Lykke, Nina. 2010. “Methodologies, Methods and Ethics.” In Feminist Studies,
144–62. London: Routledge.
Empiricism: the belief that sense-experience is the most reliable source of knowledge. John Locke believed that we are born knowing nothing, and that everything that we learn is from experience.
Feminist empiricism: Feminist empiricism proposes that feminist theories can be objectively proven through evidence. Feminist empiricism critiques what it perceives to be inadequacies and biases within mainstream research methods, including positivism.
Positivism: The view that everything that exists can be verified through experiments, observations and mathematical/scientific proof. Positivists believe in objective truth, i.e. everything we experience as reality is really out there. Positivism divides all statements into true, false or meaningless.
Epistemology: The study of knowledge, e.g. What does it mean to say we know something? or How do we know that we know? Epistemology asks how knowledge can be uncovered and secured.
Anti-epistemology: The act of obscuring knowledge through object-orientated (classification, censorship) or link-orientated (making knowledge difficult to find) anti-epistemology.
Ontology: The study of existence. Ontology raises questions about what exists, what kinds of things exist and what it means for something to exist.
Standpoint theory: A theory that knowledge stems from social position. It argues that traditional research has ignored women and marginalised people, and has not produced objective research. It emerged from the Marxist theory that people of lower class have special access to knowledge not accessible to the master class.
Rhizomatic: research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.
Feminist hermeneutics: The theory, art and practice of interpretation in the interest of women. Feminist hermeneutics holds that the meaning perceived in a text depends on the social setting in which it was produced as well as the social setting in which it is received and handed on.
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"A common distinction between epistemology and methodology is that the former deals with criteria for what constitutes scientific and scholarly knowledge, while the latter focuses on rule, principles and procedures for the production of knowledge." p.144
"methods relates to the concrete approaches chosen to carry out a particular piece of research." p.144
"discussions of methodologies and methods have not occupied the same spectacular space in the limelight of feminist theorizing as have debates on epistemologies." p.145
The author believes that "an open-ended, experimental pluralism in the choice of methods is important for Feminist Studies." p.145
Methodological principles in feminist empiricism
Eliminating gender bias from research is an important methodological principal for feminist empiricism.
For feminist empiricists focusing on medicine, natural sciences and quantitively orientated social sciences, eliminating gender bias means stricter assessments of what validity, reliability and relevence means. p.146
Eliminating gender bias can be used in designing new research, but also for re-analysing old research results. p.146
"Methodological key terms for feminist empiricists are 'better normal science' and 'stricter control over the logic of discovery.'" p.146
Methodological principles in classic standpoint feminism
"research founded in classic standpoint feminism will take its point of departure in women's interests and perspectives. For example, research informed by standpoint feminism will define itself as research for, by, about and with women, and this starting point will provide methodological guidelines for the articulation of research questions and for the construction of research designs." p.146
"A 'women's perspective' is defined in different ways by different standpoint feminists. This means the methodological guidelines will also differ." p.147
"The definition of the women's perspective will depend on the particular ontology, understood as the specific theory about the gender order, that forms the context of the analysis." p.147
"the focus framing the methodological guidelines can also be defined as the experiences of a specific group of women, for example black women or lesbian women." p.147 However, standpoint feminist studies can also prioritise an all-encompassing feminist analysis of society instead of individual experiences.
"standpoint feminist methodologies are grounded in a critical realism, that is, in an ontological assumption that there is a real world 'out there', which can be analysed as an entity separate from the researcher and from language and discourse." p.147
"The criteria for the construction of a research design and for the choice of methods are based on the underlying ontological assumptions about a specific social formation, its power differentials and the best paths to social transformation and emancipation." p.147
Postmodern feminist (anti-)methodology
"When fixed epistemological frameworks are called into question within a postmodern framework ... fixed methodological rules and criteria for choice of methods vanish" p.147
Where standpoint feminist research is based on the idea that women's experiences and interests, defined against ontological assumptions about class, race, age etc, should be the focus of research, postmodern feminist research begins from the (anti-)methodological radical skepticism towards the binaries of woman/man, hetero/homosexual, white/black.
"postmodern feminist research is often methodologically guided by a tendency to multiply gender in its intersections with other sociocultural categorisations, or to abandon predetermined categories altogether in favour of open ones" p.147
QUESTION: What does she mean by "to look for excess meanings, undecidable in-between spaces between fixed categories... is also central to the approach" p.148
Questioning the concept of what experience is leads to the postmodern feminist theory that subjects are constructed discursively and narratively, meaning discourse and narrative analysis are central entrance points to subject formations. p.148
"As a result of the linguistic and narrative turn, language, which is considered to be a transparent medium in more traditional understandings of knowledge production and science... is instead perceived as actively creative and always fluid in its productions of meaning." p.149
"This linguistic and narrative turn has been highly influential within Feminist Studies. It means that, in an (anti-)methodological sense, postmodern feminist research is often characterised by a strong tendency to carry out linguistic experiments and explore narrativity as an analytical tool apt to criticise the master narratives of hegemonic power as well as to articulate alternative - non-essentialising- approaches to analyses of resistance and subjective agency" p.149
Rhizomatics and sexual difference as analytical strategy
"What does it mean methodologically to take the body as a normative, but non-essentialising starting point, and to search for alternative feminist figurations in a rhizomatic and affirmative mode?" p.150
"the body is not a static unitary essence, but a dynamic, multiple, non-hierarchical and differentiating process; and it is this bodily process that, according to sexual difference theory, makes up an important methodological hub." p.150
"Braidotti argues that the aim of 'the nomadic or rhizomatic mode in critical theory' is to be able to account for 'processes, not fixed points'."
