Alison Wylie - Research Interests

ALISON WYLIE
Department of Philosophy - University of Washington

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I work on epistemic questions raised by archaeological practice and by feminist research in the social sciences. In particular, I am interested in a cluster of problems that come into focus when we attend to the vagaries of inference from limited data, and to the role played by contextual values in the research process. For example: how do archaeologists establish knowledge claims about the social and cultural past, given their radically incomplete and enigmatic data base? And how should ideals of objectivity be defended or reformulated when it is recognized that they are not always or only a source of compromising bias; explicitly partisan interests can sometimes play a corrective and even productive role in scientific inquiry?

In response to the first of these questions I have developed models of evidential reasoning in archaeology that emphasize strategies of triangulation and the role of background knowledge in stabilizing empirical claims about facts of the record and facts of the past. This line of work is best represented by the essays published in Thinking From Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (University of California Press, 2002), and in an overview of "Philosophy in/of Archaeology" in the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology (Turner and Risjord, eds.; Elsevier Science, 2007).

In order to better understand the epistemic role of situated (contextual) interests and values in the sciences, I am currently engaged in a project on feminist standpoint theory. This integrates feminist, philosophical, and science studies perspectives in the analysis of feminist research in the social and historical sciences. An essay that reflects these interests, "Why Standpoint Matters," appeared in Science and Other Cultures (Harding and Figuero, eds.; Routledge, 2003), and an essay on the feminist method debate is in the Handbook of Feminist Research (Hesse-Biber, ed.; Sage 2006). Related projects include a special issue of Hypatia on Feminist Science Studies (co-edited with Nelson; 2004), and essays on the philosophical implications of feminist research practice and feminist critiques of science that appear in Feminism in Twentieth Century Science, Technology, and Medicine (Creager, Lunbeck, and Schiebinger, eds., Chicago 2001), Primate Encounters (Strum and Fedigan, eds., Chicago 2000), and Changing Methods (Burt and Code, eds., Broadview 1995).

I am also actively interested in developing models of accountable, reciprocal, and collaborative research practice relevant both to feminist research in the social sciences, and to debates about ethics issues in archaeology. I take up these issues in "Legacies of Collaboration," presented as the 2008 Patty Jo Watson Distinguished Lecture (American Anthropological Association, Archaeology Division, November 2008); in a chapter forthcoming in The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation, co-authored with George Nicholas (eds. Young and Brunk, Blackwell 2009), and in an essay on “The Promise and Perils of an Ethic of Stewardship” in Embedding Ethics (Meskell and Pells, eds.; Berg 2005).s in archaeology. I take up these issues in a recent essay on “The Promise and Perils of an Ethic of Stewardship” in Embedding Ethics (Meskell and Pells, eds.; Berg 2005) , and in an on-going collaboration with George Nicholas on the ethics of cultural appropriation.

Areas of specialization: philosophy of the social and historical sciences; feminist philosophy of science; history and philosophy of archaeology; ethics issues in the social sciences.

Education:
Ph.D. 1982: Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Binghamton
                  Program in the History and Philosophy of the Social and Behavioral Science
                  Dissertation: Positivism and the New Archaeology
                  Director: Rom Harré, Oxford University
M.A. 1979: Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton
B.A. 1976: Philosophy and Sociology, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick

(continue to Publications, Presentations, & Current Projects)