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In this dissertation, I develop an approach to philosophical critique of morally relevant science and apply this approach to a new branch of evolutionary psychology called “feminist evolutionary psychology.” Morally relevant science is science that produces knowledge that has the potential to risk harm to humans, non-humans, or the environment. For example, a science that produces claims about women that reinforce prejudicial beliefs about women is a morally relevant science. The approach I develop, what I call the “social-dimensional approach,” is designed to assess a science's epistemic and ethical dimensions which makes it ideal for the assessment of morally relevant science. My development of the social-dimensional approach is informed by an analysis of the philosophy of biology literature on the criticism of evolutionary psychology (EP), the study of the evolution of human psychology and behaviour. I apply the social-dimensional approach to feminist evolutionary psychology and show that this new science has serious epistemic and ethical flaws. I address the implications of these flaws and offer recommendations for how feminist evolutionary psychologists can amend them. I argue the social-dimensional approach has use beyond evolutionary psychology and can be used for the assessment of morally relevant science more broadly.
The transformative wave of Darwinian insight continues to expand throughout the human sciences. While still centered on evolution-focused fields such as evolutionary psychology, ethology, and human behavioral ecology, this insight has also influenced cognitive science, neuroscience, feminist discourse, sociocultural anthropology, media studies, and clinical psychology. This handbook's goal is to amplify the wave by bringing together world-leading experts to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of evolution-oriented and influenced fields. While evolutionary psychology remains at the core of the collection, it also covers the history, current standing, debates, and future directions of the panoply of fields entering the Darwinian fold. As such, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior is a valuable reference not just for evolutionary psychologists but also for scholars and students from many fields who wish to see how the evolutionary perspective is relevant to their own work.
The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science is a comprehensive resource for feminist thinking about and in the sciences. Its 33 chapters were written exclusively for this Handbook by a group of leading international philosophers as well as scholars in gender studies, women’s studies, psychology, economics, and political science. The chapters of the Handbook are organized into four main parts: I. Hidden Figures and Historical Critique II. Theoretical Frameworks III. Key Concepts and Issues IV. Feminist Philosophy of Science in Practice. The chapters in this extensive, fourth part examine the relevance of feminist philosophical thought for a range of scientific and professional disciplines, including biology and biomedical sciences; psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience; the social sciences; physics; and public policy. The Handbook gives a snapshot of the current state of feminist philosophy of science, allowing students and other newcomers to get up to speed quickly in the subfield and providing a handy reference for many different kinds of researchers.
Standing at the intersection of evolutionary biology and feminist theory is a large audience interested in the questions one field raises for the other. Have evolutionary biologists worked largely or strictly within a masculine paradigm, seeing males as evolving and females as merely reacting passively or carried along with the tide? Would our view of nature `red in tooth in claw' be different if women had played a larger role in the creation of evolutionary theory and through education in its transmission to younger generations? Is there any such thing as a feminist science or feminist methodology? For feminists, does any kind of biological determinism undermine their contention that gender roles purely constructed, not inherent in the human species? Does the study of animals have anything to say to those preoccupied with the evolution and behavior of humans? All these questions and many more are addressed by this book, whose contributing authors include leading scholars in both feminism and evolutionary biology. Bound to be controversial, this book is addressed to evolutionary biologists and to feminists and to the large number of people interested in women's studies.
Sexual harassment in the workplace, date rape, and domestic violence dominate the headlines and have recently sparked scholarly debates about the nature of the sexes. Concurrently, the scientific community is conducting research in topics of sex and gender issues. Indeed, more research is being done on the topics of sexual conflict and coercion than at any other time in the history of the social sciences. Despite this attention, it is clear that these issues are being addressed from two essentially different perspectives: one is labeled "feminist", while the other, viewed as antithetical to the feminist movement, is called "evolutionary psychology", which emphasizes the history of reproductive strategies in understanding conflict between the sexes. This book brings together leading experts from both sides of the debate in order to discover how each could offer insights lacking in the other. The editors' overall goal is to show how the feminist and evolutionary approaches are complementary despite their evident differences, then provide an integration and synthesis. In fact, several of the contributors to this unique volume consider themselves advocates of both approaches. As a stimulating presentation of the dynamics of sex, power, and conflict--and a pioneering rapprochement of the diverse tendencies within the scientific community-- this book will attract a wide audience in both psychology and women's studies fields.
Making the Case brings together established and emerging philosophers who use case studies to address a variety of contemporary social justice causes. The contributors show both the depth and breadth of work in this area and highlight the distinctive approaches that feminist and critical race theorists, in particular, have pursued. For these theorists, the choice of the kinds of cases analyzed matters, not only pushing philosophy as a field to foreground the challenges facing marginalized groups but also affecting the kind of philosophy that results. This ensures that their theories do not reproduce the conceptual frameworks of dominant groups. By using thickly described cases, as opposed to the thinly described or hypothetical situations that have been the historic mainstay of philosophy, the contributors strive to create philosophy that never strays too far from the complexities of people's lives on the ground. The book provides philosophers with a host of methodologies, theories, and practical examples for use in social justice case work, with topics ranging from census design and gender bias in science to incarceration and the spate of recent police killings of black men and women.
