First I’ll do a couple examples from feminism, since it is often tarred as academic wankery, and I feel more knowledgeable about it:
Feminist theories say that movies underrepresent women, or represent them in relation to men. A simple count of the number of movies that pass the BechdelTest vs. it’s male inverse shows this to be plainly true. In fact, the gap is breathtaking. Not only that, but this gap continues with movies released today, supporting the idea that only direct and conscious intervention can fix the gap and related iniquities in the portrayal of men and women in media.
Feminist theory predicts that issues like female reproductive autonomy, education, and various categories of violence against women are strongly correlated. Statistics appear to show this is true (not indisputable; reporting and confounding factors exist).
As for postcolonialism, I’ll give it a shot, though I’m not the best to speak on it:
Postcolonial theory states that most of the institutions of formerly colonial nations (their media, the World Bank, etc.) fetishize the strong nationalist state and a capitalist economy with all the trappings (central banks, urbanization, progression from agrarian to industrial to service economy) that western nations have developed over the past two centuries, and will attempt to impose states where they can. Many argue that Western intervention in the Balkans and in Somalia bear this out.
Postcolonial theory makes many other statements about development, like that postcolonial nations shouldn’t try to emulate western paths of development (because they will result in poorer economic growth). Some of them are hotly disputed. However they are empirical.
More broadly, postcolonialism says that for any intervention in a non-western nation, basing this intervention on methodology for western nation will yield worse results than building the approach up based on the ethnographic characteristics of that nation, despite the fact that international institutions seem to favor the former.
movies underrepresent women, or represent them in relation to men
That’s merely an empirical observation.
only direct and conscious intervention can fix the gap
That’s a normative statement about what should be.
issues like female reproductive autonomy, education, and various categories of violence against women are strongly correlated
Can you be a bit more precise about these relationships? Also, does the feminist theory predict or does it say that’s what it sees?
Off the top of my head I’d say I have at least two issues with feminism. The first is that it loves to tell other people what they should think, feel, and value. Science is not normative and feminism is—that makes it closer to preaching than to science.
The second is that I am not sure why feminism (as an academic discipline) exists. I understand that historically there was the movement of “these not-quite-yet-dead white men in the social studies departments don’t understand us and don’t do things we find important, so fuck’em—we’ll set up our own department”. That’s fine, but first that’s not true any more, and second, that’s an office-politics argument for the administrative structure of a university, not reason for a whole new science to come into existence. What exactly is feminism doing that’s not covered by sociology + political studies + cultural studies?
Postcolonial theory states that most of the institutions...
Again, this is a post-factum empirical observation.
a capitalist economy with all the trappings
And that doesn’t seem to be quite true. Most newly independent countries love state power and often played with some variety of socialism, “third way”, etc. Given the context of the Cold War, their political economy generally reflected which superpower they aligned with.
will attempt to impose states where they can
Who will? Impose on whom? I don’t quite understand what do you mean here.
postcolonial nations shouldn’t try to emulate western paths of development (because they will result in poorer economic growth)
An interesting point. The problem with it is that nations which did NOT try to “emulate western paths of development” experienced even more poor economic growth. It is, in fact, an empirical observation that the economic growth in the developing world was, by and large, quite poor. However the conclusion that this is the result of transplanting Western practices to alien soil and home-grown solutions are much better does not seem to be empirically supported.
for any intervention in a non-western nation, basing this intervention on methodology for western nation will yield worse results than building the approach up based on the ethnographic characteristics of that nation
And another curious statement. You can read it in two ways. Way one is just that bespoke engineering is always better than off-the-shelf parts. True, but trivial. Way two is that the developing countries are special (in some poorly defined, presumably non-racist way :-/) so that the empirically successful practices of Europeans will not work for them. That looks to be highly motivated reasoning to start with, and doesn’t have much empirical support either.
In general, postcolonialism seems to be basically anti-capitalist, Marxism warmed over, trying to make it so the developing countries avoid capitalism and follow what’s usually called “the third way” (which, in practice, is a mix of crony capitalism and state-dominated economy run for the benefit of the ruling elite). I think this approach failed quite decisively and in that sense postcolonialism is a failed theory, not a crown jewel at all.
I made a mistake trying to defend postcolonial theory here, it’s just not my area of expertise. Whether it’s valid or not, I can’t defend it well. But we do seem to be on the same page that it’s falsifiable.
However, I do have a substantial beef with your beefs with feminism.
That’s merely an empirical observation.
Come on… Things falling to the ground is an empirical observation, gravity is the theory.
That’s a normative statement about what should be
No, it’s a prediction. If the gender representation gap spontaneously solved itself without any evident adoption of feminist attitudes that would be a strike against feminism as a theory.
Can you be a bit more precise about these relationships? Also, does the feminist theory predict or does it say that’s what it sees?
Predicts; It observed it then it continued to be true so it’s not overfitting
Off the top of my head I’d say I have at least two issues with feminism. The first is that it loves to tell other people what they should think, feel, and value. Science is not normative and feminism is—that makes it closer to preaching than to science.
