The period of self-reflection – a historical perspective 309

Harriet Holter singles out five different periods in the development of Norwegian feminist research. First, she refers to a “predecessor period” from the beginning of the eighteenth-century to the 1930s (1996: 42). In this period writings on “the woman issue” were published by leading figures of “the bourgeois-liberal women’s movements”,³¹⁰ and late in the period, also by feminists in the worker’s movement (op.cit.: 43). However, the issue had not yet been

the Labor Party state. Consider also Peter Wagner’s (1990) comparative analysis of the connections between the state and the development of the social sciences in France, Italy and Germany.

306 Quoted in Brandth and Kvande (2003: 17). They refer to a lecture given by Hochschild in Trondheim in 2001.

entitled “At the End of Global Care Chains: Children and the Global Transfer of Love”.

307 In Fraser and Honneth (2003).

308 I will return to Hernes’ influential assessment in Chapter 6.

309 This is a brief outline of the research field’s central research problems and approaches in different periods, mainly based on Harriet Holter’s brief overview. Similarly brief overviews are written (see for example Halsaa 2003). For an insitutionally oriented analysis of the development of the research field, see Halsaa (1996). A more extensive intellectual and sociological history of the research field remains to be written.

310 Holter analyzes works by among others Camilla Collett, Aasta Hansteen, Margarete Bonnevie and Mimi Sverdrup Lunden.

linked to systematic scientific inquiries. This happened in the second “period of gender roles”

which lasted from the 1930s to the end of the 1960s (op.cit.: 48). This period was characterized by “the attempt to make gender and gender differences scientific” using

“positivist-empirical” approaches and methods (ibid.). The main focus was on sociological and social-psychological studies of gender roles. The notion of gender role was inspired by Talcott Parsons, at the same time as Parson’s structural functionalism, in particular his subscription to the idea of “complementarity” between women and men as “functional in and for society” was attacked (op.cit.: 50). Significant contributors were Erik Grønseth, Per Olav Tiller, Sverre Brun-Gulbrandsen, Berit Ås, in addition to Harriet Holter herself, often considered the founding mother of Norwegian feminist research.³¹¹

Third, we can talk of a “period of patriarchy and agency” from about 1970 until the mid-1980s (op.cit.: 52). The focus in this period was on how “material, economic and political structures”, in particular patriarchy and capitalism and their interrelations, created women’s oppression (op.cit.: 52, 54). The Nordic feminist researchers were “well-informed”, Holter says, and positioned themselves relative to international theory debates and the leading figures in these debates, such as Juliet Mitchell, Gayle Rubin, Heidi Hartmann and Ulrike Prokop (op.cit.: 54). However, the Norwegian researchers did not contribute “originally” in

“international fora” (ibid.). Moreover, there were in fact very few empirical studies of patriarchy and capitalism as systems (op.cit.: 55).³¹²

The focus of the period of patriarchy and agency was also on studies of women as “agents”, a perspective often contrasted to the gender-role perspective – “women are agents, not norm- or role puppets”, it was argued (op.cit.: 52). From this perspective, numerous empirical studies of women’s lives and experiences were made focusing on work, family and everyday-life.

Thus, the problem-oriented, empirical focus of the period of gender roles persisted, even if the conceptual framework had changed. The ambitions behind the agency-studies were critical: to reveal the patriarchal and capitalist oppression of women’s lifeworld. The scholars’

ideological commitments were radical-feminist and/or Marxist-feminist. Norwegian “liberal”

feminists at the time were not engaged in feminist research, Holter notes (op.cit.: 54). This critical commitment was combined with a concern for women’s “dignity”: The focus were to

311 A special issue of the Norwegian journal for feminist research (Nytt om kvinneforskning) was published in 1992 containing articles on her contributions.

312 There were a few exceptions, such as some of Holter’s own contributions, and works by Hildur Ve (for example Ve 1977). Consider also Holter, Ve Henriksen, Gjertsen and Hjort (1975).

be on “women’s oppression” and “the counter-strategies against relations of dominance between men and women” (op.cit.: 58). The latter required sensitivity towards the “meaning”

women attached to their situation and women’s distinct “rationality” (op.cit.: 53, 57). The agency-studies were influenced in this sense by the critique directed against positivism during the 1970s, Holter argues.³¹³

The fourth period of Norwegian feminist research Holter refers to as the “period of culture, context and relations” (op.cit.: 60). It lasts throughout the 1980s and is transformed gradually into a fifth period by the beginning of the 1990s, a period Holter simply refers to as the

“period of the present and the future” (op.cit.: 41). The empirical focus in the fourth period remains on the level of the agent, more specifically on how gender is “made” and

“negotiated” in meaningful interaction: Gender is a “relation” and a “cultural code”

reproduced and transformed in local concrete arenas (op.cit.: 63).³¹⁴ Negotiations are shaped and limited by “structural, cultural and personal conditions” (ibid.). Grand theories of patriarchal and capitalist oppression are, however, rejected. Such tendencies are considered unhistorical and static; unable to “describe and explain change” (op.cit.: 61). Other tendencies characteristic of the period of culture, context and relations are, according to Holter, a growing interest in “poststructuralist” and “postmodernist” theory, phenomenology, qualitative methodology, psychoanalysis, popular culture, sexuality and the body (ibid.).

