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This is an electronic version of a working paper later published in Feminist Economics, 9(1),
March 2003, pp. 109-118. Feminist Economics is available online at:
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/ and the article is available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13545700110059261
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING: FEMINIST ECONOMICS
AND THE ONTOLOGICAL QUESTION1
Julie A. Nelson
This essay is a comment on "Feminism, Realism and Universalism," by Tony Lawson,
which appeared in Feminist Economics, vol. 5, No. 2, July 1999, and "The Case for
Strategic Realism: A Response to Lawson," by Sandra Harding, which appeared in
Feminist Economics, vol. 5, No. 3, November 1999.
ABSTRACT
It is worthwhile for feminist economists to delve into questions about the nature of
reality? This essay argues that "feeling" is an aspect of reality that is neglected by both
standard and critical-realist approaches to ontology. The author contends that a "process"
approach to characterizing the nature of reality is more appropriate, and that this
approach demarginalizes feminist concerns with emancipation and care.
KEYWORDS
Philosophy, emotion, feminism, realism, process
INTRODUCTION
Ontological questions concern how we envision the nature of reality. In recent
issues of this journal, economist and critical realist Tony Lawson (1999) urged feminist
economists to engage with ontology, while feminist philosopher Sandra Harding (1999),
in reply, argued that for strategic reasons feminists may find arguments at the level of
epistemology (the nature of knowledge) more advantageous. The purpose of the present
essay is to present a case for feminist consideration of the ontological question and give
the outlines of a feminist-process approach that I believe may hold the most promise.
Practicing feminist economists may wonder why, in their work-a-day lives, they
should bother with what seems an esoteric issue. With real-world disadvantages suffered
by women pressing hard for our attention, philosophical speculation may seem like an
unaffordable luxury, if not a downright distraction. I believe that while excessive
philosophizing in obscure jargon may indeed be detrimental, one's thinking is in fact
rooted in ontological beliefs. These beliefs may only be implicitly held, in the form of
vague and perhaps conflicting impressions about how the world works.
Standard neoclassical economics is based on a view of the world as a closed
system of laws and mechanisms, populated by atomistic agents, value-free, and of a
shape and quality which can be usefully probed with our tools of mathematical theory
and econometrics. Feminists, by contrast, believe it is necessary to change oppressive and
unjust structures. Implicitly, then, we interpret the world as open, interrelated, and
flexible--a world in which the standpoints chosen and the actions taken matter in some
fundamental way. For their part, critical realists offer, in philosophical language, an
ontology that they claim includes openness and emancipatory impulses. I will argue,
however, that the approach of the critical realists is inadequate in that, like more standard
approaches, it persists--in an important area--in privileging reason, abstraction, and
precision over emotion, particularity, and what is vaguely known.
Some feminists have recently explored the phenomena of emotional work and
caring labor (e.g. Susan Himmelweit 1995), noting that these are "undervalued" relative
to other activities. My argument is that such undervaluing is not only a matter of social
and economic power (though of course it is that, too), but it is also a branch off a larger
problem of cultural understanding. Unless "emotion" --and, indeed, "value" itself--are
present in the core of what we believe about how the world works, care and emotion will
never overcome their low status as mere add-ons. My hope is that this digging around the
ontological roots can contribute to more fruitful caring about dependents, the
disempowered, and the environment.
ONE FEMINIST CRITIQUE
One strain of the feminist critique of mainstream neoclassical economics
(characterized by Marianne Ferber and Julie Nelson, eds., 1993), coheres around the idea
that Western notions of the self, the world, knowledge, and science have, since the time
of the Enlightenment, been built on hierarchical dualisms which are also inscribed into
gender relations. Reason, detachment, independence, certainty, clarity, eternals, and
order, for example, are culturally associated with masculinity as well as with traditional
science, while emotion, connection, interdependence, fallibility, vagueness,
changeableness, and chaos have been pushed away as the feminine-associated "other."
The sharp distinction between positive and normative analysis similarly rests on a split
between a material world that is assumed to be spiritless and a (possible) realm of
meaning that is assumed to be bodiless.
