[This note has also been posted to SWIP-L and FEMMSS]

 

Dear Colleagues:

 

Cate Hundleby (U. of Windsor) and I are pleased to announce that the special issue of Studies in Social Justice on "Just Reason" which we co-edited is now on-line open access: http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/SSJ/issue/view/351.  Because SSJ is an independent publication of the University of Windsor, and a relatively new journal, this set of new work relating to feminist theorizing (incl. feminist and liberatory epistemology) might otherwise escape your attention. Please accept our apologies for cross-posting.

 

Below please find:
(1) A short except from our introduction that situates these papers in the tradition of feminist epistemology
(2) The table of contents

 

Sincerely,

Phyllis Rooney (Oakland University)
Catherine E. Hundleby (University of Windsor)

 

As work in feminist or, as it is now sometimes called, liberatory epistemology has continued to show, traditional ideals of reason and knowledge regularly accommodate, if not reinforce, unjust social divisions, particularly those relating to gender, race, and class (Alcoff & Potter, 1993; Sullivan & Tuana, 2007). In
consequence, feminist and liberatory epistemological work is centrally concerned with motivating accounts of reason and knowledge (including scientific knowledge) that make visible social inequities among reasoners and knowers, something that traditional accounts of a universal, transhistorical, disembodied Reason fail to do. This visibility and critical attention is considered necessary to the development of accounts of “just reason.” Such accounts of reason and reasoning underwrite concepts and theories of social justice that explicitly aim toward meaningful social progress in a world still significantly constrained by unequal access to social and political goods.

In challenging the traditional philosophical segregation of reason and knowledge from politics, feminist and liberatory epistemologists are not suggesting that knowledge reduces to a political contest. They argue, instead, that understandings of reason and knowledge need to engage more constructively with the ethical and social specificities that frame scientific and other knowledge projects, including social and political knowledge projects that explicitly seek to advance social justice. In particular, such understandings draw attention to the fact that the ways in which theorists conceptualize, think, or reason about social and political issues have regularly given voice to specific perspectives over others, thus limiting opportunities for insight and resolution. All of the papers and the book review in this volume advance “just reason” in this way: they give reason and voice to concepts, views, or perspectives that have usually not been included in standard debates about particular social and political issues. These issues include identity politics in multicultural societies (Mason), discourses about war and violence (Stone-Mediatore), debates about same-sex marriage (Jaarsma), the role of consciousness-raising in meaningful social change (Fischer), and the recognition of indigenous knowledges and epistemes in the academic institutions of the global North (Lange on Kuokkanen).

 

Contents>

 

Introduction: Just Reason (1-6)
       Catherine E Hundleby,     Phyllis Rooney

 

Articles
Reorienting Deliberation: Identity Politics in Multicultural Societies
(7-23)
       Rebecca Mason

Epistemologies of Discomfort: What Military-Family Anti-War Activists Can
Teach Us About Knoweldge of Violence (25-45)
       Shari Stone-Mediatore

Rethinking the Secular in Feminist Marriage Debates (47-66)
       Ada S. Jaarsma

Consciousness and Conscience: Feminism, Pragmatism, and the Potential for
Radical Change (67-85)
       Clara Fischer

Review of Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes,
and the Logic of the Gift (87-91)
       Lynda Lange

------

Book Reviews
Review of Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection (93-95)
       David Rosen

 

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Phyllis Rooney, [log in to unmask]
Philosophy Department
Oakland University
Rochester, Michigan 48309
--

Dr. Catherine Hundleby
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Philosophy
Cross-appointed to Women's Studies
Department of Philosophy
University of Windsor
401 Sunset Avenue
Windsor, Ontario
Canada  N9B 3P4Below please find: