Standpoint Theory
A standpoint is a place from which we view the world that determines what we focus on as
well as what we don’t know. The standpoint is a specific location in time and space that
determines how one sees the world. The social groups like sexuality, socio economic
status, gender, etc. we belong to shape how we see the world and how we communicate.
Not that everyone in that social group will have the exact same view point but they’ll be
closer to each other. Now, the problem is that these social groups influence the way we see
the world, but all the groups were not treated as equals. For example, poor people might be
oppressed by the rich community; historically, women were not considered as important as
men; blacks and whites were not treated equally, etc. Therefore, it was observed that some
groups were treated better than others and some group oppressed others. Societal
inequalities generate distinctive accounts of nature and social relationships. The standpoint
theory argues that the perspective from the lives of the less powerful provide a more
objective perspective than lives of the powerful. So, poor people have a better and
comprehensive way of seeing the world compared to the rich people. The standpoint
theorist idea suggests that dominant people have a less objective view of the world.
Privileged groups are not forced to observe the realities of inferior groups; therefore their
standpoints are more narrow and biased.
In Indian context as we see, there has always been the dominance of patriarchal society. It
is only recently, that feminism has gained importance. The standpoint theory gives the
feminist way of understanding the world. The theory is influenced by the early Marx and
Engel’s idea of “ideal knower”. But they talked about it only in terms of class. After much
research, it was seen that the standpoint theory was also influenced by symbolic
interactionism, which suggests that gender is socially constructed. This is the basic
difference between sex and gender where sex is a biological phenomenon and gender is
social. Therefore, though we have biological differences but most of what we do to be a
man or a woman comes from society and from those groups that we are a part of. But
standpoint does not embrace relativism. It says that all we have is our location through
which we view knowledge but some visions of the world are better than others. So, the
