Situated knowledge

Situated knowledge is knowledge shaped by the social, historical, and embodied positions of those who produce it. It rejects the idea that knowledge can be produced from a wholly neutral, context-free standpoint.

Standpoint theory: An approach to knowledge that examines how social positions shape what people can know. It connects social location to differences in access, perspective, and epistemic authority.
Donna Haraway: An American scholar whose work developed influential feminist critiques of science and objectivity. Her 1988 essay gave situated knowledges its landmark formulation.
Strong objectivity: Sandra Harding’s proposal to make inquiry more objective by critically examining researchers’ social locations. It turns situatedness into a methodological resource rather than a flaw to erase.
Participatory action research: A collaborative research approach in which participants help investigate and act on shared problems. It gives affected communities a role in producing and using knowledge.
View from nowhere: An ideal of knowledge detached from any particular observer, location, or perspective. Situated knowledge rejects this ideal as an impossible account of actual inquiry.
Positionality: The social and historical location from which a person interprets and acts in the world. It names the specific locations that shape knowledge claims.
Feminist epistemology: The study of how gender and power shape knowledge, inquiry, and epistemic authority. Situated knowledge emerged within feminist efforts to rethink who can know.
Reflexivity (social theory): Critical examination of how a researcher’s position and practices shape inquiry and interpretation. Reflexivity makes the researcher’s contribution to knowledge explicit.
Ethnography: A research approach that studies social life through sustained engagement and interpretation in context. Ethnographic accounts depend on researchers’ relationships and positions in the field.
Value-free science: The ideal that scientific inquiry can be conducted without social or ethical values shaping it. The concept contests the claim that values can be wholly removed from knowledge production.

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