It has a normative and an empirical element. An organization like GiveWell empirically assesses charities then makes normative recommendations based on a particular version of utilitarianism. Feminism assesses institutions and makes recommendations.
The second is that I am not sure why feminism (as an academic discipline) exists. I understand that historically there was the movement of “these not-quite-yet-dead white men in the social studies departments don’t understand us and don’t do things we find important, so fuck’em—we’ll set up our own department”. That’s fine, but first that’s not true any more, and second, that’s an office-politics argument for the administrative structure of a university, not reason for a whole new science to come into existence. What exactly is feminism doing that’s not covered by sociology + political studies + cultural studies?
Most of what feminism does in influence other fields. Gender studies departments exist some places and not other, but it’s influence is pervasive in academia. I think this is a misinformed criticism.
In another post you called feminism “a project dedicated to changing certain policies and cultural attitudes”. I like this definition, it makes a lot of sense to me.
However the implication is that feminism is neither a science nor even a field of study. Recall that the original question was feminism (gender studies) in academia. You said
Postcolonial theory and gender theory make a hell-of-a-lot of sense. They’re crowning accomplishments of their fields, or define fields.
I’m fine with treating feminism as a socio-cultural movement based on a certain set of values. But then it’s not an academic theory which is a crowning accomplishment of a field of study.
It’s both scholarly field and social movement. And scholars involved in it may be involved in one or both elements.
Feminism is a HUGE tent. It provides a framework for everyone from economists studying what factors drive labor participation rates among women to judges ruling on a case of sexual harassment to a film critic analyzing a character. There are probably tens of thousands of academics alone (forget lawyers, legislators, lobbyists and journalists) who would say feminism influences their work. This includes many who are very quantitative and empirical.
What does this “scholarly field” study that is not covered by the usual social sciences? And, given that we are on LW, how prevalent do you think is motivated cognition in this field of study?
Feminism is a HUGE tent.
What covers everything covers nothing.
How would you define feminism—in a useful way, specifying what kind of a thing is it and how it’s different from other similar things?
This is getting very Socratic. I don’t know what your assumptions are or what would satisfy you as a definition and it is beginning to get frustrating to figure out, but I think these two links are pretty good.
As for motivated cognition, of course it’s present, as it is virtually everywhere in life and academia. Do you have a more specific case?
Remember that though the humanities and softer social sciences have all sorts of flaws that are easy to make fun of, they don’t submit grants for $100 million dollar construction projects with stated goals they know to be totally unachievable (I’m looking at you local university particle accelerator). Don’t condemn the field just by its sins.
As for motivated cognition, of course it’s present, as it is virtually everywhere in life and academia
Don’t you think that being both a field of study and a social movement aiming to change prevalent values and social structures offers especially rich opportunities for motivated cognition? Compared to the baseline of life and academia average?
they don’t submit grants for $100 million dollar construction project
That’s peanuts. When social scientists fuck things up, the cost is in millions of human lives. Exhibit A: Karl Marx.
Don’t condemn the field just by its sins.
Well, the problem is that I don’t think it’s a field of study at all. I think it is, as you said, a project to change the society.
Can we do postcolonial theory instead? What kind of falsifiable (in the Popperian sense) claims does it make? Any predictions?
First I’ll do a couple examples from feminism, since it is often tarred as academic wankery, and I feel more knowledgeable about it:
Feminist theories say that movies underrepresent women, or represent them in relation to men. A simple count of the number of movies that pass the BechdelTest vs. it’s male inverse shows this to be plainly true. In fact, the gap is breathtaking. Not only that, but this gap continues with movies released today, supporting the idea that only direct and conscious intervention can fix the gap and related iniquities in the portrayal of men and women in media.
Feminist theory predicts that issues like female reproductive autonomy, education, and various categories of violence against women are strongly correlated. Statistics appear to show this is true (not indisputable; reporting and confounding factors exist).
As for postcolonialism, I’ll give it a shot, though I’m not the best to speak on it:
Postcolonial theory states that most of the institutions of formerly colonial nations (their media, the World Bank, etc.) fetishize the strong nationalist state and a capitalist economy with all the trappings (central banks, urbanization, progression from agrarian to industrial to service economy) that western nations have developed over the past two centuries, and will attempt to impose states where they can. Many argue that Western intervention in the Balkans and in Somalia bear this out.
Postcolonial theory makes many other statements about development, like that postcolonial nations shouldn’t try to emulate western paths of development (because they will result in poorer economic growth). Some of them are hotly disputed. However they are empirical.
More broadly, postcolonialism says that for any intervention in a non-western nation, basing this intervention on methodology for western nation will yield worse results than building the approach up based on the ethnographic characteristics of that nation, despite the fact that international institutions seem to favor the former.
That’s merely an empirical observation.
That’s a normative statement about what should be.
