Is the research a reflection of a particular country or cultural context is it generalist to other countries or other cultural contexts?.
What questions or contextual specificities are assumed, obscured, or cannot be seen or asked about?
•Are population groups or individuals ignored or presented in a specific, potentially narrow, manner?
•What is problematic about this??How does this negatively affect persons/practices concerned, or the validity/relevance of findings generated?
When looking for beneficial effects of power relations you could ask:
•What previously obscured or unrecognized detail or factor has become visible as a result of this research or question asked?
•How does this benefit the people or practices concerned, or the validity/relevance of the findings generated?
•How has this changed or at least highlighted previously problematic power relations?
Situated knowledge
As outlined in the introduction, the situatedness of knowledge cannot be avoided, but being alert to it gives us an insight into the contextual embeddedness of research. When examining the situatedness of knowledge in relation to a specific piece of research, you could ask:
•How does this research or perspective, and the way it is set up, reflect the spirit or the ideas of the time and place it is conducted in?
•How are specific political, social, ethical, cultural, economic issues of the time reflected in the research and the way the results are interpreted or discussed??Are the concerns, questions and methods reflective of specific groups or more generalisable?
?Is the research a reflection of a particular country or cultural context is it generalisable to other countries or other cultural contexts?:
•How are specific political, social, ethical, cultural, economic issues of the time reflected in the research and the way the results are interpreted or discussed?
•Are the concerns, questions and methods reflective of specific groups or more generalist?
•Is the research a reflection of a particular country or cultural context is it generalist to other countries or other cultural contexts?
When looking at very recent research conducted in the UK: ?What is it about ‘now in the UK that makes these questions pertinent and relevant?
?What would this research look like if it was conducted elsewhere; or 10 or 50 years ago?
?Would these questions have been asked at all, and why/why not; and who would have asked them?
•Why does it make sense at this time and place (or in this situation) to interpret the results in this specific way?
•How far does a piece of research or a perspective appreciate or overlook the situatedness of knowledge ?What are the benefits or problems that arise from this?
Example for the relevance of ‘power relations and ‘situated knowledges
Book 2, Chapter 8: ‘Bystander Intervention offers an example of how historically and societally specific power relations influence what is considered worth talking about and examining (i.e. scientifically relevant). It also shows what is overlooked at a certain point in time, thus illustrating the importance of appreciating knowledge as situated. In this case the societally prevailing norms meant that the sexual and gender aspect of the crime did not feature in research initially (and did not for a long time).
This had a problematic effect on how well the case of K. Genovese and the wider problem of violence against women could be understood, discussed and tackled. Further, specific power relations are expressed in the way gender relations themselves are constituted at that time (there is an implicit assumption that it is normal for women to suffer violence at the hands of men particularly when in a relationship). So the question was framed entirely as one of ‘bystander ignorance, obscuring issues of gendered violence, race and class, as well as making it hard to detect the normative assumptions that facilitated overlooking these issues.
When talking about power relations in this context we do not mean that individual (white male) scientists deliberately avoided a focus on gender (though this may also have happened). We mean the power expressed in the societal norms that prevented certain crucial questions from appearing relevant, i.e. in this case those of gender, race and class inequalities. Looking at the situatedness of knowledge it is then interesting to see that F. Cherry (see Book 2, Chapter 8, Reading 7.2) herself reports that initially she was not aware of this issue. Only with time and with shifts in societal norms and debates (here for example enabled by emergent civil rights and feminist movements), did she develop her insight into the importance of gender, class and race in the context of bystander research. So in a reciprocal dynamic new questions become available as part of overall societal shifts that broaden individuals (here F. Cherrys) analytic perspectives and vice versa. In this specific context the power of civil rights and feminist critique had a beneficial effect on the way such crime and violence against women could be understood. We can see how situated knowledge reflects prevailing power relations, but also how F. Cherrys alertness to the situatedness of knowledge enables her to help challenge prevailing power relations to open up new perspectives.
How do we anchor ourselves when comparing perspectives in Critical Mode 3?
You can see that, when ‘stepping back we are in Critical Mode 3. But does that mean we are just critiquing from personal assumptions and thin air? What legitimises our critique? Where is it anchored when we are stepping back so far? Clearly we still need to anchor ourselves. There are three aspects to this:
