• An Ethics of Care Approach to Shame
  I can’t remember exactly how i stumbled on the topic of shame but once i did, i quickly realized that stereotypes have a lot to do with shame. One of the most prevalent shaming messages is the idea that we are not good enough. And if a stereotype sets up a norm – such as [...]
• Building New Communities
  Studying stereotype development led me to the idea that we could design our communities in ways that can help us create a more just world. To do that, we need tools that specifically address aspects of justice. In this paper, i used Iris Marion Young’s work to both develop a conception of justice and suggest [...]
• Permaculture and Justice
  Grappling with finding ways to counteract stereotype development, i decided to take a permaculture design course. Permaculture suggests that we can design our communities to ensure sustainability but do these designs address issues of justice? That was the question i pursued in a paper that resulted from independent reading to accompany the PDC. You can [...]
• Beliefs are a Package Deal
  This was my very first graduate philosophy paper! I wrote it for a philosophy of mind class to better understand how cultural institutions like marriage can become lodged into our cultures despite problems with them. As i was researching the topic, i felt the need to conceptualize stereotype development. This is the result. I presented [...]

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We teach about oppression in the midst of privilege, fight for greater recognition even as it often means greater co-optation, and teach about the construction and politics of identities in order to empower as well as to deconstruct the categories produced. Feminist scholars operate within and inevitably in support of capitalism, classism, racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, elitism, imperialism, etc., while working to undermine their operations and effects. We work for change within institutions while in the process of “becoming” the institutions – being produced by them. In material terms, we find ourselves caught between a desire for better lives for ourselves – surely a mark of improvement in the world – and the knowledge that our own privilege is gained at the expense of others within current systems of power.

Balén suggests that we need to keep several things in mind to counter-act the forces of institutionalization while also reducing the discomfort produced by “living paradox” (272). Although these points are targeted at academia, I think they are important also for general movement building.

• Questioning Identity: Feminists teach that identity is constructed and thus fluid and requiring questioning. To “practice what we teach, we need to keep all levels of identity consciously provisional and negotiable” (278).
• Honor Diversity: Calls for unity inevitably hide complexity and diversity although unity might increase the visibility of a group. We need to utilize “multilayered approach[es] to develop greater articulation of the complexity of intellectual diversity [, which] resist any tokenizing” (280).
• Create Alliances: These alliances need to cross institutional boundaries and can help with honoring diversity as long as we keep the lines of communication open (280).
• Question Oppression: “There is no subject position fully ‘outside’ the system; only provisional opportunities for resistance within specific contexts exist. No one is free of the operations of oppression – internalized and/or externalized – and, therefore, each of us inevitably reproduces oppression in every moment that we are not actively resisting on every level.” (281) This requires constant vigilance about our own contribution to oppression and a willingness to remove our blinders. It requires that we are willing to listen to others who can point out our complicity in the system. It also, though, requires our patience and compassion: It can be painful to realize this complicity (278).
• Challenge Meritocracies: “Meritocracies without full social justice are problematic at best and must always be regarded critically – including the ones we have successfully negotiated” (282). Being considered smarter than others might simply be a reflection of our access to better education, which in turn reflects privilege. We might also had the luxury to fully devote ourselves to studying rather than splitting our time with part-time jobs simply to survive.
• Counteract Silencing: “Silencing is a primary mode of oppression; producing greater social justice requires practices that counter this tendency at every level” (282). We need to observe ourselves as we might be silencing others.

It is rather ironic to be reading about the privileging of certain disciplines by having stumbled on these books because a professor is reluctant to let me into her class because I did not take the required prerequisite… Clearly, this is an example of institutionalized knowledge: You have to have the background we require or else you are not welcome. That’s called silencing. I learned that term in the book, which is required reading in the prereq I haven’t taken…

