The examination o f ‘evidence’ I presented in the previous chapter builds on a research tradition that has investigated, and deconstructed, scientific practice to illustrate the social and contextual specificities that permeate every stage o f scientific inquiry.
Mulkay (1979), for example, had criticised the assumption that scientific knowledge was based on a direct representation o f the physical world; he showed how factual statements depended on speculative assumptions, how linguistic categories guided observation, and the acceptance of knowledge-claims involved indeterminate and variable criteria. Haraway acknowledges that as a result o f these critiques o f science there emerged a ‘very strong social constructionist argument for all forms o f
knowledge claims, most certainly and especially scientific ones’ (1991b: 184). This is the argument that the work of science is not free from ‘social influence’, scientists do not decipher existing natural laws, rather scientists actively construct their
explanations o f nature, as with other systems o f knowledge, scientific explanation is achieved through social and technical negotiation, interpretation and recognition, (Webster, 1991).
My understanding of the constructivist position has developed in relation to three lines o f sociological inquiry, and although the concerns and research techniques overlap, each I think makes a distinctive contribution. In my reading, the ‘interests’ approach to the sociology of scientific knowledge, sought to demonstrate the thoroughly ‘social’ nature o f scientific knowledge by relating the ‘interests’ o f scientific schools of research to the content of the knowledge produced by these groups (Pickering, 1992). This approach is exemplified by the ‘controversy study’ which seeks to illustrate how ideas, shaped by disciplinary, political, professional and ideological interests, are implicated in scientific debate (Webster, 1991). The ‘laboratory study’ became the hallmark of the ‘microsocial approach’; studying the practice o f scientific research revealed the local and contingent circumstances o f knowledge production,
erased (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). The feminist contribution to the constructivist argument elucidated these processes o f erasure; Longino (2001), for example, focuses on the use o f the passive voice (as in ‘it is concluded that....’ or ‘it has been
discovered that....’) and the attribution o f agency to the data (as in ‘the data
suggest....’) in reports o f scientific research, and Hubbard (2001) notes how scientists omit to acknowledge their relationship to the ‘objects’ they study, she argues that scientists describe their actions as though they existed in a vacuum. Hubbard (2001) contends that in neglecting the relevance o f time, location, social and political influences, human authorship, and personal responsibility, scientific knowledge
appears to transcend time and place, to be universal and objective.
However, an inadvertent effect o f the social constructivist orientation is that the emphasis on construction deflects attention from the consequences: on what effects
the constructed entity has on people’s sense o f self, the qualities o f everyday living and for the distribution o f power in society (Winner, 1993). For Haraway, this position is paralysing:
Feminists have to insist on a better account of the world; it is not enough to show radical historical contingency and modes of construction for everything. (Haraway, 1991b: 187)
She goes on to argue for ‘enforceable, reliable accounts o f things’ that are ‘not reducible to power moves and agonistic, high status games o f rhetoric’ (Haraway,
demonstrates the specificities o f knowledge, she notes that it stops short o f making an overt political argument for change2.
Haraway attempts to find some middle ground between social constructivist and traditional accounts o f science. She articulates this problem as:
how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all
knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognising our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meanings, and a no-nonsense
commitment to faithful accounts of the ‘real’ world... (Haraway, 1991b: 187, original emphasis)
Consequently, Haraway’s paper ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege o f Partial Perspective’ is an attempt to develop an alternative epistemology, one that recognises the socially constructed nature o f knowledge but is not disarmed by it, and one in which a commitment to the ‘real’ world is not incongruous.
In shaping this pathway Haraway considers both the critiques o f ‘objectivity’, namely the opposition to the presentation of knowledge as transcendent o f time and place, value-neutral and unauthored, and the criticism o f relativism charged at social constructivist accounts. Therefore, fundamental to the epistemology which Haraway develops are calls for accountability and attention to location and positioning:
2 Haraway is not alone in finding the social constructivist argument restrictive politically, the merits o f various positions within this field are discussed by Collins and Yearley, Woolgar, and Latour and
Feminists don’t need a doctrine of objectivity that promises transcendence, a story that loses track of its mediations just where someone might be held responsible for something, and unlimited instrumental power. We don’t want a theory of innocent powers to represent the world, where language and bodies both fall into the bliss of organic symbiosis. We also don’t want to theorise the world, much less act within it, in terms of Global Systems, but we do need an earth-wide network of connections, including the ability partially to translate knowledges among very different - and power-differentiated - communities. (Haraway, 1991b: 187)
Therefore, Haraway is suggesting not universal knowledge, but partial knowledges that can relate, converse and interact with one another.
Haraway proposes, as a way of engaging with this notion, to reconceptualise, or rather reclaim, the metaphor o f vision. She insists on the embodied nature o f vision, in contrast to the version that signifies an all encompassing, universal and anonymous ‘conquering gaze from nowhere’ (Haraway, 199lb: 188) which she associates with positivist science. Haraway charges this latter version o f infinite vision with being an illusion, a ‘god-trick o f seeing everything from nowhere’ (1991b: 189), a charge similar to that which she directs at the social constructivist argument:
Relativism is the perfect mirror twin of totalization in the ideologies of objectivity; both deny the stakes in location, embodiment, and partial perspective; both make it impossible to see well. Relativism and totalization are both ‘god-tricks’ promising vision from everywhere and nowhere equally
and fully, common myths in rhetorics surrounding Science. (Haraway, 1991b: 191)
In insisting on the embodiment and particularity of vision, that it is a view from somewhere, Haraway crafts a version of science, or method o f knowledge production, that is not innocent or anonymous, but located and accountable. Situating scientific knowledge production involves learning to acknowledge specificities in ‘dimensions o f both mental and physical space (that) we hardly know how to name’ so that ‘we might become answerable for what we learn how to see’ (Haraway, 1991b: 190).
Situated knowledge, by definition, must also be partial, rather than universal. Partiality, she argues, provides the grounds on which knowledges can connect and map on to one another, to partially translate. Haraway (1991b: 193) proposes ‘a split and contradictory se lf as a means o f achieving this:
The split and contradictory self is the one who can interrogate positionings and be accountable, the one who can construct and join rational conversations and fantastic imaginings that change history. ... The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with
another... (Haraway, 1991b: 193, original emphasis)
The ‘split and contradictory se lf might mean a feminist committed to realism whilst also persuaded by a constructivist account of knowledge. Haraway suggests that in being persuaded by seemingly conflicting theories, the ‘split and contradictory se lf is
able to hold a critical dialogue between these ‘fields’, to work towards connections and partial translations o f these knowledges. Furthermore, Haraway insists that in acknowledging how knowledge is always, inevitably partial, and imperfectly constructed, the potential for connection and conversation with other viewpoints is secured.
For Haraway, being situated is to be accountable, it is co-existent with interpretation and partiality, which is the basis for crossing the boundaries o f ‘fields’, and these are the grounds on which to claim ‘rational’ knowledge:
Above all, rational knowledge does not pretend to disengagement: to be from everywhere and so nowhere, to be free from interpretation, from being represented, to be fully self-contained or fully formalisable. Rational knowledge is a process of ongoing critical interpretation among ‘fields’ of interpreters and decoders. (Haraway, 1991b: 196)
So situated knowledge is engaged, identifiable and accountable; it cannot be free from interpretation. Interpretation, and therefore partiality, is the condition for dialogue between the different fields. Universal knowledge does not allow room for other partial knowledges and thus stifles dialogue. Haraway stresses that working across fields towards a network o f ‘webbed accounts’ is the only way to a fuller, more
comprehensive version o f scientific knowledge: ‘the only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular’ (1991b: 196).
Haraway recognises that partiality involves resisting closure, it precludes being ‘fully self-contained or fully formalisable’ complete knowledge, and that this generates
vulnerability. From this position political and ethical struggles over what may count as rational knowledge follow. Haraway’s claim is that moral, ethical and political discourse, not neutrality, should be the grounds on which to base knowledge production.
I am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, position, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. (Haraway, 1991b: 195)
Haraway presents an image o f knowledge, the content, production, the very nature of which is firmly identifiable and beatable. In contrast to the version o f ‘evidence’ promoted within EBM, wherein the more ‘bias’ eliminated during the knowledge production process, the more privileged its resultant epistemological status, and in which ‘weak’ studies are equated with ‘expert opinion’, Haraway suggests some principles for generating ‘rational’ knowledge in which knowledge production is authored, more, it is embodied, and the specificities o f its manufacture are laid bare. The agency o f the researcher is acknowledged, the relationship between the researcher, the researched, and the spatial and temporal location, is considered, probed, and the dimensions o f these relationships are charted. In these admissions knowledge becomes accountable. In my reading o f Haraway’s proposals for ‘situated knowledges’, I find an epistemological position that addresses the issue of
accountability in knowledge production, it does not obscure the author’s involvement, and that this strengthens the claims o f the research, it identifies the conditions on
Hence, in Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’ I find methodological principles to follow in my own research practice: to reflect on my agency, to acknowledge the agency of the practice I study, to identify the location and methods through which I produce knowledge. Indeed, whilst I have endeavoured to observe these principles throughout the thesis, the remit of this chapter is to be explicit about the above mentioned
elements o f my attempt to produce trustworthy knowledge; to account, and become accountable, for the details on which I make my knowledge claims. Sharing the intricacies and contingencies of knowledge production, moreover, resisting presenting a whole, comprehensive account does, however, incur vulnerabilities for the author. Knowledge o f this kind, situated and partial, does not map neatly onto the criteria set down in the hierarchy of evidence, and thus limits its perceived value; a tension long felt by social researchers (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). However, it is
recognised, even amongst the advocates o f EBM (Sackett et al, 2000), that to answer questions such as I raise about the ways in which different knowledges generated by various people and things relate to action, demands techniques o f knowledge
production other than those endorsed in EBM’s hierarchy of evidence; other
techniques are used to judge the quality of the research, and to weigh the value o f the knowledge produced. It is to these techniques I now turn.