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## Meet the editors

Dennis S. Erasga is a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences, De La Salle University (DLSU), Manila, Philippines. He has authored articles on social theorizing and localist sociology. He is currently writing a book on the nativist Filipino sociology *Pilipinong Sosyolohiya*. Professor Erasga is a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow and a sitting Research Fellow at the Social Development Research Center (SDRC) of DLSU.

Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy is an assistant professorial lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences, De La Salle University (DLSU), Manila, Philippines. His interests include the sociology of gender and the sociology of education. He and a co-the author are working on the gay agency of selected faculty from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Philippines.

### Contents



*by Reda Elmabruk and Nesrin Etarhuni*

## Preface

This book contributes to the study of feminism and zeroes in on the corporeal, the body, or the materiality of the feminist perspective [1, 2] examined under the rubrics of various societal issues and concerns. The book's major arguments are articulated in our chapter where we problematize the nexus of corporeality and embodiment within the optics of new materiality. We contend that mending the broken link between the two requires factoring in the notion of "agency." Agency as a conceptual tool provides a good discursive cover to amplify the fact that the fleshy aspect of the body is a tool in looking at the body as a vehicle of demonstrative impulses sans the halo effects of actions traditionally conceived. We argue that, on the one hand, social actions are but the audiences' interpretation (as in performance) of an individual's motivations. Body movements, on the other hand, are a person's internal inertia to demonstrate what is felt and needed to show to the world [3]. With this conceptualization of agency, we organized the book into meaningful themes or an ensemble of works that reflect the agentic affordance of the embodied flesh of the women's objective, hence, material body.

One agentic theme is the idea of "The Theoretical Body". The two works under this section are valuable because they propose a theoretical or conceptual understanding of the plight of women at home and in counseling research and practice. Here, Robbertze utilizes Jennifer Nedelsky's relational autonomy in making sense of the ideal form of home. She emphasizes that the home is a gendered space, and it is unfortunate that the law did not necessarily have a sufficient understanding of its nature during the pandemic, especially regarding domestic violence. Robbertze's contribution is significant, as she argues that the idea of relational autonomy can be valuable in redefining the home. If home should be redefined, so should counseling psychology research and practice. Suehn et al. utilize the Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST) to redefine counseling psychology politically and to integrate social justice perspectives both in research and practice. Their contribution is of paramount importance because utilizing FST in research can inform practical applications in clinical practice and training and in decolonizing Eurocentric epistemologies.

Literature and popular shows about aging and women's bodies [4, 5] are critical to investigate because they show how stereotypes are further reified and challenged. It is common knowledge in sociology that the media is a socializing agent or the one that teaches and transmits gendered ideas. The media echoes and reinforces the societal stereotypical expectations of society. Hence, another prominent theme in this book is called "The Literary Body". Maryani performs a narrative analysis of two soap operas and explores how women are marginalized in the processes of subjection and objectification. Maryani contributes to the studies on how media echoes and reinforces the societal stereotypical expectations in the context of the biggest soap operas in her country. Sebola, on the other hand, equipped with the postcolonial feminist theory in her analysis of the fictional works of Adichie, focuses her attention on the authoritative roles and loud voices of female characters. In Rabbani's work, the body

is critical, especially in her nomadic/post-transnational analysis of Kamila Shamsie's novel, Burnt Shadows. The literary analyses of these three authors point to the ongoing struggles to take charge of their bodies and womanhood in the contexts of soap operas and fictional literary works. This terrain remains relevant to explore because while some forms of art can reify existing stereotypes, many literary fictional works can be liberating.

Under the theme "The Legal Body", Grabowska, in her chapter entitled "The Female Body as Sites of Power" muses about the possibility of the depoliticization of the female body. She elaborates on the links of sex and corporeality to specific legislations and social policies. She evaluates the importance of not exactly depoliticizing sex and body but treating them instead as tools for political struggle. Smith, on the other hand, forwards the value of abolition feminism, which follows the premises of the abolition of democracy. This abolition feminism is premised on the impossibility of ending the carceral systems without systematic gender analysis. Like Smith's work, Muniz examines the interrelationships of sustainable development as a human right and women's economic empowerment. She argues that the right to development and economic empowerment of women is necessary for human rights to be effective. Muniz points out that the existing sexual division of labor can be dismantled by re-signifying social roles and by equitably sharing work activities. From politicizing sex and the body, restructuring the prison carceral system, and achieving transformative justice through abolition feminism and the jumping scale, up to the promotion of women's economic empowerment as a human right and linked to the idea of sustainable development, this theme reveals the heavily legal or political nature of the women's body.

Finally, under the theme "The Body That Performs", Tendenan turns to dance as a mechanism for voicing and combating violence against women. One of her central arguments is anchored on the relational character of dance that is linked to the appreciation of the existence of the female body. This chapter contributes to the discourse on the countless and creative ways women resist violence [6, 7]. Ishida also investigates the bodily performance of women, particularly their marginalization, but this time in the context of seafaring. She utilizes a Marxist feminism perspective in unraveling the links between capitalism and patriarchy in the said industry. She focuses on the economic and bodily domination of men and women and the layers of domination. The vessel is a microcosm of patriarchy showing not only the domination of men over women but also that of men over men (like a captain reigning supreme and ranking higher over his crew). In the context of language teacher education, alternatively, Elmabruk and Etarhuni problematize how teacher educators exercise pro-social or anti-social power and how that very power is influenced by gender. These three studies notably show how women perform in a bodily sense whether through dance, domination in a vessel through "transactional sex," and the disposal of power in an educational setting. The essence of these chapters is to reveal the still heavily heteronormative nature of social spaces where the gendered bodies perform. But more than that, the authors are triumphant in highlighting the possibilities of exercising agency anchored on women's very own bodies.

The bevy of works assembled in this volume testifies to the emerging new optics in feminists' agenda of juxtaposing old perspectives with new realities as far as the objective facticity of the body is concerned. Their works are testimony to the

**V**

resurgence of the body regurgitated in a transdisciplinary way. We hope that our work contributes to the expansion of the project of the feminist agenda by aggregating old and new works under unified themes of materiality and agency. With the sensate and thinking body back in the picture, agency via bodily movements may now be used as a legitimate lens in depicting materiality that construed unproblematic notions of

> **Dennis S. Erasga and Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy** Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences,

> > De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

corporeality and embodiment.

resurgence of the body regurgitated in a transdisciplinary way. We hope that our work contributes to the expansion of the project of the feminist agenda by aggregating old and new works under unified themes of materiality and agency. With the sensate and thinking body back in the picture, agency via bodily movements may now be used as a legitimate lens in depicting materiality that construed unproblematic notions of corporeality and embodiment.

> **Dennis S. Erasga and Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy** Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

#### **References**

[1] Brown SZ. Mapping pleasure and pain on Black women's bodies: Southern Black feminist geographic interventions. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. 2023;**30**(2):237-255

[2] Karmakar G, Sarkar S. Feminism, body, sexuality, and time: A Conversation with Elizabeth Grosz. Journal of Gender Studies. 2021;**30**(4):496-500

[3] Erasga DS. When the body moves: A preliminary articulation of the theory of the demonstrative body. In progress

[4] Fiedler A, Casey S. "I played by all the rules! Why didn't you tell me there weren't any rules, it's not fair!": Contradiction, corporeality, and conformity in Grace and Frankie1. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. 2021;**35**(6):938-954

[5] Collard-Stokes G. Recreational burlesque and the aging female body: Challenging perceptions. Journal of Women & Aging. 2022;**34**(2):155-169. doi:10.1080/08952841.2020.1839319

[6] Hartviksen J. Gendered outbreaks of violence and resistances to development: body, land, territory, and violence against women in postwar Guatemala. Gender & Development. 2021;**29**(2/3):291-312

[7] Sanín JR. Violence against women in politics: Latin America in an era of backlash. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society. 2020;**45**(2):302-310

**1**

Section 1

The Theoretical Body

Section 1

## The Theoretical Body

#### **Chapter 1**

## Introductory Chapter: Feminism, Corporeality, and Beyond

*Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy and Dennis S. Erasga*

#### **1. Introduction**

A theory or movement ceases to become relevant or exist when it no longer serves a purpose in society. That case is not applicable to feminism which continues to be significant today. It further develops [1], even shifts, and reaches new meanings and articulations—from lifestyle influencers [2], digital/hashtag feminism [3, 4], and even transmedia feminism [5]. One can only hope that feminism becomes less needed which would mean that the society becomes fairer and more inclusive. However, feminism, as a movement and a frame of mind, evolved together with the times. It refuses to turn a blind eye to all the inequalities and systems of marginalization brought about by existing and new forms of social contexts and social relations.

It is obvious that the pandemic has gendered effects, especially on women's lives [6, 7]. During the pandemic, domestic violence was heightened [8–10]. The government-imposed lockdowns forced families to be confined together for longer periods of time. This posed a serious problem with the already existing domestic violence. The said violence was further exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns. The intimate partner violence amidst the lockdowns victimized mostly women which took significant tolls on their, among many other aspects, psychological, social, mental, and especially physical well-being. Other than the amplified domestic violence, the very bodies, strength, and management of time of women were challenged and were put to the test. For instance, the closure of the schools and the transition to online classes became a burden to many parents or guardians at home [11]. This means additional work for those involved in the child's education at home. But this was even more challenging in places like the Philippines. Because not all students attending the public schools have access to the internet and gadget, the modular approach was used which means parents, especially mothers (stereotyped as "care giver, teacher"), served as the tutor or were practically tasked to accomplish the lessons. This could be taxing, especially when many other things are needed to be done by mothers at home. Notably, violence at home, additional and demanding tasks, and many other concerns tested the physical and bodily dimensions of women. This reveals the significance of going back to the problem of the body as we face extraordinary situations like the pandemic today.

#### **2. Agency and women's body as a continuing and unfinished project**

Even beyond the pandemic, the issue of the corporeal continues to permeate the many dimensions of women's lives. The corporeal is even more meaningful today given the many continued struggles of women in various aspects of their lives—from women and their bodies in anti-mining movements [12, 13], the feminine body in the context of the culture of care [14], body positivity in digital media cultures [15], among many other iterations. It is true that the history of gender theory is almost equivalent to the history of conceptualizations of embodiment and corporeality [16]. While many valuable feminist works advance the interests of women and the greater society, there is a need to considerably add agency into the equation. It is valuable to examine the nexus of corporeality and embodiment. The idea is that to mend the broken link between these two, the notion of "agency" must be accommodated and emphasized in the analysis. Lim [17] effectively countered the ahistorical, monolithic, and disembodied portrayal of women of Saudi Arabia. She heavily problematized the literature on how the role of the body is detached from women's movements. To highlight the corporeal elements of the movements, she utilized Butler's performativity. In her analysis of the said campaigns and movements, she successfully revealed various forms of protests (e.g., driving, cycling, silent walking) that reflected performative embodiments. More importantly, she highlighted that some forms of protest like cycling can make the body or the element of corporeality more visible and effective. Our appreciation of this example of important work is that the creative demonstrative capacities of women are clearly seen. As we explained in our other write-up here, corporeality can be regarded as a performance that is geared toward the audience for certain possible reasons or to achieve specific goals. Embodiment, seen as a demonstration, on the other hand, reveals the creative and solidarity-oriented actions and meaning makings of women. Lim's study revealed that silent walking and tweeting as forms of protest tend to organize women to act in unison. She highlighted that some sites prompt women's bodies to act together. Here, embodiment is no longer limited to the idea of performing, instead, the element of demonstration clearly reveals a certain form of agency that emanates not from the performance itself but draws power, energy, and strength from the very expression itself and demonstrated along with or in solidarity with the marginalized others.

Feminism is never a settled field. Various debates continue today like seeing sex/ body as a stable identity (Nussbaum) versus assuming the body together with many aspects of our social lives as merely constructed and performed (Butler) [18]. Some even propose to see these contending positions to be intractably linked and inseparable [19]. These contradicting and gradating positions serve particular and still relevant purposes. For instance, it is worthwhile to see the body as a stable identity in relation to identity politics. In other words, for women's political rights to be realized, sex or the body must be drawn in a concrete sense. The value of seeing the body as merely a social construction/performed allows us to see the arbitrariness of corporeality and embodiment, and hence see opportunities to change stereotypes and inequalities. The beauty here is that the interests are alive. One can argue that the concern on the body or the corporeal is an ongoing and unfinished project. The body or the corporeal is truly far-reaching, especially in the lives of women. But we reiterate that it is important to anchor the analysis on women's agency as we examine corporeality and embodiment. Liimakka [20] correctly proposed to move away from the Cartesian agency and move closer instead to the idea of corporeal agency (or what we call embodied demonstrative agency). We argue that the emphasis on the latter opens the room for the re-reading of the body and unraveling the creative and social ways of actualizing the feminist project toward genuine freedom and equality. Here lies hope, wishing that we continue to examine feminism and corporeality and perhaps go beyond as we actualize the promises and potencies of women's agentic selves.