“Extremely lively and super-smart, this Feminist Companion is indeed the friend you want to sit beside in every social psychology class.” Alexandra Rutherford, Professor, Historical, Theoretical and Critical Studies of Psychology, York University, Canada “Madeleine Pownall and Wendy Stainton Rogers’ book pings with the vibrancy and creativity of feminist critique. With this companion, they have made feminist inspiration, analysis, and activism easily accessible to everyone studying social psychology!” Virginia Braun, Professor of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand “The Feminist Companion was written for undergraduate readers, but it holds much wisdom for us all.” Jeanne Marecek, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA The Feminist Companion series includes books which act as your friends and mentors in book form, supporting you in your studies, especially when things get tough. This companion offers a feminist, critical, better-informed understanding of social psychology; what it knows, what it can deliver – and what it can’t. Ultimately, it will help you gain a deeper understanding of the data, analytic tools and theoretical frameworks that inform Social Psychology, as well as empowering you to develop the capacity and authority to challenge assumptions and become a critical and engaged social psychologist. Key features include: •Five Reasons Why You Need a Feminist Companion – a helpful summary of what readers can expect to gain from this book •Activity boxes, suggesting ways you can put the theory you are learning in to practice •See and Hear for Yourself boxes, signposting readers to where they can find real-world examples of the concepts covered •Summary sections that articulate the main points of each chapter and provide a useful revision aid •A glossary of key terms This book maps to the British Psychological Society (BPS) curriculum on social psychology as well as the Quality Assessment Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology. Madeleine Pownall is a lecturer in Social Psychology, Research Methods, and Advanced Social Psychology at the University of Leeds, UK. She is Chair of the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG) and an Associate Editor at The Psychologist. Wendy Stainton Rogers is Emeritus Professor at The Open University, UK, and a member of the Open University Press Editorial Advisory Board. Across her career she has written ten bestselling books, the majority of which are for Psychology students. She is renowned for her clear-sighted and accessible writing style, as well as for her innovative work in Critical Psychology.
Psychologies of women and gender have developed - both institutionally and intellectually - within distinct social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. In many cases, feminism has played an important role in catalyzing disciplinary engagements with gender and culture as categories of analysis and sites of theorizing rather than solely as variables defining groups to be compared. The intersections of gender, feminism, history, and culture are explored with reference to psychology, first in the United States, and then across three other national contexts. This exploration reveals the similarities and tensions between and among the approaches to studying culture and the approaches to studying gender, that psychologists have employed. It also reveals the historically - and culturally - contingent nature of psychologies of women and gender, and, by extension, of gender itself.
We trust our sciences to operate on a plane of objectivity and fact in a world of subjectivity and cultural ideologies, but should we? In The Age of Scientific Sexism, philosopher Mari Ruti offers a sharp critique of the gender profiling tendencies of evolutionary psychology, untangling the insidious threads of various gender mythologies that have infiltrated-or perhaps even define-this faux-science. Selling stereotypes as scientific facts, evolutionary psychology continually brings retrograde models of sexuality into mainstream culture: it insists that men and women live in two completely different psychological, emotional, and sexual universes, and that they will consequently always be locked in a vicious battle of the sexes. Among these regressive arguments is the assumption that men's sexuality is urgent and indiscriminate, whereas women are “naturally” reluctant, reticent, and choosy-a concept constructed to justify masculine behavior, such as cheating, that women have historically found painful. On its most basic level, The Age of Scientific Sexism explores our impulse to “explain” romantic behavior through science: in the increasingly egalitarian gender landscape of our society, why are we so eager to embrace the rampant gender profiling that evolutionary psychology promotes? Perhaps these simplistic gender caricatures owe their popularity, at least in part, to our overly pragmatic society pragmatic society, which encourages us to search for easy answers to complex questions.
Evolutionary psychology has become increasingly popular over recent years, as evidenced by the growing presence of the theory in research, classrooms, and as specialization in doctoral programs. Within the field of psychology, there have been mixed reactions to the burgeoning existence of evolutionary psychology as a framework for understanding human behavior. It appears as though some psychologists, on one end of the spectrum, have eagerly endorsed evolutionary psychology as an over-arching and uniting meta-theory to explain patterns found in human behavior. Conversely, it would seem that other psychologists have been dismissive of the theory or highly wary of the consequences for embracing evolution as an umbrella theory for understanding human psychology. Perhaps one of the most visible and consistent movements to criticize evolutionary psychology has historically been feminism. While there has been discussion in the literature of feminist critiques of evolutionary psychology, social scientists have not yet systematically examined the impact of psychologists' feminist attitudes on their perceptions of evolutionary psychology. Given the increasing presence of evolutionary psychology within the field of psychology and the apparent conflict in relation to feminist theory, it appears as though further exploration of the issue would have the potential to increase awareness of the exact nature of the discord. To investigate these relationships, the present research study compared 88 female psychologists' identification with various aspects of feminist theory and their perceptions of evolutionary psychology. The participants answered questions on an online survey comprised of a basic demographic questionnaire, three subscales of the Feminist Identity Development Scale, as well as researcher-generated questions about perceptions of evolutionary psychology theory.