Globalizing Feminist Methodology: Building on Schwartzman'sChallenging Liberalism

Abstract

Lisa Schwartzman opens her book, Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique, by noting that liberalism has been both good and bad for women. Liberal ideals and values such as equality, autonomy, and rights have certainly been valuable to women in their struggles for liberation. Yet liberal ideals have also been used to undermine women's interests: right-to-privacy arguments have been used to block state interference in cases of domestic violence, and free-speech arguments have been used to protect pornography and sexually harassing speech (Schwartzman 2006, 1). Schwartzman locates the pernicious effects of liberal theory in two features of a common methodology that many liberal moral and political theorists employ: (1) individualism and (2) a particular strategy of abstraction.Drawing from the work of several feminist moral and political theorists, Schwartzman argues persuasively that, taken together, these features of liberal methodology produce theories that render oppression invisible and often function to reinforce unjust social relations of power. Drawing from this same body of work, she identifies and articulates an alternative feminist methodology that she argues is much better equipped to uncover and critique systems of Symposium on Challenging Liberalism 145

Movement of Female's Rights in the World

“…A federation of nationally organized societies of women and men and local and provincial councils associated with women, it is the Canadian member of the International Council of Girls (ICW) (Tobin, 2009). …”

Naturalizing Moral Justification: Rethinking the Method of Moral Epistemology

“…This case study draws from a less developed version by Tobin published elsewhere. See Tobin . Although the basic details of the case are the same, here we use the case study to develop several epistemological and methodological points not made in the earlier work.…”