*Introductory Chapter: Feminism, Corporeality, and Beyond DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112684*

### **Author details**

Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy\* and Dennis S. Erasga Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

\*Address all correspondence to: michael.labayandoy@dlsu.edu.ph

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

### **References**

[1] Florvil TN, Glover KL, Joseph-Gabriel AK, Marino KM, Mitchell R, Mogoue JB, et al. New directions in feminism and global race studies: A book conversation. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society. 2022;**47**(4):1013-1040

[2] Petersson-McIntyre M. Commodifying feminism: Economic choice and agency in the context of lifestyle influencers and gender consultants. Gender, Work and Organization. 2021;**28**(3):1059-1078. DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12627

[3] Worthington N. Celebrity-bashing or #MeToo contribution? New York Times Online readers debate the boundaries of hashtag feminism. The Communication Review. 2020;**23**(1):46- 65. DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2019.1704110

[4] Villesèche F, Meliou E, Jha HK. Feminism in women's business networks: A freedom-centered perspective. Human Relations. 2022;**75**(10):1903-1927. DOI: 10.1177/00187267221083665

[5] Boyle A. "They should have never given us uniforms if they didn't want us to be an army": The Handmaid's Tale as transmedia feminism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society. 2020;**45**(4):845-870

[6] Fullagar S, Pavlidis A. Thinking through the disruptive effects and affects of the coronavirus with feminist new materialism. Leisure Sciences. 2021;**43**(1/2):152-159. DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2020.1773996

[7] Rode J, Kennedy E, Littlejohn A. Gender, and the lived body experience of academic work during COVID-19. Learning, Media, and Technology. 2022;**47**(1):109-124

[8] Krishnadas J, Taha SH. Domestic violence through the window of the COVID-19 lockdown: A public crisis embodied/exposed in the private/domestic sphere. Journal of Global Faultlines. 2020;**7**(1):46-58. DOI: 10.13169/jglobfaul.7.1.0046

[9] Ramoshaba DJ, Singwane TP. Thematic content analysis of lockdown and domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa. International Journal of Research in Business & Social Science. 2023;**12**(2):370-375. DOI: 10.20525/ijrbs. v12i2.2375

[10] Kofman YB, Weiss CCD, Yim IS. Domestic violence assault during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal community study. BMC Public Health. 2023;**23**(1):1-10. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-023-15560-8

[11] Rathaliya A, Malarkodi S, Deol R, Kuppuswamy R. Perception, burden and satisfaction of parents of children attending online classes during COVID-19 lockdown: A cross-sectional survey. Journal of Family Medicine & Primary Care. 2022;**11**(6):2493-2498. DOI: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc\_1717\_21

[12] Fotaki M, Daskalaki M. Politicizing the body in the anti-mining protest in Greece. Organization Studies. 2021;**42**(8):1265-1290

[13] Leinius J. Articulating body, territory, and the defense of life: The politics of strategic equivalencing between women in anti-mining movements and the feminist movement in Peru. Bulletin of Latin American Research. 2021;**40**(2):204-219

[14] Rodriguez M. The feminine body and the culture of care. New Bioethics. 2022;**28**(3):199-207

*Introductory Chapter: Feminism, Corporeality, and Beyond DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112684*

[15] Darwin H, Miller A. Factions, frames, and postfeminism(s) in the body positive movement. Feminist Media Studies. 2021;**21**(6):873-890

[16] Marhánková JH, Kolářová K. Embodiment and corporeality in feminist theory. Gender, Equal Opportunities, Research/Gender, Rovne, Prilezitosti, Vyzkum. 2016;**17**(1):4-5

[17] Lim M. Unveiling Saudi feminism(s): Historicization, heterogeneity, and corporeality in women's movements. Canadian Journal of Communication. 2018;**43**(3):461-479. DOI: 10.22230/ cjc.2019v44n3a3379

[18] Oh I. The performativity of motherhood: Embodying theology and political agency. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. 2009;**29**(2):3-17

[19] Kirby V. Corporeal habits: Addressing essentialism differently. Hypatia. 1991;**6**(3):4-24. Available from: https:// search-ebscohost-com.dlsu.idm.oclc.org/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN= 9201061259&site=ehost-live [Accessed: July 23, 2023]

[20] Liimakka S. Cartesian and corporeal agency: Women's studies students' reflections on body experience. Gender & Education. 2011;**23**(7):811-823. DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2010.536144

#### **Chapter 2**

## One Flesh, Many Bodies: Agency and Women's Body

*Dennis S. Erasga and Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy*

#### **Abstract**

This chapter is a sociological rendition of the body-mind issue explored within the context of feminism and agency. Being central to the entire ecology of the feminist claims, bringing the body back into the discursive field allows the appreciation of hitherto emerging insights from the ranks of feminist scholars, notably in the area of new materiality. Problematizing the classical divide between the body and the mind as distinct yet nested spheres of one's social being pegs the discussion in the language of performance and demonstrability, thus highlighting the agency intrinsic to the body and its movements as a material facticity.

**Keywords:** corporeality, feminism, embodiment, agency, new materiality, body

#### **1. Introduction**

Affirmation of the primacy of the body in human consciousness stretches back to the very beginnings of the discipline of psychology and, recently, sociology and the humanities. The perspectival evolution from physical reality to objective facticity to a sensate and thinking body (i.e., self). The body is traditionally seen as the container of the self. But now, it is being seen as the self itself, being the direct receiver, assessor, and meaning-making entity by itself. The meaning-making capacity of the body, however, is truncated by various social forces acting on it in historical periods.

The human body is a palpable reality. This means that its existence is something that can be demonstrated as it is a physical feature, hence, tangible. The senses could verify its presence given its shape and form, including the fact that it is capable of sensing and being sensed, therefore, experiencing a whole lot of emotions and events happening in its surroundings. It is in the "sensate realm" that the whole issue of the body and its gravitas in our philosophical musings and sociopolitical discourses becomes a flashpoint. Descartes' (1596–1650) "cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore, I am) is a typical case in point. This notorious statement from one of the philosophical giants of the seventeenth century is not just about the attainability of knowledge as a product of the mind-body dualism, but an assertion of a belief (now a philosophy) that the body, however conceived, is wholly separate from the mind.

According to Descartes, two substances are distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other. Thus, Descartes reasoned that God is distinct from humans, and the body and mind of a human are also distinct from one another. He argued that the great differences between the body (an extended thing) and mind (an unextended,

immaterial thing) make the two ontologically distinct. According to Descartes' indivisibility argument, the mind is utterly indivisible because "when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any part within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete" [1].

Some scholars find this Cartesian philosophy that binarizes the mind and body to be problematic [2]. This rationale for holding the distinctiveness of the two is questionable on two grounds: one is based on typology, and the other on phenomenology. Classifying the body and the mind as two distinct substances (or something with materiality). While the capacity of the body to sense (to feel) and be sensed (to be felt) is not solely ontological but experiential. The body learns from these events, and with such capacity comes the ontological aspect. The body could no longer be seen as a conduit—a mediator between experiencing and knowing, but both at the same time. It is at this point that embodiment and corporeality become both instructive and strategic in advancing a new corpus of insights (pun intended). What bridges corporeality and embodiment is the notion of materiality.

The mind-body problem is a classic philosophical debate that highlights the relationship between thought and consciousness, representing the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body. The discourse on the body-mind nexus is normally pegged in terms of how the mind and body function chemically and physiologically. So far, the interactionist perspective gave the clearest position as it conceived the mind and body as distinct—an extended position based on the premise that the mind and the body are fundamentally different. From this notion, we think that it is not a question of dualism but of duality, highlighting the distinctive factuality of both. But again, duality does not solve the issue.

Our position is that the body and the self are one, and creating distinctions between the two conflates the very idea of corporeality based on the emerging discourse on new materiality. As early as 2004, Reischer and Koo argued in their piece entitled "The Body Beautiful: Symbolism and Agency in the Social World" that the body is a site for the construction and performance of gender. Reischer and Koo [3] echoed prominent scholars like Butler and emphasized that gender is nothing but a series of repeated performances, and what holds the act together is the enactment of the very body. This therefore clearly demonstrates that the self is conscious and agentic enough to perform based on some normative expectations. This follows the argument of Grosz (1994, in [3]), who opposed the dichotomization between the mind and body and emphasized that the body is not natural, ahistorical, or precultural. More recently, Harding et al. [4] problematized the materialities and materialization of working bodies. They realized the lack of literature on bodies in their materiality. They coined the term "body/flesh," whereas the body is the cultural dimension and the flesh is the material/biological dimension. Harding et al. [4] argued that these two are indivisible, and they succeeded in revealing that the body/flesh becomes the mode of control in silencing and keeping women invisible, but there are ways to exercise agency by, for instance, interceding interpellations and breaking free from the norms.

#### **2. Materiality and the body**

For the sake of clarity and brevity, let us offer an operational definition of materiality. From the base word "matter," materiality is denotative of the physical components whose functionality and practicality in terms of purpose are the core considerations. The following quote concerning the etymology of the word is instructive:

*matter (n.): 1200, materie, "the subject of a mental act or a course of thought, speech, or expression," from Anglo-French matere, Old French matere "subject, theme, topic; substance, content; character, education" (12c., Modern French matière) and directly from Latin materia "substance from which something is made," also "hard inner wood of a tree." According to de Vaan and Watkins, this is from mater "origin, source, mother" (see* **mother** *(n.1)). The sense developed and expanded in Latin in philosophy by the influence of Greek hylē (see* **hylo-***) "wood, firewood," in a general sense "material," used by Aristotle for "matter" in the philosophical sense (https:// www.etymonline.com/word/matter).*

Given the above, it is the contention of this chapter that to address both the chasm and schism between the body and what it can accomplish, there must be a sociological accounting of their nexus. It is only through such accounting that we can have a fresh appreciation of the affordance of bringing the material, objective body back to the drawing board. The same, we believe, is made palpable by new technologies such as various social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These real-time visual artifacts re-position the physical body to different angles that reflect some sort of agency hitherto seen as such.

There are two options possible. One is to clarify the difference (and similarities) between corporeality and embodiment. The other is to reconceptualize their nexus in terms of what they intend to accomplish. The former will stabilize the distinctive traits of corporeality as opposed to embodiment, and this means recognizing both as anchored on the physicality of the sensate body. It can be accomplished by pointing out definitive features via their classic definitions. The latter will expand the ambit of their applicability in terms of how useful they are as far as the acting person (i.e., the acting body or the body in motion) is concerned. It can be done by reconceptualizing corporeality as a performance, on the one hand, and embodiment as a demonstration, on the other hand.

#### **3. Corporeality as performance**

A corporeal is a thing that has a physical existence and is capable of being seen and touched. Defining it this way, we can consider corporeality as a bodily representation seen through the functionalities of its organic parts. In one sense, the body is an object and something we are and is describable through a variety of "languages" such as biology, anthropology, medicine, and art. What we know about its components, functions, techniques, and capacities has developed and changed over time. In another sense, *to be* a body is subjective: It is the "fleshy" form through which we mediate, experience, and enact our lives. As emphasized by Harding et al. [4], when a call is heard and the body/flesh turns the very act of turning creates an embodied subject. In this way, our bodies connect us to the world, and we are subjected to the governing norms and power around us. However, while we all exist as bodies, our experiences of embodiment are not all the same.

One classic example would be the act of selfying. A selfie can be defined as a self-photograph taken using a smartphone. What makes selfies distinctive from other types of photographs is that they are taken by the persons themselves. The body positioning is done with the dedicated purpose to achieve a specific agenda in mind. While it is true that disembodiment happens online, Gonzalez's [5] study shows that digital activism creates embodiment and connection. Selfying is a postmodern way of representing the self through the visible body. A selfie of myself represents me as a person and speaks to its viewers (mostly online viewers) of both having and being a body. That is, my body does not exist on its own—it is always connected to the world and its environments. It breathes air, it converts plant and animal matter into energy, and it is sustained (and challenged) by billions of microbes I will never see. At any given moment, my body is working hard in imperceptible ways to keep me alive, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, my corporeality reminds me that staying alive cannot be taken for granted.

The selfie is done primarily for an audience. The type and set of selfies posted on an Instagram account represent how the account holders want the viewers to see them as persons with an actual body (with a fair complexion and desirable shape, located in a lovely place). They are done primarily for them; hence, customized in the way they expect him/her to be (as a body). Looking at selfies this way, we cannot help but conclude that selfies as a corporeality are a form of performance prepared for a specific audience (see [6] study about feminism and political selfies).

#### **4. Embodiment as demonstration**

To emphasize the affordance of embodiment within the discursive universe of materiality, allow us to quote William James [7] as to his sentiment regarding the centrality of the body in amassing social experience:

*The world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') comes at all times with our body as its center, the center of vision, center of action, center of interest (...) The body is the storm center, the origin of coordinates, the constant place of stress in all that experience trains. Everything circles around it, and is felt from its point of view (p. 89).*

Embodiment as a conceptual tool has generated a renewed interest within the philosophy of cognitive science over the past 20 years. Nonetheless, despite such excited innuendos, there remains much disagreement about just what it means to say that cognition is embodied. Kiverstein [8] came out with three-fold taxonomy of the body-cognition nexus (apologies for the extended quote):

*In one view, which I will call body-functionalism, the body is understood as playing a role in implementing the computational machinery that underpins our cognitive capacities. A second view attempts to deflate talk of embodiment by arguing along traditional lines that the body contributes to information processing only by supplying inputs to the brain, or by executing motor instructions sent out from the brain. I will label this position body-conservativism as it seeks to preserve the traditional approaches to cognitive science in the face of calls for revolution and reform from the philosophers of embodiment. A third, somewhat heterodox and radical view, entirely eschews the computational theory of cognition on account of its alleged failure to explain how representations can provide an agent with commonsense knowledge of the world. In this third view, the body is understood as the source of meaning. I will call this view body- enactivism, as it is concerned with articulating how the body can enact or make a situation means to an agent (p. 741).*

The trifocal categorization of body cognition quoted above is strategic in our articulation of new materialism because it tacitly prospects the agency that is lodged

#### *One Flesh, Many Bodies: Agency and Women's Body DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112403*

within the body itself. In its basic sense, the body is no longer reduced to a sensate body, leaving it as a mere receptacle and processor of experience. Rather, the body becomes the thinking flesh, the self in actuality. As such, cognition and action are no longer separate but an integrated continuum. This conception verges on the model of enactivism. Enactivism was developed as a theory describing cognition as a mental function that arises from the dynamic interaction of the organism with its environment. The concept understands mental faculties to be embedded within neural and somatic activities and to emerge through the actions of the organism. Actions are proposed to not merely constitute responses to environmental stimuli but to instantiate expectations about the valence, sequence, and form of the organism's environment. Imputing rational impulses to body movements provides new room for entertaining a new notion of agency rooted in bodily materialism.

