Response to Scott/Gender

As many of my classmates have stated this was quite the read. Even though the content of the articles were confusing and often caused headaches, the overall understanding of methodology was intriguing. Previous to these articles, each week’s theme had a specific methodological approach that accompanied the topic. This one was different. There was no specific method or theory to follow; instead it was a composite of multiple theories and methods plus the creation of new ones. The reason I found this intriguing was the way we study history. Sometimes we can’t take an existing method or theory and apply it to any topic; sometimes we have to start from scratch. Joan Scott, in her article Gender, stated, “My point was to clarify and specify how one needs to think about the effect of gender in social and institutional relationships, because this thinking is often not done precisely or systematically” (Scott, 1069).

Even though Scott uses the Marxist historical approach, she does not necessarily agree with it entirely. She uses the Marxism method for an understanding of one aspect of gender, but there were still questions not being asked. To Scott, by understanding gender in a social system there needed to be a new methodology for gender analysis. For a Marxist historian, the change is often that of material concern and economics determines the historical outcome. Scott states in her Gender article that, “Marxist feminists have a more historical approach, guided as they are by a theory of history. But, whatever the variations and adaptations have been, the self-imposed requirement that there be a ‘material’ explanation for gender has limited or at least slowed the development of new lines of analysis” (Scott, 1059). Therefore, Scott relies heavily on language and the relationship of power to construct the social relationships of understanding gender.