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Yeah, but relativity is true whether you believe so or not and its effect isn't really subject to being altered. Part of the interesting thing about sociological theories is that the way in which they influence society is dependent on how they are widely understood and consequently how they shape public opinion and policy. For example the fact that there are some very intelligent American theologians sitting in their university departments elaborating on very nuanced views on the nature of christianity does not change the fact that the the common US view of god as a belligerent, judgemental beardy bloke on a cloud leads to those "christian" values causing a huge amount of misery. We can discuss the validity of the theories in an abstract sense, but we also have to deal with their effects on the ground.
Absolutely. And if we were talking about religion I'd agree with you. I think our difference of opinion is really over the extent to which people misuse identity politics for bad or dishonest reasons. I say this happens in the vast rarity of cases, and only on the extremes - most people take from it what's intended, though as you'd expect, it's the extremes you hear from more often. I'd imagine you say it happens more often than not - in which case we just disagree about frequency.
So that's an argument in favour of eradicating identity politics altogether.
Is it?! That's a very strange reading of that quote, which is from an article entitled "Identity politics has veered away from its roots. It's time to bring it back". My take is that it means exactly what it says i.e., that the expression of one's lived experience adds a limited amount to the debate if it's not backed up with a sound wider analysis.
Well that's a conclusion I'd agree with - analysis tells us what's true, whereas lived experience tells us what that truth FEELS like. But I only read the quote, which said:
"A worldview that moves us closer to equality doesn’t stem from living in a certain kind of body"
And I say it's one of the two things it stems from. Without an understanding of how someone else's reality FEELS to them, you can't really have a polite conversation with them about the analysis. If you just look at cold hard facts you end up in a situation like I saw on Question Time the other day where a white public schoolboy was telling a black panellist that the UK was one of the least racist countries on earth. He was right, as far as he went, but it was a tone deaf thing to say at the time. That's why identity politics IS important - not in terms of the raw truth but in terms of knowing when to speak, and when to listen.
I'll have a read of that piece now.
ReekBlefs-
I think our difference of opinion is really over the extent to which people misuse identity politics for bad or dishonest reasons... I'd imagine you say it happens more often than not - in which case we just disagree about frequency.
I think that's further than I'd go and I certainly wouldn't suggest that it is done deliberately (except in a very small minority of cases). With regard to identity politics there are some standard concerns that people express about the need to balance the value of considering each person's/groups unique experience with the need to speak to a universal experience that will (hopefully) become more relevant as sources of injustice are dealt with.
My concern is, therefore, partly about the impacts of such approaches and partly about their provability. I think people adopt viewpoints/lenses/theories in this arena because they appeal to them or seem true to them based on their own experience. That's true for the bullshit "white men are the most oppressed group today" as it is for identity politics, patriarchy theory, intersectionality etc. Obviously some of those theories have a greater degree of supporting evidence than others, but I think they all fall short of the kind of bulletproof evidential support that relativity has.
The problem comes when people become invested in those models (because they resonate with them). That leads them to push them as a cast-iron "truth" and universal explanation for all possible societal phenomena. That in turn leads to confirmation bias, your example of amplifying women in meetings is a reasonable example. Have you noticed that particular men are also constantly interrupted? Their experience is not negated because it falls outside of the model, but it's not something that you address with your amplification. It also leads to reasonable criticisms of the model being dismissed either because those defending it are used to seeing completely unreasonable alt-right attacks and lump reasonable criticism in with it or because the means for dismissing criticism are inherently built into the model (which makes me really fucking suspicious). For example your article on Sam Harris essentially counters his claim to be outside tribalism by saying "well that's exactly what someone of your tribe would say". With regard to identity politics I think that brings us to your point...
Without an understanding of how someone else's reality FEELS to them, you can't really have a polite conversation with them about the analysis.
...which is true, but sometimes gets flipped to be "you can't understand the theory/can't criticise the theory, because you don't know how the manifestations of that theory FEEL in real life" i.e., you lack the relevant experience. That's really concerning because it ignores the need for theories to be genuinely evidentially supported and go beyond personal experience to be broadly accepted and applicable to policy etc.
ffm
Yeah, but relativity is true whether you believe so or not and its effect isn't really subject to being altered. Part of the interesting thing about sociological theories is that the way in which they influence society is dependent on how they are widely understood and consequently how they shape public opinion and policy. For example the fact that there are some very intelligent American theologians sitting in their university departments elaborating on very nuanced views on the nature of christianity does not change the fact that the the common US view of god as a belligerent, judgemental beardy bloke on a cloud leads to those "christian" values causing a huge amount of misery. We can discuss the validity of the theories in an abstract sense, but we also have to deal with their effects on the ground.
Is it?! That's a very strange reading of that quote, which is from an article entitled "Identity politics has veered away from its roots. It's time to bring it back". My take is that it means exactly what it says i.e., that the expression of one's lived experience adds a limited amount to the debate if it's not backed up with a sound wider analysis.