#### **5. Agency: a mode of thinking with the body**

Before outlining the key findings of this data, it is necessary to recall a distinction Husserl [9] drew between the body-as-subject (*Leib*) and the body-as-object (*Körper*). Bodies are both physical structures and lived experiences; something we are and something we have. Thus far, such a model has paid more attention to how we think about the body than how we think about the body. However, this literature remains interesting since the two facets are not independent: exploring social representations of the body can often be a particularly direct way of enlightening how first-person bodily experience interacts with social knowledge.

The body of a woman offers nuanced impacts on how this thinking-with the body. Although flesh in its constitution and form is similar to that of a man, the materiality of a woman's body has been subjected to various and diverse cultural, political, religious, and literary discourses. Her body movements have been the focus of such discursive pontifications. Under such duress, her body movements have been deprived of such virtue, even though her motivations for such actions are almost on par with those of men [10].

Women are more demonstrative in terms of how they conduct their movements compared to men, who are more performative in theirs. An example of this is how men perform power in maintaining their relationships. Performance is driven by the sheer desire to have the audience see what they want to see and what they want to feel. Hence, men's body postures are meant to show off such performances for the sake of their audience.

Women's bodies, on the other hand, tend to move (as in body motion) based on what they feel and towards self-discovery [11]. Their audience is themselves and, in many ways, they challenge the stereotypes, take back control of their bodies, and build a community and social support [12, 13]. Hence, motivations are demonstrated through body movements. From this vantage point, she could easily demonstrate what she truly feels rather than perform what is expected of them. Demonstrative actions are more agentic than performative ones. The former is anchored on internal conversations, as if thinking with the body. The latter is girded by the spectacle of showmanship.

### **Author details**

Dennis S. Erasga\* and Michael Eduard L. Labayandoy Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

\*Address all correspondence to: dennis.erasga@dlsu.edu.ph

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*One Flesh, Many Bodies: Agency and Women's Body DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112403*

#### **References**

[1] Guttenplan S. Dualism. In: A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind. Harlow: Emerald Group Publishing Limited; 1996. pp. 265-267

[2] Karmakar G, Sarkar S. Feminism, body, sexuality, and time: A conversation with Elizabeth Grosz. Journal of Gender Studies. 2021;**30**(4):496-500. DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2020.1826296

[3] Reischer E, Koo K. The body beautiful: Symbolism and agency in the social world. Annual Review of Anthropology. 2004;**33**:297-317. DOI: 10.1146/annurev. anthro.33.070203.143754

[4] Harding N, Golmore S, Ford J. Matter that embodies: Agentive flesh and working bodies/self. Organization Studies. 2022;**43**(5):649-668. DOI: 10.1177/0170840621993235

[5] Gonzalez DV. Embodiment in activist images: Addressing the role of the body in digital activism. Media, Culture & Society. 2022;**44**(2):247-265. DOI: 10.1177/01634437211060199

[6] Hardesty M, Gironda C, Belleau EP. This is what a #feminist, #antifeminist looks like? Political selfies and the paradox of giving voice to virtual bodies. Feminist Formations. 2019;**31**(2):229-261

[7] James W. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 1912/2003

[8] Kiverstein J. The meaning of embodiment. Topics in Cognitive Science. 2012;**4**:467-794. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01219

[9] Carman T. The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Philosophical Topics. 1999;**27**(2):205-226

[10] Idahosa GE. Dirty body politics: Habitus, gendered embodiment, and the resistance to women's agency in transforming South African Higher Education. Gender, Work & Organization. 2020;**27**(6):988-1003. DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12425

[11] Harrington H. Female selfempowerment through dance. Journal of Dance Education. 2020;**20**(1):35-43

[12] Collard-Stokes G. Recreational burlesque and the aging female body: Challenging perceptions. Journal of Women & Aging. 2022;**34**(2):155-169. DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2020.1839319

[13] Blackman L. The Subject of Affect: Bodies, Process, Becoming. Immaterial bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation. Sage Publications; 2012. pp. 1-25

#### **Chapter 3**

## Relational Feminism: Home in the Era of a Pandemic

*Gadiël Robbertze and Charnét Swart*

#### **Abstract**

Home forms a central part of every individual's life. Home is meant to be a space of safety, security, peace, and serenity. However, for such a central point in everyday life, the law does not reflect an adequate understanding and interpretation thereof. Home as a space during the COVID-19 pandemic has changed drastically, especially insofar as it relates to domestic violence. It is, therefore, fitting to discover what exactly home means and what home ought to mean in order to protect all legal rights that flow from it adequately.

**Keywords:** home, COVID-19, domestic violence, South Africa, Domestic Violence Act 116 of 1998, feminist theories, relational feminism, feminism in law, autonomy

#### **1. Introduction**

Home is where the heart is. It is, or at least it is meant to be, a space of safety, security, privacy, equality and human dignity. All these aforementioned rights are protected by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 ("the Constitution") and are contained in the Bill of Rights [1].

However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the national lockdown caused people to be confined to four walls, exposing existing inequalities and the scary reality that many women, in particular, face, especially with regard to gender-based violence. It can be said, during this period, that there were, in fact, two pandemics – COVID-19 and domestic violence.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, 'home' has taken on a new meaning. This chapter aims to determine what home means versus what home ought to mean if the rights therein are unlimited or unfettered by diminishing practical realisation. The chapter intends to interpret the ideal form of home from a relational feminist perspective and will look at how home as a safe space has been tarnished due to domestic violence, which has increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is predominantly theoretical in nature in the sense that we aim to analyse and synthesis feminist theories in an attempt to achieve a holistic understanding of home in law. The research is a combination of interpretive and critical analysis of the law insofar as it pertains to 'home-ing' rights, autonomy and domestic violence.

#### **2. The meaning of home in law (from a South African perspective)**

Home has been defined in various disciplines. However, it greatly lacks adequate interpretation in law. One should have a legal understanding of home because as it stands, there are laws generally applicable to the home as underlined in the Bill of Rights. This includes rights such as equality, human dignity, freedom and security of the person, privacy, housing, and to a large extent, the right to life. The reason is that home is meant to be a space of equality, human dignity, freedom, safety, and security and is the penultimate place for exercising one's right to life [2]. Home encapsulates the most intimate parts of one's life, it is a space of existence and freedom. However, home carries with it very subjective feelings and interpretations.

#### **2.1 Home and house**

In order to fully discern what home could mean, one first needs to consider what elements make up the home and this can be achieved by looking at the right to housing, the structural form of the home. However, as a point of departure, it is essential to note that home is not merely a physical location but also an inalienable emotional construct [2].

Although South African case law and legislation refer to 'home', no formal definition is in place. For instance, Section 14(1) of the Constitution deals with the right to privacy and reads as follows: "Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have – their person or home searched" [1]. Section 26(3) of the Constitution reads: "No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions" [1]. Further, Section 3(5)(b) and 17(1) of the Housing Act 107 of 1997 ("Housing Act") speaks of "home ownership" and not "house ownership" [3]. Furthermore, the preamble of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998 ('the PIE Act') reads as follows: "AND WHEREAS no one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances" [4]. Lastly, case law also refers to the home, and the courts have attempted to define it. For example, in the case of *Port Elizabeth Municipality v Various Occupiers* 2005 (1) SA 217 (CC) ('PE Municipality'), par 17, the court considers home as a concept in relation to adequate housing. The case provides that the Constitution recognises that "home is more than just a shelter" (see para 17 of the judgment) [5]. It considers the importance of the house as a home and the home as a place of "personal intimacy" and "family security" which becomes a "familiar habitat" [5].

In light of the above, it seems as though the rational point of departure would be to understand housing rights as encapsulated in the Constitution and the Housing Act. The Constitution provides for the right to "adequate housing" [1]. Housing is a complex matter, hence the difficulty in defining adequate housing. Housing has a profound emotive aspect because it plays such a central role in forming a person's life and livelihood. Access to adequate housing provides for the enjoyment of life and living as a human being. Therefore, it is crucial to establish a definition of adequate housing. There is no definition of adequate housing within South African legislation; however, there is mention of it in policies, case law and international law which has proven to assist in understanding what it entails. As a starting point, Section 26 of the Constitution provides that everyone has a right to access adequate housing and that the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures to realise the right progressively. The Housing Act was implemented to effect Section 26 of the Constitution.

#### *Relational Feminism: Home in the Era of a Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110552*

The preamble of the Housing Act states that housing, in the form of adequate shelter, is a "basic human need" and that it forms a vital part to the "socio-economic wellbeing of the nation" [3]. This is a highly regarded right.

Despite this, there is no definition of housing. The closest definition relating to adequate housing is the definition of 'housing development':

*"which means the establishment and maintenance of habitable, stable and sustainable public and private residential environments to ensure viable households and communities in areas allowing convenient access to economic opportunities, and to health, educational and social amenities in which all citizens and permanent residents of the Republic will, on a progressive basis, have access to –.*

*Permanent residential structures with secure tenure, ensuring internal and external privacy and providing adequate protection against the elements; and.*

*Potable water, adequate sanitary facilities and domestic energy supply" [3].*

International law provides a wider scope of what adequate housing necessitates. South Africa became the 163rd state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ('ICESCR') on 12 January 2015 [6]. Therefore, the ICESCR has interpretive value in South Africa, and a definition of adequate housing may be considered from this covenant. The Convention further informs South Africa on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women 1979 ('CEDAW'), which was ratified by South Africa on 15 December 1995 [7].

The international standard of housing should be the minimum standard of housing at a national level. Furthermore, adequate housing, even on an international level, means more than just having a place to live - it is interconnected with other rights, including the right to privacy, freedom, equality, and even property rights. The interdependence and interrelatedness of other human rights associated with housing rights must be recognised on an international basis as they are on a national basis. Once again, the right to adequate housing cannot be understood in isolation and must be considered within its context of other human rights [8].

Article 11 of the ICESCR deals with the right to an adequate standard of living, including "adequate food, clothing and housing, and the continuous improvement of living conditions." The ICESCR General Comment no. 4: The Right to Adequate Housing, was implemented in response to Article 11 (1) of the Covenant, which holds an interpretive value [2]. It recognises the importance of the right to adequate housing on the enjoyment of other economic, social, and cultural rights. The paper provides that the right to adequate housing applies to everyone regardless of their age, economic status or group and that the right must be absent from any form of discrimination [6]. Furthermore, this right must be interpreted in the wide sense of the word, meaning that the right to adequate housing consists of more than a roof and four walls. The right to adequate housing includes a right to security, peace, and dignity since it is not a right interpreted in isolation but within its context with other human rights that affect it and which it affects. Furthermore, it is not merely a right to housing but a right to adequate housing, which means that there should be adequate privacy, space, security, lighting and ventilation, adequate basic infrastructure, and adequate location to work and basic facilities, all at a reasonable cost. Many factors affect adequacy, including social, economic, cultural, climatic, and other factors, all of which must be considered when defining adequacy in respect of housing [9].

This understanding of housing, has a strong impact on the understanding of home since it informs part of the structural narrative of the home. However, home is not as one-dimensional as housing. It encompasses additional values and is gendered in nature. Reason being, that it can be said that for many years, and even to this day, women have traditionally been confined to the home. Therefore, it is crucial to elucidate the importance of gender and the imbalanced enjoyment of said fundamental rights in the home.

#### **2.2 Home and city**

Henri Lefebvre coined "the right to the city" and Chris Butler muses on it in H*enri Lefebvre: Spacial Politics, Everyday Life and the Right to City*. The city, according to Butler and Lefebvre, is more than just an urban product of industrial production and capital accumulation. The right to the city, according to Lefebvre, entails participation in collective and creative acts. Denying people of these acts results in a denial to the right to the city [10]. Lefebvre further suggests that the right to the city is linked to access to urban life which in turn links to centrality, gathering and convergence [10]. As a result, one can see how the home connects to the city. Both are inherently creative, expressive, and participatory spaces.

In addition to the foregoing, Allison Goebel further links the right to the city to inhabitance [11, see in general Chapter 7 and in particular, page 179]. She contends that inhabitance goes beyond merely a place of residency, occupation or habitation. Rather, this extends to aspects such as access to work, access to adequate housing and basic services [11]. These aspects all culminate to confer on one person a sense of rootedness in a particular place which brings forth an individual's sense of belonging in a certain place. Once these aspects are compromised, the sense of rootedness and belonging dissipates with it.

These places that people find themselves in are gendered (among other things) in nature. In other words, it is important to be cognizant of how geography is also of importance to the notion of gender. For instance, there have been various historical patterns of migration to urban areas within South Africa, which women have all done under very different conditions to men. In the 1980s in South Africa, restrictions on migration shifted which meant that more people, including women, began to fill new informal settlements in urban areas. Preceding the removal of said restrictions, urban areas were formed for the purposes of accommodating the male workforce. It is thus clear that the right to the city is riddled with a history of struggle and that these struggles in themselves are gendered.

Moving back to the home, and as we have argued before, home has often also been viewed as a space of imprisonment for women, especially when subjected to strong patriarchal power structures. Women's limitation of movement is as a result of certain cultural and social contexts and ultimately results in the subordination of women. For instance, women are often confined to particular places, usually the home, which can be associated with the private sphere. This not only limits her right to the public sphere, but also places a limitation on her identity. In this instance, the city, although not necessarily attainable in circumstances where she is confined, is embraced as a space of freedom, liberation, and empowerment in paradox to the perceived liberty lived in the private sphere. In other words, the city becomes her 'private' or 'intimate' space where she can fully express herself and feel autonomous, despite the different power structures within the public sphere. In comparison, her space, her home, which is meant to be a space of freedom of expression and autonomy is ripped from her and a space, the public sphere, becomes her intimate space. Thus, she is unfairly stripped

from her right to a home because the only space where she can be herself is a space that nonetheless limits her freedom, but in this instance, to a lesser extent than at home.

Furthermore, many women have been and still remain subject to discrimination in several cultures, religions, political contexts, in the city and the state (i.e., socially, economically etc.), and this discrimination occurs within the city (the public sphere) congregates within the home space. Therefore, it can be seen that city and home equally struggle with discrimination, and one influences the other, meaning that discrimination occurring within the home flows into the city and vice versa. The two concepts are interlinked but nonetheless separate.