This feminist critique of economic methodology, then, springs not from ad hoc
dissatisfaction with various aspects, but from a deep analysis of the social, historical, and
psychosexual meanings the traditional image of science holds for its participants. The
idea that the universe may be open, in some ways fundamentally unpredictable, and
intrinsically purposive--in contrast to being a closed system, ultimately distillable into
formulae, controllable, and fundamentally indifferent--is not simply a reasonable
alternative ontology that can be carefully weighed for its logical implications and
neutrally evaluated for its relative merit. As Harding writes, "it requires a great deal more
than just 'clear thinking' to dislodge...ontologies from their status as obvious" (1999:
130). The idea of an open universe feels fundamentally scary for those who sense that not
only their status as scientists set above the objects they study, but also their safety vis-àvis chaos, their "manhood" (whether actual, or, in the case of female scientists,
symbolic), and their very own distinct selfhood are threatened unless they can keep the
living, novel, relational aspects of nature safely at bay.
Feminists who delve into the historical, social, emotional, and psychosexual
dynamics that have kept women suppressed and oppressed, have found a complex of
dualistic, hierarchical belief patterns that manifest themselves not only in the social
realm, but also in intellectual (and religious and artistic) endeavors. Historically, wellreasoned criticisms of neoclassical economics--targeting its unrealistic assumptions,
narrow methodology, over-formalism, false detachment, etc.--have been legion, as any
perusal of a bibliographic database will show. Also historically, they have generally
failed to alter the mainstream ideas of the discipline. Yet the present feminist analysis
does not simply add to this legion of critiques; it suggests, at a basic emotional and
motivational level, that such critique is suppressed because it is feared. It points out how
reasonableness is taking a back seat to emotional reaction, in this drama. This feminist
analysis takes us back to the territory of critique of Enlightenment dualisms once more,
but this time with feeling.
ONTOLOGY IN THE CRITICAL-REALIST APPROACH
As Lawson's (1999) contribution to this journal indicates, the critical-realist
approach shares some characteristics with this feminist approach. Critical realists want to
develop a more adequate investigatory practice, not hidebound by allegiance to formal
modeling. They critique the falsely universalizing tendencies of the Euro-American
modernist and deductivist approaches to social science. In critical-realist thought, an
image of an open, intimately interrelated, and dynamically evolving social and economic
world replaces notions of static maximization. Many feminists share with critical realists
an epistemological view in which knowledge is seen as provisional and fallible, rather
than eternal and certain. Critical realists see their project as liberatory. The "realist"
aspect of the school refers to the belief that the world is other than purely socially
constructed.2
Readers of this journal may wish to make their own exploration of critical-realist
writings (perhaps, most notably, Lawson 1997; Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew
Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie, eds. 1998; Steve Fleetwood 1999) and
discussions of the same (e.g., Fabienne Peter, forthcoming). The notion of an open,
holistic, ethically rich universe, mentioned frequently in the critical-realist literature, is a
core feature of an ontology that I encourage feminist economists to adopt. I am, however,
unconvinced that the critical-realist literature gives as complete and sound a justification
for this ontological structure as it could, or that it promotes the idea of an open and valueladen ontology in the most effective way.
To summarize briefly, Lawson's philosophy distinguishes three domains of
reality: "the empirical (experience and impression), the actual (actual events and states of
affairs in addition to the empirical) and the real (structures, powers, mechanisms and
tendencies, in addition to actual events and experiences)" (1997: 21, emphases in
original). Lawson contrasts his conception of reality to philosopher David Hume's claim
that all knowledge comes from experience and sense-impression, which limits knowledge
of reality to the empirical (1997: 19). Lawson claims that ontological statements about
what reality is should not be confused with epistemological statements, like Hume's,
about what we can know. Hence, in Feminist Economics, he delineates "an ontology of
structures, powers, generative mechanisms, and their tendencies that lie behind and
govern the flux of events in an essentially open world" (1999: 31). What is unclear,
however, is whether the particulars of critical realist thinking, of which the notion of a
tripartite reality is an example, are either necessary or sufficient for an ontology which
sees reality as open and ethically rich. Perhaps this will be clarified as the critical realist
school continues to develop.
