Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (August 2001): 899–901 899

KATHERINE ALLEN Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Finding New Paths to Family Scholarship: A Response

to James White and Sheila Marshall

White and Marshall claim to have a difficult timeunderstanding the logic and practical implicationsof my suggestions to develop a critical conscious-ness for an inclusive family studies (Allen, 2000).They find that many of my key assumptions aretacit and unexamined, and they do not believe thatI provide adequate documentation for my knowl-edge claims. Reading their interpretation of myessay, I felt as if we were playing a game of hide-and-seek. We’re in the same backyard, but ourperspectives are worlds apart.

They’ve got their eyes closed and are countingto 10 while I hide. They can’t see me whilethey’re counting with covered eyes. I’m not allthat aware of them either, because I’m scramblingfor a challenging and secure place to hide. Afterthey’ve reached 10 and said, ‘‘Ready or not, herewe come,’’ they start to look for me. First theycheck the bushes, then the toy box, then under-neath the car. But I’ve found a new spot up in theapple tree. I can see them searching in the usualplaces they always check when we play this game.Perhaps they can’t imagine anyone climbing upthat apple tree. After all, they’ve never tried it soit doesn’t occur to them that someone like me(e.g., someone little, a girl) could do it. So intenton pursuing their habitual pattern, it is taking themsuch a long time to find me. Why don’t they justlook up? I start dropping apples to give them aclue. Some even hit them on the head, but theyare so intent on their original plan and purpose

Department of Human Development (0416), Virginia Poly-technic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA24061 (kallen@vt.edu).

that they still can’t see me. ‘‘Hey, guys, I’m uphere,’’ I say. ‘‘I’m not that hard to see. Just liftup your head.’’ If only they would try to imaginethat there is more than one way to find what theyare looking for.

The deductive, positivist path White and Mar-shall advocate is the path that dominates familystudies. As White and Marshall point out, thereare many ways of going down that path. Positiv-ism is not a monolith. Just as there are as manyfeminisms as there are feminist scholars, there aremultiple variations of positivism, and the same istrue for postpositivism and postmodernism. Con-sult any methods or theories text addressing thephilosophy and practice of science for evidence ofdivergent knowledge pathways (see, e.g., Gubaand Lincoln’s [1994] metaphysics of alternativeinquiry paradigms).

I am in complete agreement with White andMarshall in cautioning against the creation ofsome monolithic distinction between falsely op-posing camps. I agree with their concluding state-ment: ‘‘As a result, we do not see dichotomoustreatments such as descriptions of positivism ver-sus postmodernism as doing much more than triv-ializing important distinctions about fundamentalassumptions for research and theory’’ (p. 897).The purpose of my essay was much larger thanthe tired caricature of positivism ‘‘versus’’ post-positivism or postmodernism. I share White andMarshall’s enthusiasm for philosophy of sciencequestions, but the deductive method they proposeis, in my opinion, more of the same kind of the-orizing that could render family scholarship irrel-evant for the 21st century.

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My aim was to demonstrate another method oftheorizing, which respects the lived experience ofthe people who actually live in families (e.g., in-clusivity) and utilizes the human capacity for re-flection and critique (e.g., critical consciousness).By valuing additional knowledge paths, we gaininsight and understanding of what family life islike for us (e.g., the knowers), as family members,as well as for the people we study and the studentswe teach.

The method I used to illustrate one alternativepath is that of narrative, or storytelling. I told astory in my essay about how I felt when anotherresearcher described families in which I havelived in ways that denigrated their full humanity.I told stories on myself, as well, to reveal howinteraction with others once deemed differentfrom myself, through the process of critical re-flection, helped to deconstruct my own blindersand biases. In telling these stories, I sought todemonstrate a way that we as scholars can liberateourselves from such false borders that were taughtto us by our sexist, racist, classist, homophobic,et cetera, culture.

In attempting to reveal an alternative path, Icritique the status quo of knowledge productionin family studies. I put my own experiences frontand center as a way (certainly not the way) tochallenge the dominant discourse in our field. Iinvite other researchers to approach the postmod-ern turn in family social science with a fresh per-spective. Further, I put the particular method I fol-low on the page for others to critique. There is noone way to generate family scholarship. There aremany ways, but I am critical of the hegemonicbelief that there is only one way, or that there isa best way.

Perhaps it is difficult to understand the con-cepts of inclusive and conscious when one has notyet unpacked the invisible knapsack of privilege(McIntosh, 1995) nor attempted to travel to an-other’s world (Lugones, 1990). As I tried to dem-onstrate in my essay, the experience of empathyis necessary, because it permits us to think aboutexperiences from another’s perspective. Two waysto do that are to reflect on one’s own experienceand to reflect on how the actions of others makeone feel. To reiterate, being conscious means tobe reflective about who you are and where youare coming from. Inclusive means a family studiesthat includes more than the dominant discourse on‘‘The Family.’’