The paradoxical enjoyment of the public sphere was more so deprived as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in further reduction of the enjoyment of an already diminished liberty experienced by women. This not only pertained to one's freedom of movement for instance, but where one identifies as their sphere of autonomy. It showcased the said reductions due to the fact that it was realised by all South Africans within a small time frame – South African's became increasingly more aware of each other's home spaces.

Additionally, when considering the right to a city, it is also important to consider it within the South African context and how many South Africans are excluded from having a right to the city and thus, having a right to the home (on the basis that the two concepts remain interrelated). Both home and city serve as anchors and rootedness in place. Where basic human rights, such as housing, are denied, the rootedness dissipates and along with it the individual's sense of belonging. This results in exclusion from society, and once you are excluded from society, as Hooks indicates, home becomes your only source of protest and belonging.

It is true that in most instances in South Africa (and elsewhere) women are and have been, denied the right to a city. By this, we mean that the public sphere is dedicated to perpetuating the idea of it being the male's domain, and women belong to the 'private' sphere. For instance, women are statistically more at risk of enjoying the public sphere. Therefore, they are cast aside to the so-called 'private' sphere (also related to the home space). However, our argument will show that their right to live and use is denied even in the 'private' sphere. Tovi Fenster notes that the right to use public spaces must begin at the home scale. One cannot invoke such a stark separation between the public and private spheres because the two have substantial impacts on each other. By isolating the discussion on the right to the city from the right to a home, one creates neutral ideation of the public domain, which is removed from any power relations, which is simply not a realistic view of the public and private spheres.

The above displays how many women are deprived of the right to a city for reasons such as not having fair opportunities to work, having additional care-giving burdens which prevent them from moving to a more structured and urban setting which can provide them with fundamental human rights such as the right to water, housing, social grants, transport etc. However, it is true that for some women, it is a choice to remain in these rural areas. However, often these rural areas do not cater for all the needs that an individual requires. Ultimately unequal opportunities are at play when it comes to women and men based on stereotypical gender roles. It is thus important to consider how equality should be interpreted and eventually implemented to ensure that all individuals, whether male or female, are treated equally in the true sense of the word.

When considering the right to the city one needs to consider how history has played a role in women's sense of place, home, safety and their right to a city.

Apartheid in South Africa caused segregation, poverty, protest etc. The legacy of apartheid remains, and post-apartheid urban studies have followed these trends of segregation, protest, and urban poverty.

#### **3. The gendered home**

As previously stated, home is a physical location related to housing. Furthermore, it is a psychological construct. Intangible factors such as emotional, psychological, social, and cultural factors are associated with home. Home, for example, can be perceived as a place of memory and nostalgia, comfort and security. It is an innately gendered concept in this sense because there is an appeal to regress to past traditions or social norms, which results in unequal relationships between men and women. These nostalgic memories and feelings can create a sense of comfort in the discomfort - there is a comfort in being rather than becoming.

Among other reasons, this is primarily why many feminist theorists (such as liberal feminist theorists) have rejected the idea of home because it creates a false sense of security in the nostalgia where patriarchal patterns are re-implemented which confine women to one space, and limits them from entering the public sphere to a large extent. In order to illuminate how home is gendered, Martin Heidegger's philosophy of dwelling is considered as a point of departure. In 1954 Heidegger published 'Baren wohnen denken' translated to 'building, dwelling thinking' [6]. Heidegger wrote that 'we attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building' [12]. In his discussions, he, unfortunately, abandons the importance of preservation. Although the word bauen also means to cherish and protect, preserve and care for, he contends that building in the sense of preserving and nurturing does not make anything [12]. Iris Marion Young reflects on this writing and counters Heidegger's argument by expressing that preservation contributes to establishing one's identity [13]. She explains that preservation entails the act of keeping physical objects intact; moreover, it renews their meaning in life. Preservation is distinct from construction/building because construction disrupts the current state of being, whereas preservation is cyclical and temporary in nature [13].

Between 1946 and 1949, Simone De Beauvoir wrote *The Second Sex*. In her book, she asserts that women's housework has a negative basis. Acts such as tidying up, washing, and cleaning dirt are repetitive in nature and thus make nothing. One removes the dirt, only for it to be dirty again, and then the cycle starts again. She argues that human existence involves transcendence and immanence [14]. In other words, being human involves some form of moving forward (not being repetitive). Therefore, women subjected to housework alone perpetuate humanity without making any discernible change.

A potential gendered limitation of this definition reveals itself in Heidegger's argument that building in the sense of preserving and nurturing does not make anything. This indicates that women (generally speaking, preservers) are not on an equal footing as men (builders) [13]. However, Young demonstrates that preservation is in fact, world-making. She discusses the many facets of preservation and states that preservation entails not only the act of maintaining the physical things among which one dwells (which gives context to people's lives) but that it also entails the telling and re-telling of stories so that memories live on and in that sense, keeping people alive as it informs and develops and informs their identity.

The effect of nationwide lockdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the imperative nature of maintenance within the home, as families could not help but notice the imperfections and shortcomings of their living environment due to the elongated confinement in their homes.

The contrasting views on what home means for women have created duality in meaning, and the purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how home can once more, be a space of safety, equality, privacy, autonomy, and the like.

However, before delving into how home can be a positive space, it is very important not to neglect the realities that many women face daily with specific reference to domestic violence. Therefore, home as a space of danger and fear, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, will be considered next.

#### **4. Domestic violence and the COVID-19 pandemic**

On 31 December 2019, The World Health Organisation first reported the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic [15]. Governments across the world adopted regulations that forced citizens to make sacrifices in the interest of the public good. On 23 March 2020, the President of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, announced that the National Coronavirus Command Council took the decision to implement a nationwide lockdown for 21 days with effect from 26 March 2020 [16]. The announcement of a national lockdown, which would confine persons to their residential homes, is a novel occurrence in this country's history. To effectively deal with the rapid spread of the virus, the government gazetted various regulations. Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic placed the spotlight on another pandemic, namely the 'the shadow pandemic' [17]. In 2014, the UN Women started to use the term 'pandemic' to capture the global prevalence of gender-based violence [18]. During the lockdown period, the world had to deal with two pandemics simultaneously which proved to be interrelated [18]. The term 'shadow pandemic' was first referred to by the United Nations in a 2021 report to describe the exponential increase of domestic violence during lockdown [18].

A home includes different role-players of which the eldest male tends to be regarded as the 'head of the household,' and women seldom get elevated to the 'head of the household'. Women typically take on an inferior role of doing what the 'head' wishes; if non-compliance with such demands, violence often occurs. The occurrence of violence is the most common violation of an individual's human rights [17]. Domestic violence has existed in society for a long time but remains underreported as it is regarded as a private matter [19]. Domestic violence affects the development of a nation and can therefore not be regarded as a private matter [20]. The costs associated with domestic violence costs nations fortunes which hinders overall development [21]. Despite the costs to individuals, health systems and the society, domestic violence remains widely ignored and misunderstood [21]. The World Bank reported that only 7% of women reported abuse to a formal source [21]. The main reason why victims of domestic violence fail to report abuse is due to the stigma surrounding victims of domestic violence [22]. Victims who were raised in a violent home tend to think that violence is the norm and thus stay in the abusive home environment [23].

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the South African government prohibited the sale of non-essential items such as tobacco and alcohol [24]. One would expect that this prohibition would somewhat assist in regulating or reducing the occurrence of domestic violence. Unfortunately, the government did not fully consider the implications of family members being confined in an (often small) family home. Frustrations related to unemployment, the restriction of movement, and the

prohibition of substances inadvertently and habitually used to emotionally cope, caused an increase in the reported cases of domestic violence. During April 2020 (amid the lockdown period) gender-based violence rose by 500 percent [25]. During the first week of the national lockdown the South African Police Services received an estimate of 2300 complaints concerning gender-based violence [26].

#### **4.1 Restriction of movement**

After the state of disaster was announced, regulations under Section 3 of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 were gazetted. For the period of lockdown every person was confined to his or her home unless the individual was performing an essential service, obtaining an essential good or service, collecting social grants, or seeking emergency, life-saving or chronic medical attention [24].

For some, adopting the regulations which confined one to one's home was seen as a blessing as it meant spending more time with your family in the safety of your home. For others, it meant that they would conduct their work duties from the convenience of their home, which also led to financial savings. Despite the negative connotations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, some experienced benefits from the announcement of the national lockdown period.

For others, primarily women and children, the announcement of the national lockdown led to further oppression and isolation. One of the prominent tactics of domestic violence perpetrators are to socially isolate their victims [27]. As stated by Jacky Mulveen, project manager of Women's Empowerment of Recovery Educators, Covid19 does not make an abuser, but it provides the abuser with more tools to control the victim [28]. The regulations made provision for an abused partner to leave the confines of her home to seek assistance, but this did not provide adequate protection for such victim. Women who were forced to leave their homes due to an abusive partner was ultimately deprived of her physical home structure and her sense of safety, security and serenity.

In this regard, it is imperative to consider how shelters for battered women were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many women who leave their abusive homes have no option but to approach a shelter. Shelters for battered women are thus critical during these times. The problem in South Africa lies in the fact that at this point and even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Social Development only has 84 shelters set up nationally [29]. Over and above the lack of shelters, considering the vast spread of the so-called shadow pandemic, many of these shelters are inadequate in terms of their infrastructure and their facilities [29]. This would naturally make women hesitant to approach such shelters and leave them stranded in their unsafe homes.

Moreover, shelters are not a permanent solution. The lack of financial means of these shelters means that many of these shelters can only accommodate women and children for a period of three to six months. Moreover, specific admission measures and criteria tend to be in place. For example, some shelters tend to exclude women who have children over a certain age, which poses the risk of being placed in general shelters alongside men, facing the potential of abuse all over again, not to mention the recurring trauma they will face in these spaces.

It is evident that women who seek out temporary shelters lack autonomy because their ability to make choices has been stripped from them [29]. This poses a serious risk. When women have nowhere else to go, they run the risk of homelessness or facing the dreadful reality of returning to their abuser. Thus, there is a dire need to

establish funding for domestic violence shelters and temporary homes in a country ridden with domestic violence.

#### **4.2 Financial deprivation of women during the pandemic**

During the COVID-19 pandemic, women were placed in a very uncertain position as some women lost their employment or experienced a reduction in their income. Even before the implementation of the national lockdown, women faced the reality of unemployment. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) reported that South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. Stats SA reported that 2.2 million jobs were lost in quarter 2 of 2020 [30]. The NIDS-CRAM survey showed the gendered nature of job losses, with 2/3 being attributed to women [31]. Social grants were made available for persons who met certain criteria; however, grants were only accessible to those who could complete the application via WhatsApp, SMS, and e-mail [32]. This had the potential of inhibiting women subject to domestic violence from reprieve as abusers are inclined to limit their access to communication devices. Women who were subjected to domestic violence were forced to rely on the government or their abusive partner for financial support. Due to the administration involved in claiming funds from the government, women often elected to remain in the unsafe environment of their abusive partner.

During the national lockdown, some women struggled to claim spousal and child maintenance. Debtors of maintenance (mostly men) opportunistically abused the State of Disaster to evade their maintenance responsibilities. Even though a party may not unilaterally decide to abandon his or her maintenance obligations, this was done, and the court provided little support for the party who relied on the maintenance to ensure a functioning household. Family courts were deemed essential services but directives were issued which, in most cases, did not provide the party claiming maintenance with immediate relief. The Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola, said during the lockdown period that only first-time applications for maintenance and applications in respect of enforcement of maintenance orders would be dealt with [33].

During the lockdown period women took on more unpaid labour tasks such as caregiver, educator, and domestic worker. An inadequate interpretation of the law providing for home indirectly affects children as well. Any imbalance of home protection for women is cascaded down to children as well. It is regrettable that there is no systemic attempt to encourage men to take more responsibility when it comes to such tasks. On average, women perform three times more unpaid work than their male counterparts [34]. While being confined within four walls, women's tasks increased and in some instances, had a negative effect on their mental health. The additional household responsibilities reduced the women's work productivity which ultimately had (and still has) a negative impact on their career prospects.

When one thinks of 'abuse,' one is usually more concerned with physical abuse as this type of abuse is more widely reported and discussed on social media platforms. However, as seen from the above discussion, economic abuse is often more of a concern as an abusive partner is in a position to exploit an abused partner who was no other financial support.

As mentioned earlier, products such as alcohol and tobacco were banned during the lockdown period to ensure bed availability in hospitals [24]. This ban was a blessing for some victims of domestic violence, however, in other cases, individuals used all available funds to secure alcohol and tobacco products illegally [35]. They would

pay exorbitant amounts for such products instead of providing for their family's basic needs.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many individuals losing their source of income. As mentioned in the discussion above, insofar as domestic violence shelters, women lack the financial means to seek out alternative options. The effect of people losing their source of income as a result of the pandemic has exacerbated this problem. As a result, many people, particularly women, become welfare recipients of the state. This places them in a very unfortunate position because there is a preconceived notion that welfare recipients are a burden to the whole of society [36]. Society views reliance as a form of failure, failure to achieve autonomy and views these persons as a financial burden. Society at large views these women as capable of working and earning an income to care for herself and her children. However, the several factors which prevent her from achieving this are often overlooked [2]. These women are seen as dependent, which is linked with weakness. The public sphere develops many plans to enforce self-sufficiency and a perverse form of autonomy [36]. Suppose women continue to live in these unpleasant conditions. In that case, the state and the public are disappointed and confused because they believe that these vulnerable women "choose" to remain in such conditions [36].

