Economic Methodology and Feminist Critiques

This is working paper version of an article later published in Journal of Economic Methodology 8(1), 2001, pp. 93-97. Journal of Economic Methodology is available online at: http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/ and the article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13501780010023252

Julie A. Nelson

August 2000

The level of methodology is not the best entry point for the discussion of the import of feminist scholarship for economics. One could simply list the implications of the feminist critique for methodology--that, for example, economists should have greater respect for social embeddedness and material embodiment, values, emotions, institutions, power, qualitative data, language, lived experience and on-the-ground empirical work.

Yet while the feminist critiques certainly do have implications for methodology, trying to grasp these by simply listing such implications misses the key contribution of feminist analysis. All such methodological-level improvements have, of course, been suggested at one time or another by various critics of current neoclassical practice who do not identify themselves as feminist. In what does the uniquely feminist contribution consist? Why should economists, philosophers, and scholars of methodology pay attention to feminist work, even if they are not feminists (and/or not women)? 2

This essay addresses these questions. I will not attempt here a comprehensive review of the variety of ways in which the basic feminist critique that I will outline has been further developed, as such reviews already exist (e.g. Nelson 1998; Grapard 1999).

Nor will this essay look at issues at the cutting edge of feminist work (e.g., Barker 2000;

Nelson 2000).

The fundamental feminist contribution is not at the level of judging among different methods, but rather is directed at the more fundamental question of how we judge among methods. By what criteria do we judge relative superiority? What values are reflected in the choice of method? What hopes and fears may be motivating these choices? What sorts of views of the world, and views of the nature of knowledge, are implicit in this weighing of value? What parts of reality, and of human competencies, have been made invisible by the methodological choices that have been made? While, starting in the mid-1970's, some feminist economists began to question contemporary mainstream economic methodology simply because it seemed somehow inadequate to the analysis of women's issues, by the early 1990's feminist economists had incorporated feminist scholarly insights from the 1980's into a more fundamental examination of epistemology and ontology.

Feminist scholars in the 1980's, like Evelyn Fox Keller (1985) and Sandra

Harding (1986), pointed out how objectivity, separation, logical consistency, individual accomplishment, mathematics, abstraction, lack of emotion, and science itself have long been culturally associated with rigor, hardness—and masculinity. At the same time, subjectivity, connection, “intuitive” understanding, co-operation, qualitative analysis, concreteness, emotion, and nature have often been associated with weakness, softness— 3 and femininity. Such associations were sometimes explicit in the language used by the early scientists to define their endeavour. Henry Oldenburg, an early Secretary of the

British Royal Society, stated that the intent of the Society was to "raise a masculine

Philosophy … whereby the Mind of Man my be ennobled with the knowledge of Solid

Truths." (Keller, 1985, 52).

Applied to economics, it is clear that a masculinist gender bias has also been behind the choice of topics, methods, and key assumptions used to define mainstream economics. To see this in a simple way, note the splits in the following table (from

Nelson 1992, 1996):

The Contemporary Definition of Economics

Core Margin

Domain:

public (market and government) private (family)

individual agents society, institutions

efficiency equity

Methods:

rigorous intuitive

precise vague

objective subjective

scientific non-scientific

detached committed

mathematical verbal 4

formal informal

abstract concrete

Key Assumptions:

individual social

self-interested other-interested

autonomous dependent

rational emotional

acts by choice acts by nature

Note that the cultural gender associations, in contemporary Euro-American society, are predominantly of masculinity for the left-hand column and femininity for the right-hand column. The first insight of such scholarship, then, is to reveal the role of social and gendered valuations in the question of how we judge the relative value of various methods. Standards of "rigor" do not drop from the sky, but are created by communities, and the intellectual standards of these communities do appear to reflect the larger cultural biases concerning gender and value.

From this point, the analysis can continue in various ways. One might reaffirm the "masculinity" of science, for example, or flip the tables and try to establish a

"feminine" counter-science, or take a thorough-going poststructuralist route and leave the discussion of reliable methods of knowing the world for a discourse about discourse alone.

My own preferred approach is to look for how such masculinist bias hobbles economists' professed endeavour of seeking reliable knowledge, by moving beyond the 5 dualisms listed in the table above. One simple but sometimes powerful tool I have used in this is the "gender/value compass," which, moving beyond the usual association of masculinity with superiority and femininity with inferiority, breaks gender and value associations into separate dimensions. For example, instead of "precise" vs. "vague," as in the table above, the compass (Nelson 1992, 1996)

Masculine, Positive Feminine, Positive precise rich

Masculine, Negative Feminine, Negative thin vague reminds us that "vagueness" is not the only problem to be feared in investigatory work.

