist thought is receptive to what
would otherwise be considered anomalies to normal or typical (white male) sociological
thinkers. This may be so, but in Kuhnian terms, the sort of receptive capabilities the
Black feminist standpoint indicates are critical and not candidates for assimilation. It is
not possible for the current paradigm to be rearticulated or refined according to the
anomalies that Collins points out are indicative of and are indicated by the development
of a particularly Black feminist standpoint. Kuhnian philosophy of science provides
three possible outcomes to the onset of crisis, in which the community can: set the crisisprovoking
anomalies aside due to a lack of methodological and conceptual tools; refine
or rearticulate the existing paradigm, which amounts to reducing the anomalies to
puzzles; or abandon the paradigm completely and adopt a new one—one which structures
a fundamentally different grammar.