Review of Critical Realism, Feminism and Gender: A Reader

Abstract

This is a most welcome handbook arriving at a timely moment for those interested in feminism in relation to sex/gender, progressive politics and sustainability. Critical realism has been an invaluable tool in many fields of enquiry because of the resolution it is capable of bringing to the ongoing conceptual rift between enlightenment and universalist ideas and subsequent developments of postmodernism which rejected scientism and grand theories (Lyotard 1984), in defence of diversity and localism. The discipline of ‘Development Studies’, which has encouraged and benefitted from the tools of deconstruction has, at the same time, encountered problems due to its adoption of full-blown relativism, for example, in its understanding of the Climate Emergency. The realization that we live in a shared material world and do share many universally valid and real experiences has led to necessary reformulations in which a shared planet and shared universal experiences can co-exist with different particular and localized ones. Critical Realism has been an important part of this reformulation through its proposal of analytical depth, interdisciplinarity and dialectical analysis (Bhaskar et al. 2010). Feminism too, as an integral part of Sustainable Development, and as a field of knowledge and political action, has been assailed by similar theoretical criticisms by postmodernism. These challenges to Second Wave feminist formulations have not been invariably creatively transformative. Intense controversies have, at times, bordered on the destructive and the unresolved, whilst often also defeating the aim of the feminist emancipatory project. It is therefore hoped that this volume will provide some clarity on the subject of Feminism in general and, in particular, on the vexed concept of Gender and its relationship to Sex. Broadly the aim of the book is to highlight how the perspectives of critical realism illuminate the relationship between feminist and gender studies with the philosophy of science and by so doing to overcome the perceived antagonism between them. The editors emphasize that this is not to be done by denying evident theoretical differences but by showing how these fields are inevitably intertwined because they operate at different levels of analysis which reflect the reality of a stratified ontology. Their interdependence makes it possible to tease out and examine how different understandings of feminism and gender may be better or worse explanations of our daily lives. Structurally the book is rational and approachable in its layout of three parts. Firstly, a section on Philosophical Preliminaries, secondly a section on Intersectionality and thirdly a section on Methodology. This allows readers to easily seek out the sections most relevant to their own interests. The contributing authors strive to give consideration to ideas from different streams of feminism’s so-called first, second and third waves of analysis, which is useful and refreshing and opens up the debate. In the Philosophical Preliminary, the authors Lawson, Hull, New, Gunnarsson, and Dy discuss the controversies of realism, universalism, relativism, sex & gender and trans politics which cover a significant number of the philosophical controversies within Feminism. Debate around Feminism will have come across these rifts, not just due to different conceptual