Can you be a bit more precise about these relationships? Also, does the feminist theory predict or does it say that’s what it sees?
Off the top of my head I’d say I have at least two issues with feminism. The first is that it loves to tell other people what they should think, feel, and value. Science is not normative and feminism is—that makes it closer to preaching than to science.
The second is that I am not sure why feminism (as an academic discipline) exists. I understand that historically there was the movement of “these not-quite-yet-dead white men in the social studies departments don’t understand us and don’t do things we find important, so fuck’em—we’ll set up our own department”. That’s fine, but first that’s not true any more, and second, that’s an office-politics argument for the administrative structure of a university, not reason for a whole new science to come into existence. What exactly is feminism doing that’s not covered by sociology + political studies + cultural studies?
Again, this is a post-factum empirical observation.
And that doesn’t seem to be quite true. Most newly independent countries love state power and often played with some variety of socialism, “third way”, etc. Given the context of the Cold War, their political economy generally reflected which superpower they aligned with.
Who will? Impose on whom? I don’t quite understand what do you mean here.
An interesting point. The problem with it is that nations which did NOT try to “emulate western paths of development” experienced even more poor economic growth. It is, in fact, an empirical observation that the economic growth in the developing world was, by and large, quite poor. However the conclusion that this is the result of transplanting Western practices to alien soil and home-grown solutions are much better does not seem to be empirically supported.
And another curious statement. You can read it in two ways. Way one is just that bespoke engineering is always better than off-the-shelf parts. True, but trivial. Way two is that the developing countries are special (in some poorly defined, presumably non-racist way :-/) so that the empirically successful practices of Europeans will not work for them. That looks to be highly motivated reasoning to start with, and doesn’t have much empirical support either.
In general, postcolonialism seems to be basically anti-capitalist, Marxism warmed over, trying to make it so the developing countries avoid capitalism and follow what’s usually called “the third way” (which, in practice, is a mix of crony capitalism and state-dominated economy run for the benefit of the ruling elite). I think this approach failed quite decisively and in that sense postcolonialism is a failed theory, not a crown jewel at all.
I made a mistake trying to defend postcolonial theory here, it’s just not my area of expertise. Whether it’s valid or not, I can’t defend it well. But we do seem to be on the same page that it’s falsifiable.
However, I do have a substantial beef with your beefs with feminism.
Come on… Things falling to the ground is an empirical observation, gravity is the theory.
No, it’s a prediction. If the gender representation gap spontaneously solved itself without any evident adoption of feminist attitudes that would be a strike against feminism as a theory.
Predicts; It observed it then it continued to be true so it’s not overfitting
It has a normative and an empirical element. An organization like GiveWell empirically assesses charities then makes normative recommendations based on a particular version of utilitarianism. Feminism assesses institutions and makes recommendations.
Most of what feminism does in influence other fields. Gender studies departments exist some places and not other, but it’s influence is pervasive in academia. I think this is a misinformed criticism.
In another post you called feminism “a project dedicated to changing certain policies and cultural attitudes”. I like this definition, it makes a lot of sense to me.
However the implication is that feminism is neither a science nor even a field of study. Recall that the original question was feminism (gender studies) in academia. You said
I’m fine with treating feminism as a socio-cultural movement based on a certain set of values. But then it’s not an academic theory which is a crowning accomplishment of a field of study.
It’s both scholarly field and social movement. And scholars involved in it may be involved in one or both elements.
Feminism is a HUGE tent. It provides a framework for everyone from economists studying what factors drive labor participation rates among women to judges ruling on a case of sexual harassment to a film critic analyzing a character. There are probably tens of thousands of academics alone (forget lawyers, legislators, lobbyists and journalists) who would say feminism influences their work. This includes many who are very quantitative and empirical.
What does this “scholarly field” study that is not covered by the usual social sciences? And, given that we are on LW, how prevalent do you think is motivated cognition in this field of study?
What covers everything covers nothing.
How would you define feminism—in a useful way, specifying what kind of a thing is it and how it’s different from other similar things?
This is getting very Socratic. I don’t know what your assumptions are or what would satisfy you as a definition and it is beginning to get frustrating to figure out, but I think these two links are pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_studies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory
As for motivated cognition, of course it’s present, as it is virtually everywhere in life and academia. Do you have a more specific case?
Remember that though the humanities and softer social sciences have all sorts of flaws that are easy to make fun of, they don’t submit grants for $100 million dollar construction projects with stated goals they know to be totally unachievable (I’m looking at you local university particle accelerator). Don’t condemn the field just by its sins.
Don’t you think that being both a field of study and a social movement aiming to change prevalent values and social structures offers especially rich opportunities for motivated cognition? Compared to the baseline of life and academia average?
That’s peanuts. When social scientists fuck things up, the cost is in millions of human lives. Exhibit A: Karl Marx.
Well, the problem is that I don’t think it’s a field of study at all. I think it is, as you said, a project to change the society.