Feminist Social Research Research Articles

‘Stuffed if I [still don’t] know’: towards weak methodologies

ABSTRACT J. K. Gibson-Graham’s paper ‘’Stuffed if I Know!’: Reflections on post-modern feminist social research’ foreshadowed her meanderings with weak theory, and of attending not to what things are, or mean, but to ‘wonder(ing) where they might go’ and what they might do, in all their emergence, contradiction and multiplicity. Weak theory attends to the performativity of different encounters, processes and knowledges, in all their incompletion and multiplicity, and in following what things do, this paper suggests that weak theory is also methodological. I consider weak methodologies as an approach to methods and practices that centre and integrate the unexpected, confusing, failed and strange within the co-production of research and ways of knowing. To do this, I reflect on two inadvertent wanderings into weak methodologies in my research, and engage Puig de la Bellacasa’s thinking with and dissenting within, to ponder some of the potentialities present in interruption, trouble and dis(re)orientation in research methods. Here, weak methodologies are not just about creating and participating in worlding as researchers, but also about forming an intentional posture of openness to being shaped, shifted, moved and led through research in often unanticipated ways.

Revisiting young masculinities through a sound art installation: What really counts?

What Really Counts? was a sound art installation created in 2019 through a collaboration between a sociologist and a multidisciplinary artist, working with in-depth interviews with young men recorded as part of a British feminist social research project in 1990, exploring sexualities and the threat of HIV/AIDS. In this article, we describe the evolution and staging of the sound art installation project, situating it within interdisciplinary literatures on the use of sociological archives and reanimation of analogue media in a digital age. Working within a fractured tradition of curated sociology, we consider the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration for refreshing sociological analytic practice, revealing the unrealised potential of archived data sets and utilising temporal displacement as a generative analytic strategy for feeling history. We are working with a 30-year time span characterised by a stretching of intergenerational experience in relation to expectations for and mediation of sex/gender. The project attempts to realise the potential for an experimental sociological practice through the staging of open-ended past–present encounters.

Action Research and Transformation: Lessons from Three Decades of Practice

In this paper I look back over three decades of doing participatory action research and extract some lessons that bear upon the pressing issues of our time—namely, how to act in the face of unsustainable socio-economic growth trajectories and cascading environmental degradation. I start with my circuitous journey into action research and to the importance of human subjectivity to transformation processes. I then trace the thinking that shaped a postmodern feminist social research agenda. Next follows an account of developing a research design for poststructuralist participatory action research (PPAR) that foregrounds understanding ‘ways of living’ in place. Drawing on actual action research projects, the lessons that emerge concern the importance of 1) inventory and bearing witness to difference; 2) new techniques of resubjectivation that encourage transformation; and 3) shifting the action focus from human subjects to socio-technical assemblages in which humans, material infrastructures, habits and experimentation are interwoven. Throughout my three decades of involvement with action research I have learnt about the limits to the durability of subjectivity change and the need to work on support from wider ecosystems of governance, infrastructure, health and social expectation.

Memory-work

Memory work is a method for feminist social research. It combines the advantages of consciousness raising groups with the strength of theoretical analysis. It is in fact work with one 's own memory guided by theory. Thus it is a challenge for the personalities involved. It allowes to overcome the gap between researchers and their objects of research and in the same time gives a history and a language, a scientific concern to all those lives and experiences of numerous women, for their everyday lives. The article of memory work, which by now is used by a number of female research groups in Germany, deals with the problem of language, of single case studies and the right of generalization; the problem of subjectivity, identity and ideology etc. It is a call for working in collectives and gives some hints how everybody could start working with her own memory. Memory work is a method which has to be improved while in practice. Thus it is a challenge for all of us: for researchers, women in the movement, psychologists or those who are interested in therapeutical advice.

Anti-Racist Research Praxis: Feminist Relational Accountability and Arts-Based Reflexive Memoing for Qualitative Data Collection in Social Work Research

Largely absent from the feminist qualitative social work research literature are practical discussions about the ethics of white researchers who “study up” people and institutions of power. This methodological article grapples with how to conduct data collection from an anti-racist framework. I explore my use of an arts-based self-reflexive memoing process of embodied tableaux to inform my experimentations of rejecting “neutrality” when interviewing participants. I provide examples of disrupting white, patriarchal, and colonial norms during qualitative interviewing, including directly naming my whiteness and anti-racist stance; intentionally challenging the racism of white participants and deepening critical reflection; and viewing myself through a lens of critical skepticism to recognize when I was protecting whiteness or failing to effectively intervene. I conclude with an invitation to others to experiment with an anti-racist research praxis—an iterative process of self-reflexivity and relational accountability to reflect, theorize, and act differently during feminist social work research.