While not neglecting critical-realist contributions to this discussion, I believe it is
worthwhile to see if a cogent feminist ontology may be enriched by other sources.
"PROCESS" ONTOLOGY
Alfred North Whitehead, a noted mathematician and philosopher who wrote
mainly in the 1920's and 1930's, also clearly broke from standard philosophy at the point
of Humean ontology and epistemology. Whitehead’s ontology is intrinsically open and
ethically rich, and I believe has important resonances with the sort of contemporary
feminist thought reviewed above. I point to his work not because I think feminists need to
take intellectual orders from some "dead white male," but rather because his formulation
of a vital, interconnected, and purposeful universe includes a careful discussion of the
questions of ontology and realism that can be directly compared and contrasted to the
critical-realist alternative.
Whitehead's challenge to Hume at the level of ontology is profound. Whitehead
sees in most modern (and many premodern) philosophers and scientists allegiance to a
substance-and-attribute ontology. In a substance-and-attribute ontology, "stuff" or "bits of
matter" are the fundamental ontological units (1966, 1929: 128-9, 1968, 1938: 128).
These substances are thought of as fundamentally separate and distinct—as chairs, for
example, or as persons, each distinguishable from the other--and considered to endure
through time, though with changes to their attributes (location, for example, or color).
More to the point, whenever the question of knowledge is posed as being about how our
minds (in here) can know about other substances (out there), one can see that such a
notion of reality has already been assumed. Such a framing of the question assumes that
the "stuff" of a knower is distinct from that of the known. Hume worked within the
background of substance-and-attribute ontology, but rejected substances, leaving only the
attributes to be knowable.
Whitehead's ontology, in contrast, is fundamentally process-oriented, energetic,
and interconnected. He referred to it as the "philosophy of organism," though later
commentators tend to use the term "process thought." Whitehead's fundamental unit of
reality, the "actual entity" (1966, 1929: 205), is a "[drop] of experience, complex and
interdependent" (1966, 1929: 7), or a "throb of experience" (8). The actual entity is "a
process, and is not describable in terms of the morphology of a 'stuff'" (8). In this
ontology, reality is a deeply interconnected whole; each entity "feels" all other
preexisting actual entities (although some more vaguely than others) in what Whitehead
terms "prehension," and then synthesizes these data into "the unity of an emotional
pattern expressive of its own subjectivity " (8). In the present moment, the entity is
actualized through its own subjective experience, and then becomes the objective data for
the entities of the next moment, in an ongoing process. A person, for example, in this
view does not first exist and then have experiences and relationships, as would be the
case in a substance-and-attribute ontology. In the organicist view, rather, a person is
constituted in and by experience and relationships, as sequences of prehensions and
syntheses.
For Whitehead, these processes are not merely confined to conscious selves, but
rather describe reality from the simplest electron to the most complex living creature. By
emphasizing experience, including human bodily experience, as the fundamental unifying
reality, he removes the mind-vs.-matter conundrum. 3 Conscious experience is not to be
seen as something apart from matter, but rather is an outgrowth, at a very high level of
complexity, of a reality of experience that goes all the way down. Chairs, or elbows, like
persons, also "become" in the moment. The emphasis on energy and interconnection,
rather than matter and mechanics, in Whitehead's ontological scheme is, as he himself
points out, consistent with developments in post-Newtonian physics. Many later
interpreters have noted the coherency of Whitehead's view with more recent
developments in complexity theory and self-organization.
What, then, of epistemology? Whitehead, unlike the contemporary critical realists,
"accepts Hume's doctrine that nothing is to be received into the philosophical scheme
which is not discoverable as an element in subjective experience" (1966, 1929: 137).
There is a radical difference, however, from both critical realism and Hume, in
Whitehead's notion of what "experience" entails. For him, experience involves
perception in two modes, only one of which he sees recognized in Hume's thought.
Whitehead calls one of these modes of perception "presentational immediacy."