These tendencies are strengthened in the fifth period of the present and the future, characterized, however, above all by a “reflexive” turn; intensified self-critical reflection on the theories, concepts, approaches and basic presuppositions of feminist research (ibid.).

Thus, Holter’s description of the period of the present and the future resembles Widerberg’s observation of a period of self-reflection in contemporary Norwegian feminist research. As noted by both, this self-reflection is accompanied by an increased interest in epistemology, critique of science and different branches of feminist theory. Their observations were made in the early and mid-1990s – and have a predictive character: Holter and Widerberg believe the reflexive turn will continue to influence Norwegian academic-feminist debates in the years to come.

A few qualifying remarks are needed, however. First, a self-reflective wave in this research field can indeed be identified the last ten to fifteen years. However, most of what has been

313 For an elaboration and discussion of the debate on positivism in Norway, see Slagstad (1980).

314 Holter mentions the social psychologist Hanne Haavind as a central exponent of the relational turn.

published in this period, either does not address meta-issues, or addresses them only briefly.

Also, among those who have contributed, most have published on other issues as well, and most have published most often other issues than issues. Thus, self-reflection and meta-debates have not replaced empirical investigation. It is indicative that the research programs on gender initiated by the Research Council of Norway during this period have financed mostly empirically-oriented projects.³¹⁵ Meta-projects are exceptions,³¹⁶ a fact pointed out by critics (Mortensen 2002).³¹⁷ Typically, questions connected to feminist self-reflection are raised and discussed in single articles,³¹⁸ or in chapters of dissertations and books by authors who mostly write about other issues. Hence, it is not the case that Norwegian feminist research has turned into “a race for theory” and is dominated by “metatheoretical discourse”

(Wærness 1995: 21), even if the self-reflective discourse of the research field is more intense and varied than in previous periods.

Second, there were discussions also during the 1970s and 1980s about the basis of feminist critique. If we return to Kvinnekunnskap (1976),³¹⁹ I kvinners bilde (1977)³²⁰ and Patriarchy in a Welfare Society (1984), three anthologies with contributions from central figures in the research field at the time, we find for example an article discussing from “a phenomenological and existential starting point” feminist “self-organization” and “dialogical action” for

“emancipation”, referring to Jürgen Habermas, Max Horkheimer, Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge, to Rune Slagstad and Thomas Mathiesen, to Simone de Beauvoir, Sheila Rowbotham and Luce Irigaray (Gulli 1977). Another contributor provides a feminist critique of sociological concepts, referring among others to Dorothy Smith, Ann Oakley, Jessie Bernhard, Kate Millett and Shulamit Firestone, to Rune Slagstad and Regi Enerstvedt (Berge 1977).³²¹ There are reflections on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism in

315 There have been four programs: Program for grunnleggende samfunnsvitenskapelig kvinneforskning, Program for grunnleggende humanistisk kvinneforskning” (both 1988-1994), Kjønn i endring: institusjoner, normer, identiteter (1996-2002), and the one running at the present, Kjønnsforskning: kunnskap, grenser, endring.

316 Kjønn i endring: institusjoner, normer, identiteter did, for example, fund 31 projects. Only 3 have a clear meta-theoretical dimension: “The Mind-Brain Continuum: Towards a Naturalistic Feminist Theory of Embodiment and Culture” (Tone Bleie), “Sexual Differences: Beyond Constructionism” (Kjell Soleim) and

“Feminisme og liberalisme” (Kjersti Fjørtoft).

317 Mortensen complains about the priorities of the board of the new reserach program.

318 Or even in parts of single articles that mainly deal with other things.

319 Women’s Knowledge.

320 In the Image of Women.

321 The articles in Kvinnekunnskap and I kvinners bilde are generally influenced by international feminist, Marxist and critical theory, Norwegian sociologists and philosophers outside the feminist research field, in particular the critics of positivism, and established scholars in the feminist research field, such as Harriet Holter

explanations of women’s oppression (Berg 1977, Kalleberg 1977, Haukaa 1984), between

“impersonal forms” of male dominance and “how men dominate” in the concrete interactions of personal relationships, for example in the “exchanges between spouses” (Haavind 1984), and between women as oppressed and women as “altruistic” agents with “dignity” within the framework of a distinct and possibly progressive “women’s culture” (Haukaa 1977,³²² Sørensen 1977,³²³ Ve 1984³²⁴).

These publications all contribute to a discussion of standards in feminist politics and inquiry.

The discussions of patriarchy/capitalism and personal/impersonal oppression are, for example, discussions of the overall explanatory framework of feminist analysis. The discussion on altruism, dignity and women’s culture raises the question of the nature of the agent of feminist critique (altruistic, dignified), and the question of the moral or ethical standards of feminist critique (altruism, women’s culture). These cases give nuance to the prevailing view that there was mostly “empirically-driven theory development” in Norwegian feminist research during the 1970s and 1980s, as opposed to present-day “metatheoretical theory” (Halsaa 2003: 6).

Third, Harriet Holter’s description of the development of the research field puts greater emphasis on developments in the social sciences than in the humanities. There are, moreover, interesting, more detailed stories to be told about particular branches of the research field, for example about the development of individual disciplines.³²⁵ Holter’s historical analysis captures however certain general trends.