Another chapter thematizes the North-South divide, which often becomes obvious in transnational projects lead by Northern feminists in Southern countries. Linda Peake and Karen de Souza share their experience and observations in “Feminist Academic and Activist Praxis in Service of the Transnational.” They particularly stress concerns with the “increasing corporatization of NGOs,” which often take away the local power and transfer it to the (corporate?) donors and sponsors of projects. Funders want to influence what is done with the money (110) and seek measurable results (111). Both require considerable time investment by the activists and often take them away from the work they find important. Especially problematic is that funders from the North impose their standards on Southern activists often without sufficient knowledge of the needs on the ground. Peake and de Souza are also raising concerns about the Northern academic feminist label, which all too often describes academics far removed from activism and often writing so convoluted that their work can only be understood by equally initiated academics. Individual women have made careers out of feminism and this tokenism blinds them to the realization that most women are still oppressed. Tokenism has clear system justification implications: Because we can point to women who “have made it,” we claim the end of patriarchy (or because we have an African-American US president, there is no more racism). As Stephen C. Wright documents, such claims are absurd and serve to maintain the status quo, sadly often especially by the tokens themselves. De Souza and Peake also caution that within activist organizations that train new activists, awareness needs to be maintained to avoid creating an elite of activists that are above untrained grassroots activists (113).

One aspect of this chapter I found particularly gratifying. I am trained in quantitative statistical methods and have always been somewhat taken aback with many feminists’ dismissal of these methods as chauvinist. Peake and de Souza also address this by calling for training in quantitative methods with particular emphasis on being able to evaluate the validity of this research (115). I have found such evaluations a tremendously powerful tool!

Finally, I read a chapter in a book that I almost dismissed because I had trouble understanding its introduction (elitist writing maybe?). Nancy A. Naples discusses her teaching method in “Negotiating the Politics of Experiential Learning in Women’s Studies: Lessons from the Community Action Project.” The CAP offers a way to incorporate some aspects of consciousness raising into the classroom, encouraging students to become theory-informed activists. Unfortunately, I found the chapter too sketchy to be useful since Naples does not detail the specific steps she asks students to take. But it was like a taste-sampler, with promise of satisfaction. So, I will do more research on this.

The Psychology of Legitimacy

“Benevolent sexism,” a knight-in-shining armor ideology that offers protection and affection to women who conform to traditional gender roles.

I am too tired now to muse about the commonalities and differences between benevolent sexism and couplemania. For now, I’ll just notice that there seems to be an interesting commonality!

The chapter I read was a reprint of an article by Daniel Lehrman originally published in 1953 critiquing Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior (the link opens a PDF to the full article, which is excerpted in the chapter in Cycles of Contingency). I would like to touch on a couple of things in response to reading the chapter: The relevance of Lehrman’s critique to current approaches, especially in evolutionary psychology, and the odd reluctance to adopt systems approaches.

Lehrman provides some interesting examples from animal studies that call into question Lorenz’s claim to innate behavior. His approach lends itself to generalization in answering the question: How do we want to explain the origins of behavior? And his critique seems to echo some of the concerns with evolutionary psychology. His approach can be gleaned from his example on the pecking behavior of chicks. Lorenz attributed this behavior to innate forces: The chicks are born with the tendency to peck; it might require just a bit of maturation. Lehrman points out that research by Kuo provides an explanation based on the embryonic development of the chick. The pecking behavior can actually be traced back to movements that developed while the chick was still unhatched. Hardly innate! The main point Lehrman makes: If we claim that something is innate, we stop the scientific investigation without fully understanding the origin of the behavior. This leaves out important – and fascinating – parts of the explanation because we think we’ve answered the question. As he puts it: “the statement “It is innate” adds nothing to an understanding of the developmental process involved” (30). I think this is also the danger of genetic/evolutionary explanations: If we explain mating behavior, for example, by tracing it back to supposedly genetic origins, we ignore potentially richer explanations that capture all the influences on the development of certain behaviors. I mentioned the development of lactose tolerance in adults briefly in a comment. Lactose tolerance is genetically driven but if we stop with the gene, we would miss that the tolerance in human adults developed only after agriculture became part of our culture. And apparently, it developed independently in several places – in some places with the same genetic change in others with different. Why? Again, the “genes did it” answer misses this question. The answer might be fascinating (I don’t know if scientists have figured this out yet…). Similarly with mating behavior: Maybe monogamy is not innate but so many humans live monogamous (or at least try to), there are obviously forces at play that go beyond the innate tendency. And even with genes themselves: What triggers certain genes to become active while others don’t? This is also very important for understanding certain diseases, such as hypothyroidism, which have a genetic component. But just having a genetic predisposition is not enough. Something must trigger the gene to start acting. It is very important to realize that neither Lehrman nor DST advocate “nurture” explanations. The key is to move beyond the nature-nurture schema, which includes giving up figuring out the percentage contribution of each, but to look for explanations of behavior that integrate all influences.

