Parsing the actionable in standpoint theory

Question

A recent Hugo Schwyzer article laid out the following explanation of "Strong Objectivity":

We can never adopt a true “view from nowhere.” We can defy gravity in outer space, but we can never slip the surly bonds of our human imperfection. Our experiences impact us each day of our lives, and our experiences are shaped by our gender identity, our race, our class, our faith, and our communities. And while everyone sees “through a glass darkly” as a result, it seems eminently reasonable to say that the experience of being a member of a historically disadvantaged group (women; sexual, ethnic, or religious minorities; the working class) creates greater clarity about the dynamics of oppression. This is what the foremost advocate for standpoint theory, Sandra Harding, calls “strong objectivity.”

His article laid out cases wherein a particular set of opinions, though no more predisposed to being correct, might be afforded a certain privileged place due to their likelihood of carrying a depth and scope of experiences more novel in their perception of power dynamics. Essentially, the article drove home that privilege and power hide themselves from those who are afforded them, and those without them have claims to special knowledge with respect to how privilege and power assert themselves.

I am having difficulty identifying why this is called strong objectivism (apparently contrasted to weak objectivity in Harding's "Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives"), with respect to its inherently relativistic claim of special knowledge. I am trying to understand how Schwyzer's article, and standpoint theory generally, relates to epistemic claims, and specifically about the nature of making this knowledge actionable.

• Is standpoint theory a form of relativism or objectivism, or something else entirely?
• Does standpoint theory attempt to reconcile divergent frames of reference, or otherwise make differing speakers' language soluble?
• Is standpoint theory a form of descriptive or normative discourse?

Answer 1

To take a stab at your questions, in order:

1. As far as I understand it, for Harding, standpoint theory is a re-description of objectivism. It is relativistic only inasmuch as Schwyzer lays out, that certain kinds of knowledge might be more or less difficult for particular people to have in particular socio-cultural contexts. This doesn't, it seems to me, undermine objectivism, since I don't think anyone committed to objectivism would or could deny that the process of knowledge-acquisition is a contingent one (e.g. with glasses I can identify objects better than without glasses). What would undermine objectivism, among different possible formulations, is a view that knowledge, however acquired, is not knowledge simpliciter, but is true relative to a context outside of which the truth-conditions for a claim do not obtain. This is not to say that an theory of objectivism holds that certain truth claims do not extend over particular contexts. For example, 'some apples are red' might not be true forever, and that claim, without further specification, might not be true on some other planet (but the claim could be specified sufficiently so that neither dislocation in space nor dislocation in time would change the truth value of the claim). Relativism usually, I think, reconceptualizes what knowledge and truth are enough to allow for the truth of a specific claim to be relative (e.g. a specific murder could be truly bad in the judgement of some and truly bad for others, at the same time and in the same way) or reconceptualizes what we understand at certain times and in certain ways as the pursuit of knowledge and/or truth in order to recast these pursuits as historically (potentially) noble but flawed projects that occlude how knowledge actually functions both individually and collectively.
2. This likely depends on the specific formulation of standpoint theory involved; insofar as some standpoint theories merely emphasize the contingency of knowledge acquisition and call attention to particularly putatively important social problems I don't think that there is any essential alterity between speakers. For any formulation that would entail relativism, it could be relativism of the sort that might admit the existence of contradictions and for that reason believe in a single language of some kind (minimally, propositions); or, it could be a relativism that need not endorse contradictions per se by rejecting the possibility of a single frame that encompasses different linguistic utterances/meanings and within which they could be understood and reconciled.
3. If this question is equivalent to "Is standpoint theory a description of how knowledge-production does work or is it a claim about how knowledge-production should work?", then I think it most cases it is both, with its claim of descriptiveness entailing a normative burden insofar as if knowledge-production does work along standpoint theory lines then those seeking truth should take care to incorporate standpoint theory into their epistemologies so that truth can be better sought and easier found.