“You Just Know It’s the Only Thing You Can Think”: A Conversation with Chodorow

ABSTRACTNancy Julia Chodorow (1944–) is a pioneer feminist theorist who brought together academic fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis in her work related to feminist theories and psychoanalysis. Her first book, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978), gave primacy to a more generalized account of the developmental and familial origins of prevalent psychological differences between femininity and masculinity from a psychoanalytic sociological viewpoint. Her later books, Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (1994), The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (1999), and Individualizing Gender and Sexuality: Theory and Practice (2012), bring in a rich interplay among socio-structural influences (i.e., culture) as well as intra- and inter-psychic dynamic processes, emphasizing more the importance of individuality and subjectivity. Based on an interview I had with Chodorow on the development of her thought, this paper gives Chodorow’s account of her personal history and academic background, current manifestations in feminist social science research and feminist psychoanalysis based on her contribution and legacy, and reflective narratives on the unfolding of feminist and psychoanalytic theories from the 1970s onward. Chodorow’s note to the next generation of feminist psychotherapists is also included.

What is a transformative approach to care, and why do we need it?

The meanings of care are contested – the approaches to care in the development and feminist literature have varied greatly. At the same time, care is a common word, loaded with moral meanings concerning notions of duty and love, and care is commonly associated with women. These associations are not innocent; they have concrete effects in shaping different policy agendas and institutional responses to care and care work. While the feminist meanings of care stem from feminist philosophy, feminist economics, and feminist social policy research, these meanings compete with the more conservative and traditional meaning of care in the development discourse. This article provides a conceptual introduction to care, and aims to show how the different understandings of it affect the ways policymakers approach the issue. Depending on the way care is framed, policies and practices can be designed and implemented in transformative ways, in the sense of supporting carers – predominantly women – and lightening their care burdens, while challenging the notion that this work is intrinsically ‘female’ and of lesser importance than work seen as ‘productive’. The article invites development practitioners to reflect on their own views about care, and to identify what can be done to recognise, reduce, and redistribute care at multiple levels.

Mother, researcher, feminist, woman: reflections on “maternal status” as a researcher identity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which a researcher's maternal status as “mother” or “non-mother/child-free” is implicated in the research process. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on the experiences as two feminist researchers who each independently researched experiences of motherhood: one as a “mother” and one as a “non-mother/child-free”. The paper draws on extracts from the original interview data and research diaries to reflect on how research topic, methodology and interview practice are shaped by a researcher's maternal status. Findings – The paper found that the own maternal identities shaped the research process in a number of ways: it directed the research topic and access to research participants; it drove the method of data collection and analysis and it shaped how the authors interacted with the participants in the interview setting, notably through the performance of maternal identity. The paper concludes by examining how pervasive discourses of “good motherhood” are both challenged and reproduced by a researcher's maternal status and question the implications of this for feminist research. Originality/value – While much has been written about researcher “positionality” and the impact of researcher identity on the research process, the ways in which a researcher's “maternal status” is implicated in the research process has been left largely unexamined. Yet, as this paper highlights, the interaction of the often-conflicting identities of “mother”, “researcher”, “feminist” and “woman” may shape the research process in subtle yet profound ways, raising important questions about the limits of what feminist social research about “motherhood” can achieve.

Nurturing “Critical Hope” in Teaching Feminist Social Work Research

Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession.

Fiction and the Feminist Academic Novel

This article reviews the use of fiction as a qualitative research method. The article focuses on the feminist academic novel as a means of representing qualitative research, raising feminist consciousness, accessing hard-to-get-at dimensions of social life, opening up a multiplicity of meanings, tapping into empathy and resonance as ways of knowing and reaching diverse audiences with feminist social research knowledge. The article centers on the construction of the two lead female characters in the feminist arts-based novel, Low-Fat Love.