Lehrman’s article was originally published in 1953. And as Timothy Johnston points out in his introduction to the article, it largely fell on deaf ears. Researchers responding to Lehrman thought he just switched sides by contributing all explanatory power for behavior to learning (aka “nurture”). He does not: Again, he advocates leaving the innate/learning dichotomy behind. It’s not either-or; it’s always both. Similar patterns of reactions to systems advocates can be found in other areas as well. Anne Fausto-Sterling has called for using systems approaches since the mid-1980s. Then again very obviously in her 2006 Bare Bones articles. She suggests that we cannot understand the development of bones if we only look at genes, for example. She identifies seven systems that influence bone development, some biological/genetic, some environmental, all interacting. It is as if nobody heeded her call and she threw up her hands and decided to do the research herself because she is now actively doing research, following her proposal (of course, she might have planned this all along and I might be reading frustration into her “Bare Bones” article but…). A similar thing seemed to have happened with system-justification theory, an approach to explaining internalized stereotypes proposed by John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji in 1994. Their follow-up article written 10-years later reads just as much as a call for using systems-justification theory as the original article. It seems like the systems approach had not taken off. Why this reluctance to adopt systems theories? Systems approaches tend to be more complicated. It’s not just genes (with a little bit of environment or culture thrown in) or ego-justification (with some group-justification added). It is an interplay of various forces that combine to develop certain behaviors and/or traits. Maybe this complication makes these theories less attractive. They seem to make a lot more sense, though, at least to me. System-justification, for example, explains the “weird” phenomenon of people acting against their own self-interest: Even lower status groups, people discriminated against, act to maintain the status quo. System-justification captures this (maintaining the status quo requires that we justify the system). Of course, explaining that behavior pulls in the other systems theory: We need to look at the interplay of cognitive biases, such as resistance to change, and cultural forces, such as pressures to maintain a system, including oppression.

The assumption that is underneath the claim that monogamous, life-long coupling is natural seems to be that since it is natural, we should support marriage as the best way of organizing human beings. That is, the underlying assumption is that since we can see what is – the vast majority of people couple – this ought to be. This is what G.E. Moore called a naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is natural does not mean that it is a good thing (the flu is natural, for example…). The universality claim is similarly fallacious: Just because “everybody does it” doesn’t make something morally right (this is called an argumentum ad populum). So, the underlying motivation for the claim is fallacious. Nevertheless, it seems to be a fascinating question and there are several researchers who have looked into the evidence of sexual pair-bonding or coupling. Most of these researchers are evolutionary psychologists, so I approach their findings somewhat cautiously. Their findings are also supported by evidence from other animals, in particular our closest primate relatives, chimps and bonobos.

In her article “The Evolution of Human Serial Pair Bonding,” Helen Fisher presents evidence that indicates that coupling makes evolutionary sense – but only for about the first four years of a child’s life. This is about the amount of time that a human infant is completely dependent on the care from his/her parents. Fisher suggests that this care is provided by both parents because the mother cannot take care of the infant by herself. Various ways of ensuring that the father stays around long enough supposedly evolved (including female orgasm, which Fisher claims evolved for pair-bonding reasons – something highly questioned by Elisabeth Lloyd). Fisher presents anthropological evidence to support her hypothesis, as well as evidence from primates. She does not, however, look at alternative explanations. For example, why is the father the second adult who cares for the child? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has developed the idea of alloparents – adults who are not biologically related yet care for an infant. Alloparents could just as well provide the help a mother needs (and they in fact do in the case of many primates). It does not have to be the father. So, although on the face of it, Fisher’s hypothesis seems plausible, it does not sufficiently exclude alternate explanations. Yet, it casts at least some doubt on the “coupling is natural” claim…

