Creating Theories
What is a theory and why do we need it? To move forward, to understand our world, and to change our world, we need theory. Theories allow us to explain events that we observe in broader frameworks of our understanding. Theory helps us make sense of the universe and our place in it. And theory is something every one of us do every day.
We all create theory. Historically, it’s been just Western, white, university-educated, Christian, upper-class men and their theories which have had the greatest impact on how humans understand the world and their place in it. These powerful, arrogant, deeply-biased men define the world according to their entitlement. For millennia, they have defined reality.
The danger with theories is that they tend to reflect the values and interests of those who create them. They are rarely neutral. Even science is rarely neutral.
Objectivity, the scientific method rests on emotional detachment and social distance. The method is empirical: observe and measure. Count and separate. Their understanding rests upon taking apart a whole in order to study its parts. This theory of science believes and takes for granted that the rat in the cage, separated from its natural environment and all other rats, separated certainly from the scientist doing the measuring, who is carefully separated from everything else in his daily life and the world around him, will give us the truth. There are no ethics, no values, no emotion recognized by science, there is just this repetitive and cold scientific methodology. But, science is not objective or neutral. Science is a cultural institution, structured by political, social, and economic values of the culture in which it ‘s created. The rat belongs in the cage. The scientist in his laboratory. This is the sheer cliff of science. Unquestioned much, in the annals of history.
All knowledge is value-laden and biased and serves the interests of the dominant culture that produced it. So, we have all these theories to justify inequalities. In times of tension and upheaval, some researchers always try to prove that differences in social, political, and economic status of women and men, blacks and whites, rich and poor, humans and nature, are inevitable results of inborn qualities and traits; that men are better at math than women, that blacks are less intelligent than whites, or that women are more nurturing than men, that nature is less deserving of rights than humans.
Social and political institutions shape what we learn, know and believe — the family, our education, our religion, the law, the media, and economics are a few institutions that invisibly, ineffably guide our lives. Christianity is the dominant religion in America. Capitalism is the dominant social, political, and economic system in our world. Capitalist theory is written by and for the powerful, and the rules of capitalism uphold these positions of power. Children are taught these rules, and they reinforce them and pass them on in the culture as they grow. For example, the games of Monopoly and Life indoctrinate these in children into “reality”. So does media. So does Christmas and wanting things.
However, despite it all, we can strive for fairness and accuracy in our theories. We can use self-reflexivity to critically examine how we think, how we act, and our relative positions of privilege and power.
Feminist theory seeks to explain women’s experiences and everyday lives. It’s like a lens we use to understand the world, in all the world’s elements, all we’ve been taught is true, in every subject of our liking. Like a lens, we can zoom in or zoom out. The personal is like a microscope, while the Political is more a telescope.We test our observations against our lived experience, and that of others. We unlearn the biases of the great men who have ever-explained the world to us. We learn to taste our power as we challenge dominant ideologies.
Feminist theory allows for multiple and varied approaches for understanding the world. These are not fixed and unchanging, and there are many such feminisms with theories to study — liberal, radical, socialist, anti-racist, post-colonial, and queer are a few. You can find (locate) yourself and your experiences in these theories. You can push against them and make connections between your life and these theories. The theories ask different questions, but they all place women and marginalized people at the center of their analysis. They de-center patriarchy.
Dominant ideologies appear neutral in cultures, just as privilege is invisible, while alternative ideologies are seen as radical, or irrational, regardless of their content. These dominant ideologies represent the normal foundational values of a society — marriage is between a man and a woman, capitalism is the best system, the U.S. is a democracy, women should be passive and submit to men, men should be strong and not show weakness because that’s sissy stuff and it makes you like a woman.
For those interested in social change, theories can help generate knowledge that challenges the dominant wisdom, help give voice to marginalized beings, and lead to liberation from discrimination and oppression. Values come from the principles we’ve been taught to believe in — but they could come from a holistic sense of fairness, justice, equality, based on our experiences as marginalized humans.
The theory of Social Constructivism tells us that our behavior and our beliefs are both socially constructed, learned, so these can be unlearned. Racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, and entitlement can be unlearned. The quest for wealth, the definition of progress, the drive to feed the world to our machines can be unlearned. As we are learning with many other facets of our lives, these tricks of power are not biologically determined.
To study Theory, ask these questions of any claim
What is the purpose of this statement?
What are the underlying assumptions on which it is based? Who came up with this idea, under what circumstances, and when?
How did this idea become so popular?
If the statement were true, what would it imply about action we could take?
If the statement were not true, what ideological purpose might it serve?
What would you need to know to decide if it’s really true?
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