The first goal of the relational approach requires compromises. These compromises require changing the subjective understanding/belief of autonomy and how to achieve it. The public sphere pleads helplessness and believes that these circumstances of abused women are inherent in the structure of society. They see no feasible solution to these vulnerable circumstances because the only reasonable solution would necessitate a complete loss of the most basic structures of society they are familiar with [2]. The only solution requires sacrifices, which entails challenging the association of independence with autonomy and viewing interdependence as a way of achieving independence, thus, denying the conventional claim to independence [37]. An alternative understanding of autonomy is required, one which does not negate the possibility that the development of a person stems from relationships, which includes dependency relationships [38]. The importance of the relational approach in this context is to make oppressed and abused women feel safe and more autonomous, regardless of their dependency on state welfare [39]. The relational approach denies the exclusive association of independence with autonomy because this association often devalues people who do not fit the ideal image of independence [39]. The relational approach redefines autonomy in terms of relations which enhance this value.

#### **4.3 Domestic violence Act 116 of 1998**

Women, children, and elderly people are more prone to suffer from violence. The reported cases of gender-based violence in South Africa are among the world's highest, and this was the position even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic [40]. The increased number of reported gender-based violence cases led to the South African government declaring gender-based violence a national crisis [41].

The Domestic Violence Act's preamble specifically states that the Act intends to provide more effective remedies to deal with acts of domestic violence. The Act aims to ensure that the home environment is a place of safety. Research on the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act has revealed that law reform does not automatically change women's experience of violence. More legal remedies and easier access to such remedies do not liberate women from violent behaviour within their homes [42].

#### *Relational Feminism: Home in the Era of a Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110552*

In *KV v WV* 2020 (1) SACR 89 (KZP), the court *inter alia* states that the legislature's intention in dealing with domestic violence matters was to apply different principles to those set out in criminal law and delictual laws. In this case the court had to determine whether unlawfulness would be a requirement to determine whether the conduct constituted domestic violence. The court explicitly held that the requirement was 'harm' and the requirement of unlawfulness need not be considered. The court recognised that domestic violence can take on a multitude of manifestations and that the home environment should be protected by providing victims (primarily women and children) with a wider form of protection by making reference to the word 'harm' [43]. Even though this Act can provide some sort of protection and remedies for victims of domestic violence, such orders are seldom made final.

There are various non-profit organisations whose main aim is to assist victims of domestic violence with court procedures, shelters, and general emotional care. One of these organisations is MOSAIC. MOSAIC is an organisation that provides court support services to victims of domestic violence who apply for protection orders. The organisation estimated that almost half of its clients were not returning to court to finalise their protection orders. In most instances, the victim reported that she was threatened by bodily harm or harm to a loved one and therefore did not return to make the protection order final. Victims also reported not adhering to the return dates due to systemic issues. These issues mainly relate to the victim not being adequately informed of the process and what is expected of her. Other victims simply claim that they lost confidence in the criminal justice system [44].

CEDAW found that nearly 144,000 requests for protection orders were made from 2018 to 2019, of which only 22,200 were granted [45]. In many cases, the protection order simply called on the abuser to sleep in a different bedroom within the same house. This shows that in some cases, the home remains a source of anxiety, fear and oppression even if the victim is deemed as protected under the law as it stands.

#### **4.4 International response to gender-based violence during lockdown**

The increasing rates of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic have given rise to a range of additional responsibilities placed on governments and nonprofit organisations around the world. Worldwide regulations were implemented to curb the spread of COVID-19. Most countries, such as Italy, Spain, and France, implemented strategies to assist individuals in abusive relationships during the lockdown period.

Italy implemented a smartphone system where victims could seek help with the use of a smartphone application which made it possible to seek assistance without making a phone call [46]. A new law was also implemented that orders the abuser to leave the family home and not the abused party. In Brazil, a similar innovation was implemented. The Human Rights BR application was launched in April 2020, which provides victims with a method of reporting that would be more secure than a traditional phone line [47]. Domestic violence matters could also be filed electronically, and the matter could be heard virtually in some of the Brazilian courts [47]. Protection orders which would have expired during the lockdown period were automatically extended [47]. The Maria da Penha Patrulha police, which was established in 2019, provided services that include house visits to victims' homes to ensure that court orders are complied with [47]. This initiative is aimed at both the abuser and the abused and ultimately does not just place the responsibility on the abused. Such

innovation ensures that the home and the human rights of the abused are properly protected.

The Spanish government enabled exemption from lockdown regulations for women who found themselves in domestic violence [47]. In most cases, women are clearly left with one option: she must leave the communal home whilst the abuser remains comfortable in the home pending the possible finalisation of court cases. It is believed that Spain was the first country to implement the Mascarilla-19 campaign [48]. Women who found themselves in an abusive relationship were urged to visit a pharmacist and use the code word 'Mask-19', which would then alert the pharmacist that the woman required assistance. Similar campaigns took root in France, Argentina, Chile, and India [48]. The French government went as far as providing free counselling and paid for the bills of the hotel rooms of the victims who asked for help at the pharmacies. During the first lockdown, the French government subsidised 20,000 nights of accommodations in hotels for victims of domestic violence. The Spanish and the Belgian government took a similar approach by purchasing several nights of private hotel accommodations for victims [48]. These initiatives provided temporary relief, which did not protect the home environment of the abused. Despite the noble intentions of the abovementioned initiatives, these initiatives only provided temporary relief and did not protect the home environment.

#### **5. Evictions during the National Lockdown in South Africa**

An eviction process sparks various emotions such as powerlessness and humiliation. In an attempt to ensure that persons remain within the confines of their homes, the Disaster Management Act Regulations placed a moratorium on evictions [49]. Unfortunately, this protection did not provide adequate protection for women in informal settlements. Residents of informal settlements, inner city occupiers, tenants, and mortgage payers were the most vulnerable groups who had to face the risks associated with the pandemic and losing their access to housing [49].

Interpretation of ownership in rural areas differs markedly from the acquisition of immovable property in accordance with South African laws [49]. In rural areas, a home is regarded as a collective 'home,' and it is passed on from one generation to another. The Constitution does not recognise this practice and is not legalised as it is based on a verbal or written agreement between families [49]. When it was found that women and their children did not belong, they were forcefully removed from their homes, curtailing their right to health services [49].

In March 2020, a group of about 210 occupiers of a building belonging to the City of Cape Town was evicted following a court order which was obtained before the implementation of the national lockdown Regulations. These occupiers were left without alternative accommodation [50]. Further, in April 2020, the City of Johannesburg evicted 23 residents in a building that accommodated City employees. This eviction process was challenged, and the Gauteng High Court, Local Division ruled that it was indeed an unlawful eviction [50]. The City of Cape Town's Law Enforcement Unit forcibly evicted over a hundred residents of Empolweni without a court order. This eviction was also found to be unlawful [50]. The above examples illustrate the helplessness experienced by many (mostly women and children) amid the COVID-19 pandemic despite so-called legal safeguards [50].

#### **6. Towards a relational (feminist) understanding of home**

The gendered aspect of home requires a reconceptualization of home through the lens of equality. For instance, domestic violence will not stop unless abusive relations are restructured. Therefore, there is a need to interrogate these sets of relations which inform unequal powers between parties. The task of restructuring abusive relations is challenging on the one hand because it aims at restructuring intimate relations as well as relations in broader public spaces, which shape and uphold domestic violence [37]. However, on the other hand, relations are dynamic and ever-changing which means that there is scope to interrogate and change these harmful relations. Once this can be achieved, the true and hopeful meaning of home can be achieved.

Furthermore, if rights are understood in terms of relations, it brings forth the possibility to determine which relations are destructive, and which are constructive to values such as privacy, security, safety and autonomy. Such values are only made possible by structures of relationships [2]. In other words, a relational approach determines which relations structure the right to a home (being safe, secure, and settled in one's identity and the relations that form it). Certain relations take away from this right to the home (not always directly), often indirectly, by being complicit to the threat of these values. For instance, it is not solely the violence between intimate partners within the home that causes a threat to such values, but also the state's complicity. This complicity contributes to the violence occurring privately [37]. Hence, there is a clear need to restructure these detrimental relations and how they undermine these values, into a way that considers alternative relations which are beneficial to them. Many social relationships have constrained and oppressed women. Therefore, imbalanced power relations between men and women need to be restructured, alongside a transformation of the social and intimate relations that give rise to these values threat.

Relations of inequality and patriarchal conceptions of masculinity are what shape domestic violence. However, these relations are only understood when seen in the light of broader gender relations that society instills [37]. It is, therefore, critical to understand how masculinity and patriarchy intersect with other hierarchies and state structures and how they affect both men and women [37]. In order to eliminate violence and to ensure that cherished human values are upheld, a serious rearrangement of power relations between men and women is required [2]. This is a rearrangement of how relations are structured, not only from an interpersonal level but from a broader societal level as well [51]. The dichotomous relationship between the public and private spheres is part of the destructive relations that contribute to the prevalence of violence. The divide insulates the private sphere from regulation, even when such regulation is necessary. This insulation leads to women's continued force and subordination in the private sphere [52].

Therefore, it can be argued that Jennifer Nedelsky's concept of relational autonomy can add some value to redefining the home and the relationships that exist within it. Autonomy exists because of constructive relations. Autonomy is imperative to all feminist theories. It is a notion that aims at dismantling oppression, subjection, and individuality [37]. Nedelsky defines autonomy in terms of a relational approach and looks at autonomy as the feeling of comprehension, confidence, dignity, efficacy, respect, and a degree of peace and security from oppressive powers. Domestic violence is a prime example of how oppressive relationships stand in the way of achieving autonomy and, equivalently, the ideal of home. The relational approach calls for a need to restructure state involvement in a way that does not threaten her

autonomy. The relational approach does not invite more state involvement but rather a different form of state involvement [37]. This different form of state involvement will be achieved when underlying structures in the public sphere are restructured in such a way that it informs values within the private sphere. In other words, we require a restructuring of the values in the public sphere which enhance patriarchal practices to ones that celebrate autonomy as understood in relational terms [37]. This does not equate to more state involvement. It results in a different application and practice of state involvement which merely upholds already existing rights. It results in the state applying its duties in a manner that mandates change. The principal purpose of the public/private divide is to ensure that autonomy is protected. However, such a divide has proven to be ineffective in ensuring autonomy. Often the divide protects the violence within the walls of the private sphere instead of autonomy. It results in violence within the walls of the private sphere, which is being protected, instead of autonomy. The fundamental question should not be how to maintain and build more boundaries but rather how to advance autonomy between these boundaries.

Although autonomy is rooted in liberal theories of individualism, Nedelsky argues that relational autonomy has the capacity to incorporate the human experience of embeddedness in relationships, both good and bad. Relational autonomy and relational feminism investigate social norms and institutions that are detrimental to the value of autonomy and consider methods of restructuring these destructive norms. In redefining autonomy from this perspective, it becomes easier to protect it because it is no longer limited to independence and to the private sphere. When redefining autonomy in terms of relations and protecting it, we reclaim autonomy as an ideal and simultaneously reclaim home. By reclaiming autonomy in terms of relations, we reclaim home as a place, and we reclaim home as a feeling.

#### **7. Conclusion**

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic people have been expected to adjust their entire lifestyle. Individuals were *inter alia* expected to remain home in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19. It has become apparent from the above discussion that a home is not merely a location or a physical structure, but it is a space where one longs for a sense of security, autonomy and belonging. In the case of *PE Municipality* the court specifically recognised that a 'home is more than just a shelter.' It further recognised that a home is a place of 'personal intimacy.' Many feminist theorists reject the idea of home as the home is regarded as a measure of confinement as it purports lofty conceptions of the enjoyment of rights, however, when not provided an adequate consideration of the factors and relationships contained within this concept it is merely a vehicle for further divide/disparity and oppression.

The home thus goes beyond a functional dwelling as currently defined and should be considered within the context of other human rights. The implementation of the lockdown regulations emphasised the already existing pandemic – the shadow pandemic. Gender inequalities were further brought to light during this state of disaster/pandemic, ultimately for the restructuring of abusive relations. The COVID-19 regulations and lockdown were crucial in highlighting the disparities and inequalities suffered by women and, ultimately, families within South Africa, showing now more than ever the importance of the law to adapt its conception of the home and the inequalities to be addressed therein. This does not equate to more state involvement but an appeal for a different application and practice of state involvement which would promote human rights.

#### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to acknowledge all the brave women who have suffered in silence and in the face of domestic violence. We would also like to commend all those fighting the courageous fight against domestic and gender-based violence. If you or a family member has experienced domestic violence, the following helplines are available in South Africa:


With greater discourse on these problems, will come greater equality for all.

### **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **Thanks**

We would like to thank IntechOpen Limited for providing us with this opportunity to not only spread awareness of the dangers that many women face, but also as an avenue to provide solutions and assistance where it is greatly lacking.

#### **Author details**

Gadiël Robbertze1 \* and Charnét Swart<sup>2</sup>

1 University of Pretoria (LLB) (LLM) University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

2 University of Pretoria (LLB), South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: robbertze.gadiel@gmail.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 4**

## Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research and Practice

*Megan Suehn, Anusha Kassan, Shelly Russell-Mayhew, Tonya Callaghan and Julie Cohen*

#### **Abstract**

As a guiding critical research epistemology, Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST) combines the idea that all knowledge is situated with a claim that some sociocultural locations provide opportunities to develop epistemically advantaged knowledge about overarching systems of power. FST thus represents a framework for uniting researchers and participants in coalitions of solidarity to decolonialize traditions of knowledge and research that assume researchers are objective observers. In this paper, we discuss how FST research methodologies can offer counseling psychologists a nuanced systemic and intersectional lens to better situate each person and their lived experiences, and in turn, develop collaborative, meaningful social justice-oriented advocacy and interventions across individual and community spheres. Accordingly, in Part I, we argue that an FST lens can shape counseling psychologists' approach to research. In Part II, we then discuss how this consequently influences clinical approaches that require engagement of a psychological lens to attend to the lived experiences of vulnerable groups.

