SOC 475 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Feminist Sociology, Gender Identity, Feminist Theory

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 475
• Professor: Amina Jamal

Document Summary

Foucault interpreted these disparate struggles as marking the emergence of a post-marxian culture. Central to the western enlightenment tradition has been the idea that scientific reason can contribute to human freedom. This critical spirit has guided liberal and left culture. He did not discount the utility of these theories but was critical of the aspirations of these conceptual strategies to be unifying theories. His objections are both intellectual and practical: totalizing theories are reductionistic and exclusionary. For example, marxism insists that political economy and class are the organizing principle behind all societies, however social conflicts need to be understood in terms of their unique social patterns and history. Foucault"s alternative was geneaology (anti-science: genealogy gives up the search for secure intellectual foundations that try to comprehend the origin and endpoint of history. In the spirit of postructuralism, genealogy aims to disrupt social conventions and norms-imagines the world as social and susceptible to great variation and change.