By this he means the mode in which the percepta "are distinct, definite, controllable, apt
to immediate enjoyment, and with the minimum of reference to the past, or to the future"
(Whitehead 1966, 1929: 188). His claim, then, that for Hume, "presentational immediacy
was the primary fact of perception, and any apprehension of causation was, somehow or
other, to be elicited from this primary fact" (1966, 1929: 121), bears a certain similarity
to the discussions of causation that the contemporary critical realists put forward. . Both
Whitehead and the critical realists are concerned with how causality can enter the picture,
if all we know are atomistic events along with observations of, in critical-realist rhetoric,
their "constant event patterns" (Lawson 1997: 19) or, in Whitehead’s phrase, the
"repetition of associated presentational experiences" (Whitehead 1966, 1929: 122).
What Hume neglected, however, according to Whitehead, was perception in the
mode of "causal efficacy." Percepta in this mode are
...vague, not to be controlled, heavy with emotion; it produces the
sense of derivation from an immediate past, and of passage to an
immediate future; a sense of emotional feeling, belonging to oneself in
the past, passing into oneself in the present, and passing from oneself
in the present towards oneself in the future; a sense of influx of
influence...This is our general sense of existence, as one item among
others, in an efficacious actual world. (1966, 1929: 118)
For example, suppose one examines a five-pronged object. To note the distinct aspects of
color, size, shape, and weight is to perceive the object in the mode of presentational
immediacy. To perceive the object as one's own hand, and sense that it is something that
one can, in fact, purposively direct to pick up a pen, is to perceive in the mode of causal
efficacy. To see a person in terms of figure, smell, and sound uses the mode favored by
Hume; to recognize in that person a being like oneself, a companion, uses the mode
Hume omitted.4
Whitehead calls his position provisional realism (1997, 1925: 91). That is,
because of the integral presence of actual entities in other entities, we perceive (via the
mode of causal efficacy) that "other things...are in the world of actualities in the same
sense as we are" (1966, 1929: 136). To put it in other words, while we can admit to
knowledge only what we know from experience (as an empiricist would posit), because
reality interpenetrates and because our experience includes broad, vague feelings of
influence and efficaciousness, we are confident that items and relations outside us exist
(as a realist would posit).
We can easily compare Whitehead's version of realism to that of the critical
realists. Lawson, for example, defines his preferred position as asserting "that the
ultimate objects of enquiry exist for the most part independently of, or at least prior to,
their investigation" (1999: 27). Both versions of realism refute the fully subjectivist or
solipsistic claim that the world exists only as "in our minds" or upon interaction with our
minds (as any realism would). But Lawson's language of "objects" and "independently"
seems insufficiently distinguished from the usual dualisms of subject and object, and
gaps between the knower and known, that are inherent in a substance-and-attribute
ontology. The "transcendental" realism aspect of critical-realist thought seeks to assert
the existence of objects (mechanisms) outside of experience, through (since the gap
between knower and known cannot be directly bridged) arguments for their logical
necessity. Abstraction and reason are called on to bridge the assumed chasm. Whitehead's
ontology, by contrast, more thoroughly locates the knower within reality, and (through a
broader, deeper, and more serious understanding of experience) sees the knower as
having a sense of the whole and the many (or, in more current lingo, the "other"), as well
as of the self (1968, 1938: 117).
Whitehead's ontology, further, puts emancipatory and caring activities at the core
of reality. Elaborating on his idea of "feeling," he suggests that "[a]t the basis of our
existence is the sense of 'worth'" (1968, 1938: 109). Moral and purposive behavior arises
from the fact that "[e]xistence...is the upholding of value intensity. Also no unit can
separate itself from the others, and from the whole. And yet each unit exists in its own
right. It upholds value intensity for itself, and this involves sharing value intensity with
the universe." (1968, 1938: 111). Whitehead rejects the notion of matter as passive
substance, proceeding either deterministically or randomly without purpose. A sense of
aim and direction is integral to his ontology.
Similarly to the critical realists, Whitehead finds that "Hume fails to provide
experience with any objective content" (1966, 1929: 137), and seeks to fill that void.
Unlike the critical realists, Whitehead proposes an ontology which, by acknowledging
noncognitive and nonsensory perceptions, coherently grounds a (provisionally) realist
philosophy.
PROCESS AND FEMINISM
But note what cognitive and philosophical biases must be overcome, if one is to
become open to considering Whitehead's organicist philosophy. Feelings! Emotions!
