Week 3: Turning from Science to Social Science
We are turning this week from the perspective offered by scientists on the questions of gender and sexuality to that offered by social scientists, in particular by Bryn Mawr alum and anthropologist Sherry Ortner, whose life work on the structures and practices of gender will form our reading for the next two weeks. So what are you noticing as we make the turn from the scientific to the social scientific study of gender and sexuality? How does the perspective shift? What is attended to by ecologists and neurobiologists, but not by practice-oriented anthropologists, and vice versa? What is foregrounded by one discipline that is backgrounded by the other? Which of these various lenses seems to speak more to your own questions, and come closer to providing some useful answers to them?