I know of two books who specifically address this question: The The Myth of Monogamy by David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton and the forthcoming Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. Both books were written by married couples, which is interesting but probably completely irrelevant… More relevant is that they both present evidence that monogamy is, well, a myth. (Since I have not read either book, I will have to leave my biased reviews for another post or two…). More doubt casting…

To me, the bottom line of all this is that even though the evidence might not be complete and absolutely scientifically rigorous, there is evidence to at least question the assumption that coupling/pair-bonding is based on an innate desire/drive/gene/whatever. There is evidence that in fact suggests the opposite. However, marriage and coupling are nearly universal. How can that be if they aren’t based on a natural predisposition?

This leads me to my conclusion regarding the naturalistic question: Who cares whether coupling is natural or not – the fact is that it is done a lot – and that leads to the more interesting question, at least to me: Why is coupling so prevalent? Obviously, in part, the claim that coupling is natural attempts to answer this question: If coupling is a natural drive – like eating food to stem hunger – clearly it would be very prevalent. But, as I have sketched, there is evidence to doubt the naturalness – at least as an all-encompassing answer. I would like to suggest that the best way to answer this question is through a systems approach. There are a lot of variables that are at play to produce this result. Clearly, human beings and other animals are very social. We thrive on interacting with others. This suggests that there is at least a tendency to bond. That tendency, I think, has been channeled into marriage because alternative ways to bond have been culturally downplayed and often even tabooed, like friendships between men and women. Matrimania and singlism are essential elements in the legitimization of marriage as an institution. They work so well because we have innate biases that predispose us to conform with the status quo (conformist bias) and we love to copy what famous/important people do (prestige bias) (see this article for more information on how these biases work).

So, why is coupling so prevalent? It is because of innate tendencies to bond as well as biases that make cultural legitimization possible, plus the legitimization pressures themselves, as well as the delegimitization of being single (take a look, for example, at the history of the word “spinster” to see that at work) and decreasing importance placed on friendship. That is, there is an interplay at work between nature and nurture (and then some). Exactly how all this works, I don’t know yet but I am hoping to get a better idea as I do more research.

Here, I make another point: Even if coupling is natural for certain things, matrimania still takes this way beyond nature…

Developmental systems theory (DST) is an approach that does not answer the nature/nurture dichotomy. It overcomes it by suggesting that not only are both important as causal factors but that there is interaction between nature and nurture that make it impossible to look at each factor separately. Only a systems approach that integrates can truly explain the various influences. Note that this approach is no longer linear, as the approaches of EP are, for example, which give most weight to nature/genes with a dash of nurture. DST captures interaction: Genes impact the environment which impacts genes which impact the environment and so on. For an article that sketches how this might work, please check out Anne Fausto-Sterling’s “Bare Bones” articles (a PDF to Part I is here). She only gives a very broad overview of DST itself but the article is really DST in action, which might be a very good way of being introduced to a theoretical approach that requires a paradigm shift in our thinking.

The best introduction to DST is a book edited by Susan Oyama (who, I believe, is the researcher who introduced DST to biology), Paul Griffiths, and Russell Gray: Cycles of Contingency. Here are the major themes of DST as presented in Table 1.1 of that book:

1. Joint determination by multiple causes – every trait is produced by the interaction of many developmental resources. The gene/environment dichotomy is only one of many ways to divide up these interactants.
2. Context sensitivity and contingency – the significance of any one cause is contingent upon the state of the rest of the system.
3. Extended inheritance – an organism inherits a wide range of resources that interact to construct that organism’s life cycle.
4. Development as construction – neither traits nor representations of traits are transmitted to offspring. Instead, traits are made – reconstructed – in development.
5. Distributed control – no one type of interactant controls development.
6. Evolution as construction – evolution is not a matter of organisms or populations being molded by their environments, but of organism-environment systems changing over time.

Sounds complicated? Well, it is more complicated than the “genes (with a dash of nurture) are behind {insert your favorite trait}” approach. But so are organisms.