Influence! Connection! Holism! Vagueness! Process! Value! Is there any rule of polite
philosophical and scientific discourse that Whitehead does not break? The notions that
Whitehead seeks to introduce are exactly those that feminist scholarship suggests will be
most feared and suppressed. The dualistic structures and notion of solitary, separative
selfhood criticized by feminists are the same structures and notion addressed by
Whitehead:
All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the
world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality,
particular and universal. The result always does violence to that
immediate experience which we express in our actions, our hopes, our
sympathies, our purposes, and which we enjoy in spite of our lack of
phrases for its verbal analysis. We find ourselves in a buzzing world,
amid a democracy of fellow creatures; whereas, under some disguise
or other, orthodox philosophy can only introduce us to solitary
substances, each enjoying an illusory experience...(1966, 1929: 136).
A feminist-process view can ground a (provisionally) realist philosophy, and even more
importantly, can ground emancipatory projects. But, as contemporary feminist
scholarship points out, this view of reality faces an uphill battle against social, historical,
economic, religious, and psycho-sexual tendencies maintained precisely in order to
suppress those parts of reality that are "not to be controlled."
Other scholars, from feminist, multiculturalist, or ecological perspectives, have
also drawn on insights about "feeling" and even directly on Whitehead. Rajani Kanth, for
example, uses emotional language in criticizing the Eurocentric nature of critical realism
to date, concluding that we need ideas that are not so much "bright, perhaps, I think, so
much as warm..." (1999: 200, emphasis in original). Charlene Spretnak's The Resurgence
of the Real (1999) provides a wide-ranging and nontechnical introduction to a processoriented approach to realism which builds on the feminist, ecological, spiritual, and
political concerns emerging at the turn to the 21st century. The use of the term
"separative self" to describe homo economicus (Paula England 1993) is taken from the
work of feminist theologian Catherine Keller (1986), who in turn draws on Whiteheadean
thought.5
CONCLUSION
This essay has used philosophical sources to examine how process, openness,
purpose, feeling, and value might be intrinsically incorporated into the core of our views
of how the world works.
For some aspects of economics, the implications of such a changed worldview are
fairly direct. The notion of "caring work" is problematic within the neoclassical
framework, for example, because neoclassical theory has no room for concepts of
intimacy, interdependence, and nurturance. Economic improvement is disastrously tied
to notions of Pareto optimality or GDP growth in standard economics, because there is no
concept of value beyond that given by atomistic, individual utility. A process-feminist
view lays the beginnings for taking on such sterility at the root. The fact that this
ontological view also provides a way around old epistemological debates will, for many
feminist economists, be an aspect of lesser importance.
As a matter of everyday strategy, a feminist economist will still often find that
phrasing her or his arguments largely within usual mainstream modes of discourse is, as
Harding argued in Feminist Economics, the best way to achieve feminist ends. But, for a
practicing feminist economist, might it not be more satisfactory, whether engaging in
research or advocacy, to proceed with a sense that the universe is such that what one
struggles for matters?
Julie A. Nelson, Center for the Study of Values in Public Life,
Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Ave.,
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.
e-mail: [email protected]
NOTES
1
I thank Fabienne Peter, Tony Lawson, Geoff Hodgson, and John B. Cobb, Jr. for
elucidating discussions on ontological issues. This work has been supported by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman Memorial Fellowship for Research on Caring Labor. The usual
disclaimer applies.
2
More generally, "realism" refers to the idea that there are forces which cannot be
apprehended empirically, but are nonetheless "real." I thank an anonymous referee for
this clarification. The referee suggests Thomas Boyland and Paschal O'Gorman (1995)
for further elaboration.
3
The nature/social dualism is also removed. In this I differ in from Pradeep Philip (1995)
in my interpretation of Whitehead, since Philip seeks to relate Whitehead's thought to
critical realism without moving past a strong dualism of natural vs. social science.
4
Whitehead contends that all perception in fact involves both modes, but I have
simplified for expositional purposes. The hand and pen example is my elaboration of
Whitehead's discussion of our perception of our own bodies (1966, 1938: 114).
5
I have discussed elsewhere other historical and contemporary correlates of process
oriented thought (Nelson, 2001).
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