Alison Wylie

Philosophy has the dubious distinction of attracting and retaining proportionally fewer women than any other field in the humanities, indeed, fewer than in all but the most resolutely male-dominated of the sciences. This short article introduces a thematic cluster that brings together five short essays that probe the reasons for and the effects of these patterns of exclusion, not just of women but of diverse peoples of all kinds in Philosophy. It summarizes some of the demographic measures of exclusion that are cause for concern and identifies key themes that cross-cut these discussions: gender stereotypes and climate issues, ‘cognitive distortions’ and disciplinary norms.

Feminist analyses of science have grown dramatically in scope, diversity, and impact in the years since Nancy Tuana edited the two-volume issue of Hypatia on “Feminism and Science” (Fall 1987, Spring 1988). What had begun in the 1960s and 1970s as a “trickle of scholarship on feminism and science” had widened by the mid-1980s “into a continuous stream” (Rosser 1987, 5). Fifteen years later, the stream has become something of a torrent. The essays assembled for this special issue of Hypatia represent a vibrant fi eld of scholarship that has matured and diversifi ed in many respects, and that presupposes a number of hard-won insights that were just beginning to emerge in the mid-1980s. To take the measure of these developments, consider briefl y where we have come from

Insofar as the material residues of interest to archaeologists are cultural and, as such, have specifically symbolic significance, it is argued that archaeology must employ some form of structuralist analysis (i.e. as specifically concerned with this aspect of the material). Wylie examines the prevalent notion that such analysis is inevitably 'unscientific' because it deals with a dimension of material culture which is inaccessible of any direct, empirical investigation, and argues that this rests on an entrenched misconception of science; it assumes that scientific enquiry must be restricted to observables. It is clear, as realist critics of this view have argued, that scientific (explanatory) understanding depends fundamentally on theoretical extensions beyond observables; extensions which bring into view underlying and inaccessible causal structures or mechanisms responsible for the mani- fest phenomena through a procedure of analogical model construc- tion. In consideration of realist models of these procedures and of the potential of linguistic modes of analysis for archaeology, it is pro- posed that archaeologists might (and, in fact, often do) effectively grasp the symbolic, structural order of surviving material culture through analysis governed by a rigorous and controlled use of ethno- graphic analogy. It is claimed, moreover, that the archaeological record can provide empirical bases for evaluating these theoretical constructs if a procedure of recursive and systematic testing is adopted in research, but the standard hypothetico-deductive model is seriously flawed as an account of an ideal for this procedure. Glassie's analysis of Middle Virginian folk housing is an example of research along these lines which illustrates the potential for a rigorous structuralist alternative.

Internal debates over the status and aims of archaeology—between processualists and post or anti-processualists—have been so sharply adversarial, and have generated such sharply polarized positions, that they obscure much common ground. Despite strong rhetorical opposition, in practice, all employ a range of strategies for building and assessing the empirical credibility of their claims that reveals a common commitment to some form of mitigated objectivism. To articulate what this comes to, an account is given of how archaeological data may be ‘laden with theory’ constructed as evidence—and yet still function as an independent constraint on interpretation.