**Keywords:** feminist standpoint theory, methodology, qualitative research, intersectionality, social justice, intersectional marginalization, multiple marginalization, counseling psychology, identity

#### **1. Introduction**

For counseling psychologists, scholarly and clinical competency requires being responsive to an individual's personal psychological, behavioral, and emotional experiences in parallel with a relational and sociological understanding of wellbeing via the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model [1]. In line with this model, feminist and social justice advocates continue to encourage psychologists to address the gap between theoretical valuing of social justice orientations and integration as visible practice for clinical training [2]. According to such a holistic and systemic approach, counseling psychologists must be comfortable managing the complexity wrought by the role of

power, privilege, and oppression as it affects clients' daily lives as well as the breadth of counseling psychologists' professional and scholarly activities. A feminist social justice perspective thus requires that counseling psychologists adopt an orientation toward advocating against systemic inequalities in various communities [3, 4]. For counseling psychology scholars, this commitment involves ongoing reflexivity to recognize and deconstruct the colonial roots of Western mental health practice and research.

One way that counseling psychology scholars can better integrate social justice values in their practice is by first adopting critical epistemologies in their research pursuits. Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST) represents one example of a flexible epistemological lens that is well-suited for guiding counseling psychology scholars to embed social justice initiatives in research. FST is a tool that aids scholars in the deconstruction and redistribution of systems of sociocultural power. It does this through engaging social justice values of collective solidarity via the epistemological re-centering of marginalized standpoints in research previously excluded or pathologized [5, 6]. As Rolin [7] argues, FST is a uniquely valuable research lens for conceptualizing sociocultural power as a distinctive type of obstacle to the production of scientific knowledge due to the ways that power distorts or suppresses the collection and analysis of evidence. FST scholars argue that the relations of power are a critical object of inquiry since they are endemic to global societies rather than representing merely an individualized cognitive bias that occurs solely on a personal scale [8, 9]. From this, an FST lens can offer counseling psychology scholars an epistemic and methodological scaffolding for research. Such practices, alongside a sustained FST lens, can in turn inform clinical practice through mobilizing a richer commitment to critical inquiry and social constructionism [10].

In this paper, we discuss the fit of FST as an important epistemological lens that can support counseling psychology scholars to better embed social justice initiatives in research. Further, we argue that, by extension, adopting an FST lens within research informs practical applications for clinical practice and training, filling the gap between social justice theory and praxis. In Part I of this article, we summarize the relevant epistemological tenets and historical background of FST, which includes the ways that it naturally dovetails with intersectionality theory as its core of critical praxis. We then discuss how FST takes a psychological lens to situate critical inquiries in social science research on everyday experiences to reveal how they illuminate overarching systems of power. In Part II, we illustrate that, as a social justice informed field, counseling psychology clinical practice can be similarly enriched and mobilized by adopting an FST lens.

#### **2. Part I: FST epistemology and methodology: critical inquiries on power**

FST describes an area of feminist theory and practice first articulated by sociology, Black Feminist/Womanist, and political scholars such as Bell Hooks [11, 12], Nancy Hartsock [13, 14], Dorothy Smith [15], and Sandra Harding [6, 16, 17]. Specifically, as a social constructivist and post-positivist epistemology, FST provides justification for what we claim to know in both daily life and social science research [18]. FST holds important and meaningful roots within Hegelian and Marxist traditions that are critical of, and seek to deconstruct, the oppressive systems of power that organize our world especially regarding intersections of gender, race, and class. Marxian roots further inform FST by suggesting that knowledge, knowing, and the knower are

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

ideas linked to particular time-and-place social categories (and locations), which are unequally "imbued with power" ([19], p. 160). The result is that knowledge, knowing, and knower are separate and sometimes alienated from one another.

Broadly, these philosophical roots inform two specific, material precepts within FST. First, it is vital to account for the social positioning of any social agent [20]. Secondly, standpoint theories are foundationally oriented toward making an appeal toward these social identities in order to pursue its core aim: the study of structural power relations [7]. Power in this sense refers to the dynamic and continually unfolding processes wielded by institutional structures to manage the ability of a group or an individual to constrain the choices available to another group or individual [21]. FST can therefore provide an critical lens to support ongoing efforts within the field of counseling psychology to decolonize Eurocentric epistemologies within research and practice paradigms [22, 23]. Of particular interest to counseling psychology researchers is the way that FST scholars are interested in engaging an intersectional analysis on individual-level psychological experiences and the ways these are influenced by—and therefore can illuminate—the structural dimensions of social life [9]. It is thus important to first discuss how and why FST posits an epistemically advantageous relationship between interlocking experiences of marginalization and the ways that this advantage provides opportunity for people to develop standpoints. Secondly, it is necessary to discuss how standpoints are discerned within an FST lens to inform counseling psychology research on the nature of social reality. As such, the following sections addresses the epistemology and values of an FST lens to research including: a) the role of power as it shapes the situatedness of knowledge, b) the role of power as it affects critical research inquiries, c) the importance of FST's intersectionality stance, and d) the applicability of an FST lens to counseling psychology researchers' social justice approaches. Lastly, we will briefly discuss criticisms and ongoing development within FST research scholarship and epistemology.

#### **2.1 FST epistemology and the role of power and situated knowledge of social agents**

According to the FST conceptualization of power, one of its most influential concepts, situated knowing, attends to interlocking systems of structural power and argues that one's social location shapes *and* limits one's knowledge of the world [17, 24]. As Harding [25] and Grasswick [26] argue, each person can only achieve a partial view of reality from within their particular social location, as this view is ultimately shaped by the values and interests of the overarching systems of power acting upon them. As a result, FST's aim is the study of power relations, which is undertaken through coalitional research and activism with sociopolitical identities that are characterized by a lack of cultural privilege. In her foundational approach to FST, Hartsock's [27] concept of the politics of location critically generalizes Marxian epistemology which posits that "due to the forces of capitalism and the ideology of 'abstract masculinity', material life is structured into a fundamental opposition between two different groups" [28], such as capitalist and proletarian classes, or women and men. Black scholars such as Hooks [11, 12] and Patricia Hill Collins [29–31] articulated crucial nuances to FST's central ideas that related to issues of gender oppression. In particular, they underscored how this form of power occurs at the interlocking intersections of racism and sexism, in addition to other simultaneously intersecting dimensions of oppression [32].

To further understand FST's concept of situated knowing, adopting this lens suggests that those who occupy the furthest extremes at the margins of power and privilege have experiences that they can critically reflect upon. Compared to people positioned at the social centre, people within this context are therefore thought to be more likely to develop what W. E. B. Dubois called double vision, Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of "*borderlands*" *consciousness* [33], or Dorothy Smith's *bifurcated consciousness* [6, 34]. This type of vision affords such people epistemic advantage to insights on the very dynamics and structure of the overarching systems of power. As such, double vision represents a cyclical relationship between intrapersonal and wider group-level sociocultural experiences. Important knowledge and survival skills associated with the development of double vision are achieved through enduring oppression. Subsequently, double vision typically culminates in a psychological shift as individuals mobilize their knowledge and survival skills to resist these relations of power, thus informing the ability to act as social agents.

Given this lens, standpoint is an attitude of active political engagement that an epistemic agent develops from *having to learn* to move through the world from the margins [35]. Solomon [36] argues that the nature of such a standpoint relates to theories about the achievement and "epistemic fruitfulness of political awareness" (p. 233). This stance clarifies that epistemic advantage does not merely represent a simple perspective *developed at* the cultural margins or bestowed as a result of holding a particular identity group label [32, 37]. Further, standpoint knowledge can be explicit or implicit, and is present in one's "ability to participate in, challenge, or manipulate power relations between social groups" [36]. This aspect of standpoint theory bridges the epistemic gaps between situated knowing and subjectivity. For instance, Harding [25] argues that P. H. Collins' [29, 31] concept of the Outsider Within possesses such a critical psychological ability—specifically, *the ability* to engage in reflexivity. This represents a form of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence developed by people with experiences shaped by interlocking systems of oppression at or between social margins.

FST scholars such as Collins and Bilge [38] and Hammers and Brown [28] argue that FST's interest in empowerment, consciousness raising, and social justice initiatives can be strengthened through the construction of intersectional epistemic community spaces. These spaces would focus on discourse and coalitional solidarity among diverse groups who have been (or who are) marginalized. The purpose of this strategy is to deconstruct traditional knowledge gaps and boundaries by inviting open standpoint dialog across diverse "subjects of liberatory knowledge and politics" ([17], p. 176). This aspect of research and advocacy starts from giving voice to the perspectives of maximally oppressed lives, after which other experiences are bridged to capture shared and unique nuances. Foundational to such coalitions is the intentional centering of Black women and other groups who have been socially marginalized (and thus typically left out of scientific discourses). Further, these social agents are foundational to social revolution as, due to their marginality, FST posits that they are less likely to be committed to maintaining dominant power systems, and to be more resistant to the oppressive assumptions inherent within a sociological or psychological discipline's traditional values and resources [32]. This practice relates to HOOKS' [12, 35] articulation of "centering the margins" as a crucial process of individual liberation as well as pivotal to wider processes of decolonialization and social justice [38, 39].

#### **2.2 The role of power and standpoint knowledge in research**

Power relations are a uniquely challenging object of inquiry because of their ability to "suppress or distort relevant evidence" ([7], p. 119) to obscure their own

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

nature and thereby prevent opposition. FST focuses on standpoint as a technical term referring to the development of a politically engaged perspective, identity, or consciousness that develops through struggle against such power (i.e., oppression and domination). Standpoint is pivotal to FST research because it encompasses the knowledge and survival skills that are cultivated as groups who have been marginalized engage in scientific actions that critically examine the underlying nature of social relations. The result of these scientific actions is to illuminate the ideological workings of relations of power [40, 41].

According to FST, standpoint captures knowledges that have historically been positioned to exist "outside" of Eurocentric traditional conceptions of scientific objectivity. From this, FST argues that people situated at social locations characterized by marginalization have the most nuanced and rich knowledge of sociocultural dynamics relative to knowledge produced by those situated at the social centres [25]. For the most productive FST inquiries on sociocultural power, Harding [25, 42] argued that researchers should begin by engaging "maximally" marginalized standpoints. This, she argued, was due to the speculation that the higher the level of oppression, the more objective the account of the mechanisms and structure of society ([43], p. 16). Notably, this tactic posited a kind of feminist objectivity intended to provide a counterhegemonic discourse against traditional, masculinist, and White research, scholarship, and theory discourses [44]. Harding thus initially argued that by inviting the standpoints of "the most oppressed group of women" ([45], p. 17) who are also oppressed by race and class, researchers can generate the most truthful research findings. The nature of standpoint thus offers epistemic privilege and authority to make the relations of power visible and therefore accessible to social justice revolution [46]. Beginning research from these standpoints enables FST researchers to uncover aspects of social power relations otherwise obscured within traditional research approaches and biases.

#### *2.2.1 Development of a research inquiry: reflexivity and deconstructing traditional biases*

As a starting place to deconstructing traditional research biases, Cole [47] provides foundational guidelines for psychologists to attend to diversity within groups by asking who is included within groups. From this, FST research involves conceptualizing social categories as reflecting "what individuals, institutions, and cultures do, rather than simply as characteristics of individuals" ([47], p. 175). To Cole, this shift is meant to "productively complicate the meaning" (p. 173) of social categories of identity, and how difference, privilege, and inequality shape experience [9]. Examinations of the role of inequality help psychologists attend to how groups, group members, and institutions stand in relation to one another and begin to deconstruct traditional conceptions of boundaries of difference and the individualization of social category membership. This involves engaging research that challenges the presumption of homogeneity of groups, thus inviting evaluation of the implicit bias that causes researchers to view categories of marginalized identity as being defined by difference and disadvantage. Such a cognitive shift requires diligent reflexivity on the part of the researcher to continually transparently situate and consider their own biases, experiences, and role relative to the context of the research inquiry, hegemonic traditions of research, and wider sociocultural relations of power.

Since the FST epistemology requires flexibly and sensitively centring marginalized standpoints as the position from which research inquiries should begin, this lens does

not depend upon any manualized structure for developing research questions. From this starting point, research is then oriented "upstream" toward critical inquiry on overarching structural power [47, 48]. FST researchers then determine participant recruitment and community partnerships by attempting to critically discern whose standpoints will reveal the most about sociocultural systems of power, and who will benefit most from the research [6, 49]. Engaging this critical examination at the outset of a research project involves establishing and maintaining partnerships with stakeholder communities. Researchers can then deconstruct gaps between knowledge and relations of power. This orientation reflects the importance FST bestows upon participants' identities as a lens to examine both how overarching power relations shape social locations, and the diversity inherent within groups without assuming homogeneity [25, 29, 50, 51].

#### **2.3 FST means engaging an intersectionality stance**

Intersectionality is an intrinsic component of FST and provides a mechanism to situate the research data with respect to complex relations of power. As a concept and tool of critical inquiry and social justice praxis, intersectionality theory is neither new, nor is has it been solely the domain of North American feminist scholarship and activism [38, 52, 53]. According to Angela Davis [54], taking a *intersectionality stance* represents "today's feminism"—specifically, it is an answer to critiques against what Davis calls "bourgeois white feminism", and possesses underlying ideas rooted in the scholarship of Black womanism, feminism, and anti-colonialism. As a challenge against sociopolitical contexts of "neoliberal domestication of dissenting knowledges in academia", Canadian scholar Sirma Bilge [55] argues that a more radical intersectional praxis is necessary to combat the "whitening and depoliticising of intersectionality theory" [56].

*Intersectionality theory* itself originated from a legal, anti-discrimination discourse that was argued to allow Black women to make both a race and gender claim as simultaneous causes of action. Specifically, the theory argues that such intersections create unique and distinct burdens that make social identities the consequences for vehicles of certain kinds of vulnerabilities [39, 52]. As a social science theory, intersectionality begins within the argument that each person's identities and experiences are multiple and shaped by a multiplicity of interlocking social categories. Next, intersectionality theory posits that, people's lives are best understood as being shaped by a multitude of interlocking "axes of social division that work together and influence each other" ([38], p. 11), rather than by any single axis in isolation.

