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LUCY BROWN (MA, PHD CANDIDATE)
LUCY BROWN (MA, PHD CANDIDATE)
We were always there too: rejecting women as static factors in social development
We were always there too: rejecting women as static factors in social development
Presentation abstract:
Presentation abstract:
While feminist theory and perspectives have continued to grow in importance in sociological theory and feminist critique of mainstream sociological theory has been broadly accepted, theoretical education and debate surrounding core tenants of sociological theory have largely continued as if nothing has happened. The failure to incorporate feminist theory into mainstream theoretical approaches has allowed the subject to be avoided entirely by theorists or relegated to gender ‘specialists’ with the focus limited to concepts of oppression. At the same time it is difficult to recentre women in major sociological theories of society because of the subjectivity and assumed ‘objectivity’ of the male perspective. The implications of this problem are present and significant: assumed truths about the long-term ‘decline’ in social violence are false if the violence against (and by) women are incorporated into the data yet it is still being taught as a basic premise of modernity.
A possible solution would be the radical testing and reconfiguration of existing major sociological theories with the female ‘standpoint’ centred. This is an approach I am adopting in my own research questioning Norbert Elias’ concept of the ‘civilising process’ on which the basic premise rests: that society has gone from unrestrained, violent interaction to restrained and non-violent. In doing so, oppressive social factors are naturally considered however adopting ‘women’ as the default in social relations gives a very different interpretation of social processes: the long term adoption of female interactional strategies as common behavioural standards.
Bio:
Bio:
Lucy Brown is in her 4 th year of doctoral research at Charles University studying within the department of historical sociology. Her main research focus has been a re-examining of the theoretical foundations of Norbert Elias through an examination of the long-term social process that was European witchcraft prosecutions. She is also currently working on research surrounding the social significance of the AI revolution with a focus on impact, accessibility and the democratisation of information.
Prior the PhD, Lucy spent several years working as a professional archaeologist in England following her Masters degree from the University of Leicester. Her Masters thesis ‘Power, charity and brotherly love: parish politics in Early Modern Essex’ was published in 2018 and comprised a comparative historical analysis of social relations. Her inter-discipliner interests were first developed during her undergraduate MA degree at the University of Edinburgh (2016) which focused on social history, anthropology and the social sciences.
(PhD, a postdoc fellow at the University of Stavanger, Norway )
(PhD, a postdoc fellow at the University of Stavanger, Norway )
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