A Revolution Reconsidered? Examining the Practice of Qualitative Research in Feminist Scholarship

One of feminism’s most notable objectives is to revolutionize the practice of empirical inquiry. Many feminist scholars have advocated the adoption of qualitative research methods based on standpoint epistemology as a means of reducing power imbalances and giving voice to participants. However, there has been little attempt to systematically address the extent to which qualitative methods have been integrated into feminist social science research. There are a number of key factors that suggest that such a review is both timely and relevant for a reflexive feminist inquiry. Numerous scholars have drawn attention to the rigid and onerous ethical demands that feminist qualitative methodologies may entail, and the postmodern turn has challenged feminist standpoint underpinnings by asserting the discursiveness and ephemerality of all knowledge and experience. This article assesses the impact of these epistemological and methodological challenges on the ways in which feminist qualitative research is undertaken by summarizing a content analysis of recent academic feminist literature. We ask whether qualitative research continues to predominate in feminist social science research and, if so, which methods, in particular, are most prominent. We characterize the overall epistemological and methodological trends and implications based on a sample of mainstream feminist social science journals, noting congruence and divergence in theoretical and methodological advances in the field.

Can You Hear Me Now? Augmentative Communication, Methodological Empowerment, and the Life Story of Jon Feucht

Keywordsaugmentative communication, disability, biography, methodologyAbstractFeminist social research and disability studies converge in arguing for a research methodology undertaken on behalf of and to empower research participants. Our research, an ongoing life history project with Jon Feucht, has been undertaken in this tradition. Throughout much of his life, Jon struggled with a severe speech disability due to cerebral palsy that significantly impaired his ability to communicate verbally with others. After acquiring a sophisticated augmentative communication device, Jon's life changed for the better. In this paper we describe the nature of augmentative communication, share some of Jon's thoughts about augmentative communication and people with disabilities, and explore some of the challenges and opportunities facing researchers collaborating on research projects with individuals who use augmentative communication to speak.

Sexual Violence, Disidentification, and Long-Term Trauma Recovery: A Process-Oriented Case Study Analysis

Psychotherapy for survivors of sexual assault often focuses on recovery from acute posttraumatic stress symptoms. Little research has investigated treatments conducted when an asymptomatic patient seeks treatment for a traumatic event that occurred many years prior to starting therapy. This study draws on current literatures about rape recovery to frame the case history of Michelle, a 30-year-old woman who was raped at age 17. Using Herman's trauma theory, Kohut's self-psychology, and feminist social science research about gendered violence, this case study illustrates the complicated dimensions of “trauma bonds,” whereby rape survivors harbor positive feelings toward their rapists. Using detailed transcripts from the 50-week treatment, this study illustrates clinical strategies for helping a rape survivor move from intellectualizing and distancing to emotional connection, acceptance, and recovery. Particular attention is paid to Michelle's identification with her perpetrator and the clinical implications for the therapist–patient relationship in cases of long-term trauma recovery.

Criticality, Not Paranoia: A Generative Register for Feminist Social Research

“Taking Turns” is an open forum for brief and rapid assessments of changes emerging in the field and its discontents. In this series, we invite Nordic as well as non-Nordic scholars to present their take on contemporary challenges for feminist scholarship and gender research. In this issue, we are handing the relay over to Sasha Roseneil, Professor of Sociology and Social Theory, and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also Professor II at the Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo. Professor Roseneil is currently chair of the Psychosocial Studies Network in the UK, and from 2007 to 2011 she was Deputy Scientific Director of the EU-funded project FEMCIT. Her recent research has involved the study of intimacy, subjectivity, personal life, citizenship, and social movements, engaging with queer, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory, and using comparative and biographical-narrative methods.

Beyond the Binary: Critical Feminisms in Social Work

Affilia has had 30 or more years of creating and holding space open for feminist social work scholars, activists, and poets to reflect on the nexus of their work and social justice. So why is Affilia publishing this special issue on critical feminisms and why is the journal’s corporate board organizing an upcoming conference on unsettling feminisms? Is there a need? Yes, we would answer emphatically. There is a need to open and broaden spaces for critical feminist work because much feminist social work research, practice, and education focus on ‘‘women’s issues’’ without critically exploring or analyzing structural issues and forces as they inform people’s lives. In this era of preemptive wars and increasingly globalized racial and class disparities, critical voices are systematically silenced or dismissed. Without critical feminist voices that highlight the ways in which inequalities in power and social structures distort gender, many people experience limited access to opportunities and a reduced potential for development. We join with Trevino, Harris, and Wallace (2008, p. 8) and paraphrase the much-needed contribution from critical scholarship:

What Makes it Feminist?: Mapping the Landscape of Feminist Social Work Research

Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of analysis; the social work profession, started and maintained largely by women, has been home to several generations of feminists. Yet, social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions of feminist research. This article explores contemporary feminist social work research by examining 50 randomly selected research-based articles that claimed feminism within their work. The analysis focused on the authors’ treatment of the gender binary, their grounding in theory, their treatment of methodology, and their feminist claims. Feminist social work researchers are invited to reconceptualize feminisms to include third-wave feminist thought and more explicitly engage theory and reflexivity in their work.

Critical realism and post-structuralist feminism: The difficult path to mutual understanding

Tony Lawson, Sandra Harding, Drucilla K. Barker, Fabienne Peter and Julie A. Nelson have recently debated the merits and demerits of critical realism as the basis of feminist social research. Yet the dialogue is left unfinished, with no clear agreement attained. Some key features of that failure are analysed in this article. It is suggested that, despite shared support for explicitly post-positivistic stances, critical realists and post- structuralist feminists cannot gain much from a dialogue that proceeds like this one. Other modes of discussion should be looked for. One more promising basis for such discussion - a question-driven approach to social scientific explanation - is introduced at the end of the article.

A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change

If the scientific consensus is correct, then humanity faces an impending climate crisis of catastrophic proportions. It is no longer a question of whether it is really happening, but what will be the impacts of climate change on societies around the world and how governments and individuals will adapt to the troubles they will bring. In the light of frightening predictions, it might reasonably be asked, what is the point of suggesting that greater attention should be paid to gender? Feminist scholarship on environmental problems must always be ready for such questions, to defend the relevance of gender analysis in the face of dominant tendencies to see humanity as homogeneous, science as apolitical, and social justice as a luxury that cannot be chosen over survival. In this essay, I make the case for feminist social research on climate change with the following argument: shedding light on the gender dimensions of climate change will enable a more accurate diagnosis and a more promising ‘cure’ than is possible with a gender neutral approach. My argument is that any attempt to tackle climate change that excludes a gender analysis will be insufficient, unjust and therefore unsustainable. Supporting this argument with evidence is challenging because there is a worrying lack of research on which to draw. Social research on climate change has been slow to develop; feminist research into the gender dimensions has been even slower. After briefly taking stock of the small amount of research that currently exists on these issues, I take a critical look at the ways in which gendered discourses, roles and identities shape the political and material aspects of climate change. I consider the ways in which gender plays a role in three broad areas: i) the construction of climate change, ii) experiences of climate change in everyday life and iii) institutional and individual responses to climate change. Where possible I discuss what is already known in the available research; but it is also possible to draw on traditions of feminist theorizing in the field of ‘gender and environment’. In many ways climate change raises issues that are no different from the environmental challenges we have been facing for the past 40 years. My intention is to highlight gaps where more research is needed now, and so I conclude with a call for more feminist-informed sociological research into the ways in which the material and discursive dimensions of climate change are deeply gendered. If these can be made more obvious, then perhaps the need

Remembering the Historical Present

471 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. I had the benefit of reading versions of this paper at a number of institutions, and I wish to record the help I received at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the New School for Social Research, Waseda University (Tokyo), and the University of Washington. I also want to thank Kristin Ross, Carol Gluck, and Hyun Ok Park for commenting on earlier revisions of the manuscript. Remembering the Historical Present

Critical Realism and Post-Structuralist Feminism

Tony Lawson, Sandra Harding, Drucilla K. Barker, Fabienne Peter and Julie A. Nelson have recently debated the merits and demerits of critical realism as the basis of feminist social research. Yet the dialogue is left unfinished, with no clear agreement attained. Some key features of that failure are analysed in this article. It is suggested that, despite shared support for explicitly post-positivistic stances, critical realists and post-structuralist feminists cannot gain much from a dialogue that proceeds like this one. Other modes of discussion should be looked for. One more promising basis for such discussion - a question-driven approach to social scientific explanation - is introduced at the end of the article.