From this critical theory again comes praxis. For instance, Bilge [56] argues that intersectionality represents a counter-hegemonic political awareness that offers feminist academics and activists vital critical potential for constructing non-oppressive political coalitions between a multitude of social justice-oriented movements. Similarly, as Patricia Hill Collins [39] and Kimberlé Crenshaw [53, 57] argue, these movements require intersectional, flexible solidarities to form a robust and inclusive set of coalitions around social justice across a range of political identity sites (i.e., within Black communities; among communities of other people of color; with white allies). As such, many argue that intersectionality theory is subverted if it is only used to privatize identity and the related influences of unequal power relations [3]. Rather, its application must be focused on dismantling the systems of power that maintain the marginalization of certain identities. This perspective is rooted in intersectionality as an embedded, critical praxis to feminist research, which inherently implicates individual researchers as equally construed subjects [10].

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

A large area of work by feminist standpoint theorists has been to attempt to embrace more complex intersections and difference (2000). FST proponents argue that interacting systems of privilege and oppression position individuals who hold marginalized identities at a precarious intersection of oppression and domination. Relations of power often further render these identities as epistemically invisible since they fail to fit the normative prototypes of their respective cultural groups [58]. In response to these dynamics, FST offers a powerful guiding epistemology to criticalideological research on intersectionality. FST is able to embrace such complexity because it inherently posits that *all people* have experiences that exist at the nexus of multiply-intersecting sociocultural systems that differentially privilege and/or oppress particular groups [10, 59, 60].

It is important for FST researchers to interrogate the role of structural inequality as it affects multiple minority identity category membership. This is because these relations of power position groups and individuals in asymmetrical and hierarchical relation to one another, thereby creating vastly different perceptions, experiences, and health outcomes [47]. Notably, processes of multiple and interlocking systems of marginalization combine to impose many forms of sociocultural and psychological harms [61–64]. FST's critical inquiry into the nature of power relations upon such identity intersections therefore requires flexibility and attention to nuance. In particular, Solomon [36] notes that the language of *intersections* is best applied with the intention of treating complex experiences of identity as "nonformulaic combinations of simpler identities" (p. 233). She goes on to argue that more complex intersections must continue to be empirically investigated and not simply derived through "armchair combinations of the standpoints of component groups" (p. 233).

#### *2.3.1 Researcher/psychologists' social identities and power in research*

To access maximally epistemically privileged standpoints, an FST lens means researchers must engage in a process of critical evaluation to attempt to discern which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims [25]. This is a controversial position in feminist scholarship, given how FST positions the researcher as a kind of judge with the power to weigh a prospective participant's relative sociocultural oppression [49]. Through engaging an intersectionality stance, the researcher must take contextuality into account to increase the rigor of critical scrutiny that occurs in epistemic communities of researchers [65]. This involves a process of situating and contesting dominant perspectives that have been traditionally prioritized within research to then determine which people and perspectives are better than others for the goals of the inquiry [66, 67]. Starting with centring the margins, FST researchers then invite a diversity of standpoints which together can engage in critical dialogs to produce knowledge about (and useful to) society as a whole. This process involves subjective and objective justifications that support FST's central theses of situated knowledge and epistemic privilege [68]. Specifically, Harding [69], p. 9 writes,

*Each oppressed group will have its own critical insights about nature and the larger social order in order to contribute to the collection of human knowledge. Because different groups are oppressed in different ways, each has the possibility (not the certainty) of developing distinctive insights about systems of social relations in general in which their oppression is a feature.*

FST critical inquiries focus on sensitive research topics that must be handled with respect to honor participants' voices and experiences. In sharing their personal experiences, participants face potential costs involving the risk of experiencing guilt, shame, or embarrassment [48]. These risks can be heightened when sharing personal stories with a researcher who potentially represents dominant cultural groups or institutions. Consequently, FST scholars call for flexible methodological approaches that can be responsive to participants' needs, safety, and trust building. Researchers are therefore encouraged to offer anonymity to avoid face-to-face interactions, or conversely, "more personal and interactive communication and has the potential to diminish the typical power relationships present in conventional research" ([48], p. 291). Crucially, Toole [37] argues that such approaches to research require empathy as an invaluable tool of any inquiry. She posits that empathic perspective-taking helps researchers maintain a more consistent appreciation for the paradigms participants employ, and "generate new data, offer better interpretations of existing data, or come to understand phenomena" (p. 16) that were otherwise obscure. This is a researcher role and skillset that is strongly resonant with counseling psychology's existing practices and perspectives to human sciences and therapeutic interventions.

It is important to consider the risks of abuse of power inherent within any research inquiry, given the epistemic and social power held by researchers. FST scholars argue that one important strength of the approach is that it offers a framework to consider not just multiple, marginalized participants' perspectives, but also to transparently situate and examine researchers' own perspectives, social locations, and identities [70]. In this aim, FST researcher Kristen Intemann [65] argues that in adopting the FST lens, the locus of objectivity and empirical justification is social and psychological. FST research objectivity and justification must therefore be promoted at a higher level—that is, by structuring epistemic research communities through practices that manage the negative influences of biases of individual researchers. This process requires that the community and individual researchers pursue thorough epistemic rigor in examining the ways that researchers' (and thus counseling psychologists') social locations shape aspects of research. Examples of areas for explicit examination include the development of research questions, selection of methodologies, examinations of background assumptions, and interpretations of the data. As such, an individual researchers' status as an insider or outsider (or some combination therein) to the inquiry is less important than the ways that the research contributes to and engages with the wider social epistemic FST and social justice communities to critically produce knowledge [65]. Importantly, the degree to which such epistemic rigor on the research inquiry can occur is influenced by the social locations of the epistemic/empirical community members (i.e., individual researchers and psychologists). Specifically, Rolin [67] argues that the epistemic fruitfulness to challenge problematic default assumptions within science itself is greater when these epistemic communities include wider and diverse participation foregrounded upon the standpoints of insider-outsiders (i.e., who are members of oppressed groups).

#### **2.4 Counseling psychology: therapy and research projects that Centre the margins**

To cultivate a more situated understanding of the world that is authentic to the dynamics of power, counseling psychology researchers can use an FST lens to intentionally centre and prioritize diverse marginalized standpoints as a foundation for social justice-oriented initiatives. This process of centering the margins breaks from the traditional structure of subject-object relations [12, 35]. When centred, the FST

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

research lens can offer an empowering framework for these subjects to take view of the traditional and dominant systems of power and oppression. This process therefore allows counseling psychologists to redistribute power by affirming the experiences and identities of those most profoundly harmed and oppressed by sociocultural power inequalities. An FST lens helps researchers and participants deconstruct the unequal power structures that restrict the agency, access, and production of knowledge to only those groups positioned at the centre of the power structure [7]. Through this individual-level psychological lens, this means that a counseling psychologist and participant are relationally positioned as co-researchers. Together, they enter an epistemological coalition to engage a process of validation and deconstruction of the dominant discourses and ideologies that are brought forth by both stakeholders, since both are mutually shaped by such overarching relations of power [71].

Ultimately this engages the therapeutic dyad, the site of counseling psychology across both clinical and research domains, as the means and mechanism by which to explore the nexus of counseling and standpoint as a critical discourse of body proximity. Specifically, the core of counseling is typically therapeutic dyad. This functional relational space constitutes a *meeting-place* that is both verb and noun: the intersection of two body subjects is a tangible project of multiple and intersecting knowledges. It is at once reflective and shaping of the power relations that house it [72]. In this space, counselor and client are equally imbued with aspects of epistemic power as subjects and objects alike. However, it is important that we acknowledge the limitations of therapy as an act of one type of the project of justice-doing and activism. We must always recall that psychotherapy has historical and current risks of serving as a tool in the hands of institutions and individual counselor by which to reify social control that maintains oppressive power structures [73]. An FST lens necessitates that we consider the researcher (i.e., subject) and researched (i.e., object) as co-constituted in the knowledge making-process – that is, the researcher cannot be controlled for or eliminated through methodological rigor; they must instead be marked, explored, and articulated throughout the research process [9, 10]. Similarly, an FST lens problematizes and challenges this positionality when considering the therapeutic dyad. An individual counselor's status as an insider or outsider (or some combination therein) to the therapeutic intervention or assessment project is less important than the ways that the therapeutic space contributes to and engages with the wider social epistemic body positionings of both counselor and client to critically produce knowledge for the purpose of therapy [65].

Through an FST lens, the sociopolitical and physical proximities between the counselor and the client are inescapable and legible to both subjects, no matter the ethical stance of the counselor. Indeed, our physical bodies are tools of representation: as counselor and client sit together at this nexus, systemic and social forces of power produce and invoke power relations from and toward their gendered and racialized bodies. This emotional (yet physical) relational meeting constitutes a site of political situatedness separate but deeply linked to the relative and proximal epistemic positioning and access that are imbued upon their differing (yet physical) social bodies. A critical feminist optics such as an FST lens therefore allows us to view the exchange and flow of power in the therapeutic meeting-space relative to the configurations of body positions in these interactions. Subsequently, both bodies (counselor and client) take on subject-object qualities of critical knowledge: toward the self-body, the other-body, and the relational space they are positioned at, both inside and outside the physical counseling space. The counseling relationship may therefore be one factor in explaining the power relations between the engaging bodies at such a

meeting-place. Exploring our physical bodies at this nexus may then serve as a critical reason to center the margins, *and conversely*, to locate the margins within the center of the counseling dyad.

As a result, through the phenomenology of an FST lens, both counselor and client are reformulated to consider both the body that we *have* and the body that we *are* [74]. This novel process of centering the margins breaks from the traditional structure of subject-object relations [12, 35]. When centred, the FST research lens can offer an empowering framework for these subjects to take view of the traditional and dominant systems of power and oppression. This process therefore allows counseling psychologists to redistribute power by affirming the experiences and identities of those most profoundly harmed and oppressed by sociocultural power inequalities.

#### *2.4.1 Data analysis, counseling skills, and knowledge translation*

As a critical and ideological research paradigm, FST can guide counseling psychology researchers' reflexive lens as they engage in data analysis. This lens shapes the research mind in order to question the position, socio-political context, and aim of the research in each step, rather than suggesting specific manualized steps to data analysis. This lens extends beyond the traditional scope of a research project's immediate outcomes, since feminist research inquiry offers a platform to motivate mutual consciousness raising between participants and researchers, social change, and empowerment of vulnerable stakeholders [75]. For instance, research findings must offer information that is useful to participants, and is validating of their experiences through engaging a holistic view of reality that integrates the personal and political [76]. Further, FST research practices can focus on participants' agency and options (e.g., promoting a shared understanding of power relations), and stressing the importance of personal empowerment and respect for personal dignity [77]. As a result, adopting an FST epistemology involves critically revising scientific practices, for example, by offering flexibility and transparently situating researchers and participants' standpoints and social locations. This lens can support counseling psychology researchers to deconstruct the ways that relations of power shape participant safety, data collection and analysis, and the values implicit across the overall research process [7, 65]. In extension, an FST lens can inform counseling psychology researchers to be critical of the policy implications of their findings and ensure that they are accessible to relevant stakeholders [75].

Given the prevalent use of interview-based research within the field of counseling psychology, an FST lens to research can also inform the unique ethical implications and dual roles that can arise when research blends with therapeutic relationships [78]. Importantly, neither the FST nor counseling psychology research interviews are meant to provide therapeutic intervention. However, FST scholars hold a central interest in consciousness raising, which they argue can occur when "articulating perceptions of one's experiences that are usually censured by the culture" ([17], p. 194). Further, consistent across counseling psychology and FST scholarship, the relationship between researcher/psychologist and participant/client is conceptualized as living, collaborative, and foundational to the goals of either approach. As such, like the therapeutic relationship, the research partnership is an important site to begin situated, meaningful social justice actions that can, in some cases, promote reflexivity that can have therapeutic effects [3, 79].

Primarily, researchers should be aware that structural relations of power can become internalized to occupy both research and therapeutic relationships [7].

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

To manage the risk for abuse of power, Campbell and Wasco [75] suggest that FST researchers should use their role and power to facilitate the development of nonhierarchical relationships, deconstructing inequalities therein, such as the assumption of researcher expertise. To balance some aspects of relational power, researchers can consider disclosing personal information or experiences relevant to standpoints on structural power dynamics [80]. Active practices of transparency can also include researchers informing participants about their intentions and collaborating on how participants' involvement and the dissemination of research findings will benefit them and the communities they represent [22]. FST research practices also require methodological flexibility, and ongoing reflexivity to clearly situate and articulate the researcher's presence, pre-suppositions, and intentions throughout the research inquiry. Specifically, the researcher's presence should not, nor "cannot be controlled for or eliminated through data scrubbing, member checking, bracketing, or auditing; rather the researcher's positionality should be marked, explored, and articulated throughout the research process" [9]. This means that an FST lens can strengthen counseling psychology researchers' practices of active and transparent commitment to protecting and upholding participants' voices, stories, and preferences after they share their experiences within research [22].

#### **2.5 Criticisms and ongoing development of FST**

FST represents an array of related feminist perspectives which continue to provoke important theoretical debates and dynamic developments of the theory as a lens for research [24, 37, 68]. For instance, critics such as Bar On [81] have raised issue with FST's second wave Feminist extension of Marxian ideas as they relate to an intersectionality stance. Specifically, early FST theorists argued that women were not simply a homogenous social *class* characterized by social marginality but were also a *revolutionary* class who would be the best agents of their own liberation under patriarchy. These early ideas overlooked intersectionality, and have since been reoriented within FST [20]. Similarly, authors such as Jiang [82] contend that Harding's focus on locating and starting from maximally objective standpoints conflicts FST's own underlying social constructivism by implying essentialism based on the rhetorical positioning of "women" as a group that exists separately from intersectionality. Bowleg [83, 84] argues that such assumptions create false dichotomies and intergroup conflict. In response, Hekman [44] argues that FST might be more authentically conceptualized as a counterhegemonic discourse that must remain responsive to new paradigms of politics. That is, it should recognize politics as "local and situated activity undertaken by discursively constituted subjects", and define political resistance as counterhegemonic discourses that are "effected by employing other discursive formations to oppose [the dominant] script, not by appealing to universal subjectivity or absolute principles" [44].

