Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper describes the theoretical perspectives on race, class and gender of Elizabeth Esterchild and Patricia Hill Collins. Both agree that race, class and gender intersect as bases for unequal treatment. Hill Collins concludes that Black women have special insights because in academia, as elsewhere they are often the outsiders within. She describes how self-valuation and self-definition in Black culture mitigate the debilitating affects of oppression. Esterchild provides a general model of stratification which encompasses several different types of inequality. We conclude that these two sets of ideas are highly compatible and that combining them leads to major advances in our understanding.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Gerhard Lenski is widely acknowledged as one of the giants of modern stratification theory (see Barnett 2004 for an overview of Lenski’s place in modern sociological theory), but more often than not, he is also seen as irrelevant to current feminist theories of inequality, particularly as reflected in the relative lack of citations to his work on gender inequality and race, gender, class (RGC) intersectionality. This dual reputation of historical importance and contemporary irrelevance rests on two separate streams of Lenski’s scholarship: (1) Lenski's theory of “status crystallization” and “status inconsistency,”which explains status ranking in multidimensional stratification systems on individual political and other behavior; and (2) Lenski’s comprehensive evolutionary theory of stratification presented in Power and Privilege (1966; 1984), Human Societies (1970-2006), and Ecological-Evolutionary Theory (2005), which present his macro level theory and research on variation in societal level distribution systems with patterns of inequality correlated with the generation of surplus. However, neither Lenski’s mico or macro level theories and research beginning in the 1950s and 1960s has been explicitly viewed by feminist scholars or integrative race, gender, class scholars of the 1980s and 1990s as an embodiment of “multidimensionality” or “intersectionality” in explanations of inequality. Only recently have a few scholars suggested that Lenski’s theories lay a foundation for powerful models of inequality based on the intersections of race-class-gender and other statuses generating variation in power and privilege that developed in the 1990s and are prevalent today (Barnett 2004a, Tickamyer 2004). In this paper, we: (a) analyze Lenski's contributions to the study of social stratification and social inequalities at both macro and micro levels; (b) consider Lenski’s major ideas for understanding gender inequality and their relevance to feminist sociological analysis; and ( c) trace Lenski’s work in the 1950s and 1960s, especially his work on “status inconsistency” and status crystallization,” as a significant precursor of the race, gender, class “intersectionality” theories and research in the 1980s and 1990s that view systems of domination and subordination as determined by the intersections of race, class, gender (RGC) and other relevant socially constructed identities and locations (Andersen 1993; Baca Zinn and Dill 1994; Barnett 1993, 1995; Brewer 1993; Chow 1987; Collins 1986, 2000; Dill 1979, 1983; Gilkes 1980, 1988 ; Glenn 1999; Higginbotham 1988, Henderson and Tickamyer 2006; King 1988) and the development of RGC as an officially recognized subfield in sociology, thus the continuing relevance of Lenski’s work from 1954 to present times.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will examine the empowerment dimension of the PCTFI Common Indicator Framework in two of the four PCTFI Cohort 2 countries (Ghana, India, Bangladesh, and Malawi), with a specific focus on Ghana. It will focus on the major outcome category of empowerment as it relates to a critical expected outcome of CARE's education work. The literature around empowerment suggests multiple ways of defining and measuring this theoretical construct. This paper outlines the definition being used in PCTFI based on three indicators of empowerment - supportive strategic relations, girls' agency, and gender supportive structural environment. The paper explores the necessity of both cross-country indicators of empowerment as well as context specific elements and the complications this brings to measurement. The paper will then discuss more fully the difficulties involved with measuring empowerment and comparing measurements in multiple contexts. Finally, the paper will outline how CARE is measuring empowerment in these countries and how it uses preliminary data to make recommendations about future data collection on this outcome category.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As is other theoretical discourses, contemporary feminist critical theory is largely influenced by classic sociological/social theory. Lukácsian standpoint of the proletariat and Foucaudian power/knowledge relations provides with conceptual foundations Haraway’s feminist standpoint epistemology theory and Clough’s articulation of the knowledge/standpoint relations in poststructuralist turn. Uniquely, Collins’ theoretical claim, outsider-within standpoint epistemology, is originally formulated by Simmel’ sociological classic, the Stranger. Outsider-within presumes 1) situational identities for the marginalized, 2) historical specificity of the plight of Afro-American women, and 3) potency for provoking political collectivity.

Collins recently observes her outsider-within suffer from its conspicuous personification, formalization and commodification. Such a risk can be attributed to her misapplication of the classic foundation. To Collins, historical specificity and collective emotional experience unique only to African American women are the essential for claiming the epistemic privileges of Black feminist thought. Experience is thus a particular, historically specific moment, which cannot be formalized or applicable to other moments of history, or other individuals and groups. However, as a proposed example of his formal sociology, universal applicability is at the very heart of his Simmel’s theory of strangerhood as a form of social interaction epitomizing subjective experience of modern social life - urbanization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Since the 1970s, a movement known as the "New Evidence Scholarship" has argued for formal mathematical approaches to legal decisionmaking. Members of this movement maintain that law is already saturated with the language of probability but that this language needs to be mathematized in order to reduce error. Opponents argue that verbal assertions of probability are fundamentally different from mathematical formulas and that the latter cannot do justice (literally) to complex legal questions. In practical terms, the debate seems to have been won by the opponents, aided by a 1968 California Supreme Court case (People v. Collins) that rejected them. However, calls for these approaches have continued, perhaps influenced by the rise in the 1990s of Bayesian statistics (which emphasizes subjective reasoning), as well as the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which prompted questions about the ability of jurors to understand complex data. This paper examines People v. Collins in the origin narratives of the New Evidence Scholarship. In that case, the court struck down a robbery conviction of an interracial couple that had been based almost entirely on probability testimony. Although other cases better present the circumstances under which most New Evidence scholars advocate using formal mathematical reasoning, Collins emerges as central to the origin narratives of the movement. This paper argues that unlike these other cases, Collins represents an anxiety about the loss of shared communal values and prepares the way for statistics, as a supposedly neutral technology, to stand in for communal decisionmaking.