Precise work, such as typified by formal logic and mathematics, can fail to be revelatory through excessive "thinness" of content. Meanwhile, while more verbal analysis may stray closer to the failing of vagueness, the very concreteness and multiplicity of meaning involved in use of language allows for "richness" of analysis. While feminist analysis does, indeed, point out the need for greater respect for qualitative and verbal analysis, this is not a methodological point that stands out on its own. Rather, it is tied into an extensive critique of social and intellectual life.

While this critique starts, and takes its major development, though the analysis of gender, it is not true that "feminism" is some inferior subset of a larger project such as

"humanism" or "cultural" studies. Feminists are sometimes accused of being parochial, and of caring only about women, as though our analysis, by entering though the portal of gender is thereby limited to only an analysis of "women's issues." The above exposition should make it clear that feminist scholarship is dealing with deep-seated and widespread 6 social and intellectual hierarchical dualisms, whose import for men is as far reaching as for women. Women have tended to lead the feminist charge, not because we "bring something different" (via our genes or brain functions), but because the masculinist biases are far more obvious to those outside the system. Fish, it is said, do not notice they are swimming in water. Other "outside" groups, characterised as "other" by way of race, sexual preference, age, disability, nationality, or class vis a vis the dominant culture, also bring important views to the discussion of reliable methods, and feminists are often now active in investigating the impact of these in addition to gender.

The most interesting current developments in this field are, in my opinion, in the area of epistemology and ontology. In modernist epistemology, the investigator--much like Economic Man--stands apart from social and natural reality, seeking to penetrate its mysteries from a position of neutrality and detachment. Most questions in epistemology presuppose that there is a problem between knowledge (internal) and reality (external).

This is, in fact, a heavily masculine-gendered image of the economist or scientist, since the idea of the active, knowing mind is very much reliant on the corresponding idea of a feminine nature passively waiting to be known. In contrast to such an image of a split-off self, feminist scholarship on the importance of recognition of natural and social connection leads to the compass (Nelson 1992, 1996):

M+ F+ individuated connected

M– F– isolated engulfed 7

The human knower is both part of the reality to be studied (i.e., not isolated) and reflects on that reality (rather than simply being passively carried along by it). Feminist economists tend to advocate greater respect for methods that recognise social embeddedness and material embodiment, values, emotions, lived experience and on-the- ground empirical work, not as isolated methodological prescriptions, but arising from a worldview that brings back into recognition connection at an ontological level.

Feminist methodological discussions, finally, nearly always highlight the importance of ongoing institutions and differentials of power as factors to be taken into account in any discussion of economic reality. Women and people of color did not come to be defined as "other" through some kind of voluntary social contract. Methods of analysis which have no vocabulary for the discussion of exploitation and domination-- much as they might serve the interests of the dominant--are manifestly inadequate to the task of gaining reliable knowledge.

Methodological discussions that stay narrowly within the confines of a modernist, detached notion of science only supply sand to the mainstream economics sandbox. All too often, attempts to break out of that mold just switch to a different sandbox, of language play and aesthetic appreciation. The feminist critique of science and feminist work on the philosophy of economics deserve careful study from those who would venture beyond these confines, no matter what their sex or academic loyalties. 8

References

Barker, Drucilla K. 2000. "Women, Knowledge and Power: Methodological Challenges

in Feminist Economics." Work in progress, Hollins University.

Grapard, Ulla. 1999. "Methodology," in The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics,

ed. Janice Peterson and Maregaret Lewis. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar

Publishing, 544-554.

Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University

Press.

Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press.

Nelson, Julie A. 1992. “Gender, Metaphor and the Definition of Economics.”

Economics and Philosophy 8:1, 103-125.

Nelson, Julie A. 1996. Feminism, Objectivity, and Economics. London: Routledge, 1996.

Nelson, Julie A. 1998. “Feminist Economic Methodology,” in Handbook of Economic

Methodology, ed. John B. Davis, D. Wade Hands, and Uskali Mäki. Aldershot,

UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 189-192.

Nelson, Julie A. 2000. "Confronting the Science/Value Split: Notes on Feminist

Economics, Institutionalism, Pragmatism and Process Thought." Working paper.