The situated knowledges is a very useful term
because immediately it reminds us that
knowledge is never pure, simple and never
comes from no viewpoint. What I mean by that
is
that it always comes from a viewpoint and
several viewpoints often. So it’s always
situated.
In ordinary terms to say that knowledge is
situated means that there isn’t some general
completely value free context free knowledge
that is ahistorical and completely the same.
Knowledge is always situated somewhere and
in some time, and what something means in
that place and that time differs from what
it means somewhere else.
Whenever knowledge is thought, produced and
disseminated, it’s always because it is situated.
It’s situated in a certain time;
it’s situated historically; it’s situated
in certain places
and it varies from place to place.
It changes with social change. Knowledges change, social psychology
has changed and continues to change in many ways.
And it’s also situated in
terms of values, belief systems and cultural differences.
And so when you look from the
outside at social psychology, when you step
back and try and make sense of it, it’s
really very
useful to be able to say…
I see that that
happened because it was 1950s, it was North America,
it was when a certain scientific
idea of social psychology dominated and therefore
it’s not surprising that this is the kind
of knowledge that was produced. And so we
use this
idea in the course to situate the kind of
social psychology which we’re showing to
students.
Certainly social psychological knowledges
are situated. But so it is that every day
common
seneschal knowledge, the things we take for
granted in living our every day lives, that
social
psychologists are deeply interested in, are
also situated.
To be a wife in these days, in the 2000 and
somethings, is very different from being a
wife
even when I was a wife the first time round
in the, in the 1960s and ‘70s.
To talk about what a good wife is or being
a good wife is to talk about two very very
different
things between those two times. So the knowledge
of what being a good wife is has
changed. To be a good wife in this culture
and to be a good wife in a township in South
Africa
or in a small village in Shropshire compared
to being in an inner city in Los Angeles,
you
know, what wife means in those different places
is profoundly different.