I suggest we can learn from our own lived ex-perience and scholarly practice so that the family

scholarship we produce and teach is current, alive,relevant, and healing. The students I teach, thefamilies in which I’ve lived, and the people whoselives I’ve studied do not look like the construc-tions that derive from our deductive theorizing ef-forts. As a heuristic device, traditional family the-orizing provides a common language, anintersubjectivity, but we are in danger when weact as if families actually look like the theories wehave constructed. My aim was to introduce somealternative reality into this static picture. To do so,I brought myself and some of my complicated andcontradictory history to the mix. I illustrated thealternative path I advocated by embodying mydiscourse. That is, I inserted my self into the por-trait I envision.

In describing the historical moment in whichwe find ourselves, my attempt was to talk aboutthe intellectual movements of positivism and post-modernism in a broad way, not to ignore or denytheir many internal diversities. The interdisciplin-ary nature of our field requires us to read diversetexts and converse with people from other disci-plines. Family scholars should be masters of in-novation, not defenders of a singular tradition.Yes, we are searching for truths, but there mustbe humility in that search. Knowledge is partial,and it is easy to misrepresent another’s perspec-tive. It is arrogant to assume that there is only onetruth, or that the truth has to make me feel com-fortable in the world.

I focus on inclusivity because I live in a worldthat has been dominated by people other thanthose like me: other than female, lesbian, mother,and family scholar. My embodied experience inthe world reminds me that there is at least oneother version of the truth. I am arguing for mul-tiple truths, multiple realities, not ‘‘nontruth,’’ asWhite and Marshall presume. The practice I ad-vocate must be done by individuals, but it is acollective effort. The lamp I’m trying to light withthis essay has been lit many times before me. Inmy essay, I name some of the scholars who haveguided the way: C. Wright Mills, Jessie Bernard,Donald Campbell, and Audre Lorde.

I do believe that family scholars, especially theones privileged enough to publish in prestigiousjournals, earn large salaries, receive big grants,and teach new generations of students, need toconstantly challenge and change ourselves lest wedo harm to others. As I explained in my essay,whenever I read a statement about the inadequacyof single mothers, it hurts. Each time I experi-enced the political vulnerability of trying to get

901Finding New Paths

my nonbiological son on my health insurance ata Southern state-supported university, and failedto do so, it hurt. These lived experiences serve asa touchstone for the many people who do not havehealth insurance, or even a job, for that matter. Iam reminded of my own privilege of being a uni-versity professor and the simultaneous heartacheof living in a sometimes hostile environment as alesbian mother who was unable to provide halfher family with partnership benefits and all thelegal protection that marriage affords. These ex-periences remind me about the difficulties facedby any family who is different from the dominantdiscourse enshrined in our legal, educational, po-litical, and social system. If my cushy life canchallenge and hurt so much, I wonder how othersmight feel, with very different access to resourcesthan my own. Critical reflection, then, is onemechanism to open our understanding and therebyenhance the inclusiveness of family studies.

Science is the foundation of our field: familysocial science. Although there are multiple epis-temological stances, the main epistemological po-sition in family studies is a (not the) positivist one.By trying out another way (e.g., other ways), wecan learn and contribute something new. As I il-lustrate in my essay, we can see through anotherscholar’s arguments to the invisible discourse thatundergirds them. We can recognize our own bi-ases through interaction with others. We can im-prove family science by taking ourselves on.

I think this is an important effort because myyears of practice as a human being and a teacherreveal to me that students hunger for a knowledgethat is ‘‘healing to the uninformed, unknowingspirit’’ (hooks, 1994, p. 19). I also believe thatmany of us entered family studies with activistintentions, wanting to understand why familieswork the way they do, and what we can do toameliorate the constraints families face. Without

this activist desire to actually change the harsh orprejudicial circumstances of family life, perhapswe would have entered the fields of engineering,microbiology, or law. I state this assumption andlay it out clearly. What I’m talking about is amethod of doing reflective science, and I try todemonstrate that method by my own narrative dis-course. My critique of objectivity is that weshould all be more cautious about what we claim,teach, suppose, and assume is true. We have towork harder to be honest in our scientific produc-tion, and we should not hide our own private ide-ologies. When we struggle with exposing our ownvulnerability, we can be more careful with thelives of those we teach and study. I argue for anaccountability in family science that acknowledg-es and respects lived realities, including our own.

NOTE

I thank Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Alexis Walker fortheir helpful comments on this response.

REFERENCES

Allen, K. R. (2000). A conscious and inclusive familystudies. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 4–17.

Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing par-adigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research(pp. 105–117). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education asthe practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Lugones, M. (1990). Playfulness, ‘‘world’’-travelling,and loving perception. In G. Anzaldua (Ed.), Makingface, making soul: Haciendo caras: Creative andcritical perspectives by feminists of color (pp. 390–402). San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

McIntosh, P. (1995). White privilege and male privilege:A personal account of coming to see correspondencesthrough work in women’s studies. In M. L. Andersen& P. H. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: Ananthology (2nd ed., pp. 76–87). Belmont, CA: Wads-worth.