Naturally, it is important for standpoint theorists to emphasize the specific historical feminist roots of the theory, invoke its core stance of intersectionality, and invite inclusive diversity to standpoint epistemologies. As such, to expand its historical gender lens regarding the achievement of standpoint and epistemic privilege, contemporary standpoint theorists typically engage an intersectional stance to capture the interlocking experiences of other social categories characterized by a lack social and economic privilege. In fact, Harding [6] described the absence of an intersectional stance in feminist research a "kind of no-longer-tolerable error that is not itself a part of standpoint theory" (p. 19). Further, anchoring FST within intersectionality

and marginality related to multiple-marginalization represents what Cole [47] calls the oldest approach within intersectionality studies, and cannot be isolated from theory or research. The author further argues that exploring intersections of multiple subordinated statuses achieves some aims of social justice by attending to categories that have largely been (and often continue to be) epistemically erased or otherwise stigmatized (see [85]). As such, it is important to ensure that intersectionality is upheld by moving away from the idea that marginalized groups or social locations represent the sole *constitutive sites that convey* epistemic privilege [34]. Further, researchers seeking to include a wide range of experiences that have been marginalized should be mindful not to treat these standpoints as secondary to the experiences of women as a social category. Doing so risks implying class essentialism by taking a static, additive perspective of intersectionality [9, 20].

In response to criticisms of maximal oppression stances, proponents of FST argue that researchers should focus on "the diverse array of knowledge found within a multiplicity of standpoints" ([45], p. 17) rather than assume the ability or necessity to generate universal knowledge claims. In doing so, FST recognizes that epistemic privilege is available to individuals whose experiences of pain and suffering may occur at other positions on the social power spectrum that are not currently captured as maximal extremes [30]. Broadly, these debates illustrate how a fundamental tension between feminist empiricism and feminist postmodernism is reconciled by modern FST, making room for the breadth of human experiences that represent anti-categorical intersectionality [86, 87]. Through an FST lens, counseling psychology theory and research can be strengthened by embracing difference and complexity found in revolutionary coalitions of multiple subjectivity [17].

#### **3. Part II: FST as a lens for engaging social justice counseling psychology practice and advocacy**

Embracing complexity helps FST researchers develop knowledge on society that can then be mobilized toward social change. Broadly, FST's political engagement integrates several epistemological practices and values. Firstly, they represent crucial acts of empowerment and self-determination for maximally marginalized people [12]. Secondly, the intentional centring of the margins and the de-centering of sites and agents of structural power helps FST researchers to manage the risk of epistemic relativism, essentialism, and erasure. Thirdly, these practices enable what FST theorists refer to as a *democratic strategy for world sciences* [5, 6, 39]. Specifically, in seeking to develop a more transferrable, situated human experience of the world, FST's intersectional stance offers a trajectory toward specific social justice actions that matter to relevant stakeholders.

It is important to explore what FST research practices might mean for clinical practice in counseling psychology. Counseling psychologists are typically interested in humanism and the holistic bio-psycho-social-spiritual [1] wellbeing of clients and research participants [88, 89]. These ideas have been propelled by arguments that the field would benefit from supplementing their training with "interdisciplinary study in history, sociology, or other social sciences and/or to pursue collaborative relationships with scholars in other disciplines" ([47], p. 175). Counseling psychology also distinguishes itself with a proud history of social justice advocacy and an ongoing commitment to on-the-ground community and political engagement [23, 90, 91]. There are many creative and diverse ways to approach praxis related to FST in ways

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

that may be meaningful and relevant to counseling psychology's goals of social justice action. As such, given the way an FST lens can shape the counseling psychology research mind, the following sections will discuss how it can in turn affect clinical practice. This discussion includes issues related the ways in which FST lens can shape counseling psychology clinical practice along with engagement with wider policy and community partnerships.

#### **3.1 FST As a lens for counseling psychology clinical practice**

The field of counseling psychology relies upon the scientist-practitioner model that requires a careful balance between clinical expertise and skill development in relation to rigorous empirical investigations of issues that influence client presenting concerns and treatments [92]. Such a balance requires mindfulness toward critical inquiry as praxis, such as the ability to fluidly translate epistemological and theoretical data to real-world applications in ways that are meaningful to client wellbeing. This obliges counseling psychologists to not only consider, but to centre the physical proximity of counselor and client as a site of epistemic analysis and reification, in directly response to the gendered and racialized bodies of those present.

For counseling psychologists, an FST lens offers a framework to go beyond simply identifying vulnerable groups and individuals within them. Specifically, it orients this analysis to hold the physical meeting-place of the counseling interaction as a site of power. This space is not just physical but also social, emotional, relational space. At this nexus, gendered and racialized bodies are iteratively positioned to be able to critically identify higher sociocultural relations of power that create and uphold these systemic vulnerabilities (i.e., to centre the margins). In doing so, counseling psychologists and clients can first identify culturally relevant needs, systemic barriers, risk factors based on their body proximity inside and outside of the counseling site. The increased nuances of such a knowledge base can allow counseling psychologists to more appropriately inform and collaboratively develop interventions that will most empower clients as they are supported in defining their needs and systemic barriers on their own terms [93]. This approach helps to deconstruct hegemonic tendencies within social sciences related to objectifying, deficit-based analyses of vulnerable groups tied to the relational experience of these bodies brought into the proximity of the physical counseling site [22, 94]. Instead, an FST lens can encourage counseling psychologists to pursue practice that focuses on holistic, mutual, situated conceptualizations of client and counselor. Through an FST lens, strengths and resilience are centred, and viewed, instead of simply vulnerabilities, as forms of nuanced, adaptive creativity that influences psychological processes of identity development, knowledge production, and politically-engaged practices of resistance against structural power [70, 73].

Beyond counseling psychologists' understanding of the individual and systemic cultural factors that impact clients, there are elements within the therapeutic relationship that are unique. Moodley [95] describes this as a 'third space' in therapy, which is created when a psychologist and client interact, each bringing with them a unique set of intersecting cultural identities and social locations. While there is a common understanding in FST that psychologists hold a certain level of power, there are unique nuances that are highlighted in the therapeutic relationship. For example, given their life circumstances, a psychologist may have faced more adversities than a particular client, and this can lead them to develop alternative psychological conceptualizations. In this way, an FST lens allows for unique experiences and

understandings to come to the forefront for both the client and psychologist, and the third space provides opportunities to unpack such realities [96].

Beyond the therapy room, counseling psychologists are called to engage with community, policy, and service advocacy partnerships [22]. As discussed above, FST challenges researchers to understand the world through the lived experiences of individuals who have been socio-politically marginalized, and more importantly, to apply that knowledge toward social change and activism [45]. Given this stance, it is helpful to understand how FST researchers address issues of critical feminist epistemology by first informing research inquiries and subsequently drawing practical implications toward social change through advocacy and clinical practice interventions. These areas of discussion illustrate how an FST lens can inform counseling psychologists in their own commitments to social justice. Subsequently, engaging FST research values to counseling psychology practice implicates two important areas of discussion. First, an important focus is placed on practical and theoretical issues of ethics, power, and social justice values as they affect the development and management of the psychologist/client relationship. Second, there is a focus on FST research validity and knowledge transfer, as they can impact clinical practice and advocacy.

#### *3.1.1 Living relationships: researcher-participant, psychologist-client*

Within its critique of post-positivist empirical research traditions, feminist empiricism considers the traditional connections between the researcher (i.e., the subject) and research participants (i.e., the object) as living and co-constituted within the process of knowledge production [97]. Several important implications stem from FST's stance that the researcher and participant are co-constituted within processes of knowledge production. For instance, when the FST researcher and the participant enter into an epistemological coalition, this living relationship begins processes of illuminating and challenging internalized dominant discourses from both people, and offers a means to validate each other's voices [71]. This perspective parallels counseling psychology's humanistic stance of equity and collaboration, regarding the therapeutic relationship as an foundational site of therapeutic intervention [3, 78].

An FST lens can also empower psychologists in recognizing subjectivity as unfixed, as well as recognizing the importance of critical self-reflection and relationality. Overall, many counseling clinical skills are well-suited to FST's research orientation toward relational equity, epistemic coalitions, and social justice. Examples include reflexivity, the use of immediacy, transparency, appropriate self-disclosure, and empathic, active listening and clarifying questions to check assumptions are crucial for equitable, and culturally conscious relationship management. In addition, counseling psychologists' existing attendance to a bio-psycho-social-spiritual systems model [1] can be more richly informed by adopting an FST lens [3, 78]. In this way, when viewed from a feminist optics, the therapeutic relationship has the potential to offer much more than helping a client reduce distress or make changes; it can lead to new insights about the gendered and racialized self-body. In turn, integrating such self-understandings can lead to broader shifts in how one engages in the world at large, possibly contributing to social change as the individual iteratively engages and disengages in proximity to other bodies in the world.

#### *3.1.2 Knowledge transfer, catalytic validity, and community partnerships*

FST research practices can benefit existing counseling psychology practices (e.g., managing one's sociocultural positionality as it exists the particular nexus of physical

#### *Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

body proximity in the counseling dyad) by focusing reflexivity to include analysis of relevant power relations that might be reified within the research relationship. In extension, this lens can inform counseling psychology's existing social justice values, which argue that collaborative and interdisciplinary treatment planning should foreground client voices, and that clinical judgment should be articulated and positioned throughout the process of mental health service delivery [3]. Both the FST researcher's and social justice-oriented counseling psychologist's goal is to give voice to insiders to speak to their social realities and carry forward a range of restorative justice actions on their behalf [77]. Specifically, FST involves taking the concept of the standpoint seriously throughout, such as by inviting participants to hold a greater stake and agency in research development, data analysis, and dissemination [98], and clients to be empowered as experts of their own experiences who have full decisionmaking capacity. Further, counseling psychologists can benefit from by FST's concept of taking standpoints seriously through the power of research to inform clinical practice—that is, by using knowledge produced by the collaborative critical inquiry to guide them in sharing power with clients to hold greater agency over their own assessment, intervention, and mental health plans.

An FST lens embraces methodological pluralism and flexibility in both qualitative and quantitative research to bridge group- and individual-level experiences, and to illuminate the nature of overarching cultural forces. Similarly, counseling psychology focuses on utilizing a range of methods for investigating "both emic and etic perspectives on human behaviour, and [promoting] the use of research methods drawn from diverse epistemological perspectives" ([90], p. 130). As such, a critical FST epistemological framework can be integrated into feminist empiricist methods and counseling psychology practice alike to interrogate the role that power relations play in science, therapy, and assessment. These strategies can support counseling psychology's individual and organizational policy stances toward ethical cultural responsivity, non-maleficence, and social justice regarding incorporating research into practice and methodological plurality. Similarly, FST also informs counseling psychology's orientation toward integrative therapeutic modalities predicated upon culturally-competent and socially-just assessment and treatment [22, 91].

Through an FST lens, counseling psychologists can making use of body proximity to engage in a deeper critical evaluation of clinical practice and the appropriate applications of research that considers clients' identities and physical bodies as meaningful markers for examining the interlocking power relations that shape social locations, group diversity, and individual experience and knowledge. This orientation can then guide professional policy, activities, and partnerships toward intervention and advocacy that are carried out in solidarity with marginalized communities. An FST research lens can help counseling psychologists center intentionally in the margins, facilitating vulnerable clients' participation in science and their therapeutic treatment by using practices oriented toward anti-oppressive restitution [22]. An FST lens to research can also deconstruct power hierarchies by sharing control and decision-making with clients about knowledge transfer and consciousness raising—two integral aspects of FST research methodology. Through this lens, research and counseling psychology practice is no longer conceptualized as interest-free or apolitical, but instead should be understood as having direct and indirect impacts on the lived realities of stakeholder communities.

Finally, an FST lens oriented toward building coalitional community partnerships can inform collaborative trust-building between counseling psychologists and clients by attending to the internalization of structural power dynamics for both

psychologist and client [93]. These partnerships might be engaged by both individual psychologists across their practice areas, as well as informing policy within training programs as these roles bring them iteratively into proximity with the gendered and racialized bodies of others. Subsequently, this lens can inform clinical practice and professional identity development by encouraging transparent discussions oriented toward growing a mutual self-awareness and consciousness-raising of one's reactions or beliefs between psychologists and clients alike. An FST lens can also help counseling psychology training program policies and curricula to challenge the cultural dominance of deficit-based models related to hegemonic conceptualizations of marginalized groups as inherently vulnerable and defined solely by risks. Instead, an FST lens can inform the development of program and organizational policies that actively centre empowerment, resilience, and strength-based models of well-being and healing. In turn, the production of previously marginalized social knowledges can benefit training and clinical practice by providing meaningful ways to mobilize the therapeutic relationship as an important site of resistance against structural of oppression [22, 99].

#### **4. Conclusion**

Counseling psychologists' ethical commitment to ongoing reflexivity and cultural responsivity is well supported by critical epistemologies like FST [94, 100–102]. FST offers a powerful lens of political engagement that can inform current efforts in counseling psychology to more deeply embed a social justice stance across research and practice domains [2]. FST research values can mobilize counseling psychology due to the overlap of counseling skills and feminist research methodology. This also has implications for the ways that counseling psychologists build coalitions among social justice researchers, as well as with various stakeholder groups. These values thus recognize the importance of collaboratively managing the relations of power that shape both therapeutic and research partnerships. More broadly, adopting an FST lens supports counseling psychologists' focus on subjectivity, body proximity, and the importance of developing understanding of contextualized psychology to direct social change, rather than seeking to demonstrate a static, objective truth [103].

*Perspective Chapter: Feminist Standpoint Theory – A Lens for Counseling Psychology Research… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110554*

#### **Author details**

Megan Suehn1 \*, Anusha Kassan<sup>2</sup> , Shelly Russell-Mayhew1 , Tonya Callaghan1 and Julie Cohen1

1 University of Calgary, Vancouver, Canada

2 University of British Columbia, Calgary, Canada

\*Address all correspondence to: drmegansuehn@wayfindingpsychology.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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