Agential realism and situated knowledges as analytical strategy
Agential realism is "where the subjects and objects of research, knower and known, are part of the same context and not fenced off from each other." p.151
"According to Barad, the researcher subject and the object of research are not a priori bounded off from each other. Instead they are always to be considered as parts of the same world and reality and involved in continuous intra-actions with each other." p.151. However, the cuts and boundaries are necessary for science and knowledge production, so provisional, momentary cuts and boundaries are created, defining and contextualising both the researcher and the object of research.
Siting and sighting: the former means the researcher must reflect on their position (time, space, body, history, intersecting power differentials). This encourages the researcher to reflect on and take responsibility for the context of the research. The latter, sighting, implies that the research technologies and their effects are visible to all. It also means that the material and conceptual dimensions of research technologies/apparatuses are involved in constant intra-action with the researcher and the researched.
Haraway's ontological starting point for the 'imploded object': "The world must be understood as a complex, process-based network, which makes it analytically problematic to separate our subjectivity from objectivity, human from non-human, organism from technology, discourse from materiality, fact from fiction, macro-analysis from micro-analysis and so on." p.153
Imploded object: "how entities that appear to be fixed, stable and self-evident can be analytically unlocked and genealogically traced back to the dynamic process of transformation of which they are momentary products." p.153
Diffraction: "an alternative methodology to critical reflection" p.154 It is used in the space of reflection. Instead of being self-reflexive, researchers practice diffraction which creates continuously new patterns of difference. "diffraction is useful to analyse change or dynamism related to processes of sociocultural transformation, liberation, emancipation" p.155
"Diffraction is the production of difference patterns in the world, not just of the same reflected - displaced - elsewhere." (Haraway, 1997, 268)
"Objects of research can be interpreted as imploding objects or phenomena, and the analysis can be made more diverse and multi-faceted, if the methodology of diffraction is included in order to make the foreground and background of the phenomena shift." p.155
Epistemology and ethics
"feminist empiricism is built on the belief in positivist ideals about value neutrality" p.156
"In classic feminist standpoint epistemology, questions of political values and social justice are central and outspoken." p.156
"There is a clear connection between the standpoint epistemological focus on women's experiences as a critical social and political point of departure and the emphasis on these 'feminine' values as an epistemological and ethical-moral foundation" p.156
"Within a postmodern framework, there is no final, universally given truth about 'the good,' 'the just,' 'the morally correct' and so on. Categories are unstable, multi-layered, incalculable and they 'leak', that is their meanings spill over into each other and cannot be unambiguously defined." p.157
Postmodern feminist anti-ethics stance believes that lack of ambiguity and universalism results in the exclusion of diversity and a confirmation of the logic of the same. p.157
"Scientific research produces realities and worlds, and precisely because research, for good and for bad, is never without real effects, the researcher cannot allow herself or himself to avoid taking moral co-responsibility for the consequences." p.159 "the researcher is situated in and is part of the reality she or he investigates." p.159
Pluralism of methods and feminist hermeneutics
"the landscape of Feminist Studies in terms of methods is characterised by a broad diversity of approaches" p.160
"An experimental and innovative perspective on issues of methods is, in one way or another, integral to a major part of feminist research." p.160
"Feminist Studies has critically challenged biological determinism and cultural essentialism in the production of scientific and scholarly knowledge about intersectional gender/sex. In addition it has highlighted how gender/sex has been ignored under the cover of a focus on gender-neutral ideas about 'the human'." p.160
"the innovative force of Feminist Studies will only operate in optimal ways if it maintains an experimental, unorthodox and open approach to the issue of methods." p.161
"analytical strategies drawing on critical feminist theorizing should be seen as able to interfere with all kinds of research methods - qualitative and quantitative methods, methods characteristic of the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as methods used in biology and medicine" p.161
144–62. London: Routledge.
Empiricism: the belief that sense-experience is the most reliable source of knowledge. John Locke believed that we are born knowing nothing, and that everything that we learn is from experience.
Feminist empiricism: Feminist empiricism proposes that feminist theories can be objectively proven through evidence. Feminist empiricism critiques what it perceives to be inadequacies and biases within mainstream research methods, including positivism.
Positivism: The view that everything that exists can be verified through experiments, observations and mathematical/scientific proof. Positivists believe in objective truth, i.e. everything we experience as reality is really out there. Positivism divides all statements into true, false or meaningless.
Epistemology: The study of knowledge, e.g. What does it mean to say we know something? or How do we know that we know? Epistemology asks how knowledge can be uncovered and secured.
Anti-epistemology: The act of obscuring knowledge through object-orientated (classification, censorship) or link-orientated (making knowledge difficult to find) anti-epistemology.
Ontology: The study of existence. Ontology raises questions about what exists, what kinds of things exist and what it means for something to exist.
Standpoint theory: A theory that knowledge stems from social position. It argues that traditional research has ignored women and marginalised people, and has not produced objective research. It emerged from the Marxist theory that people of lower class have special access to knowledge not accessible to the master class.
Rhizomatic: research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.
Feminist hermeneutics: The theory, art and practice of interpretation in the interest of women. Feminist hermeneutics holds that the meaning perceived in a text depends on the social setting in which it was produced as well as the social setting in which it is received and handed on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A common distinction between epistemology and methodology is that the former deals with criteria for what constitutes scientific and scholarly knowledge, while the latter focuses on rule, principles and procedures for the production of knowledge." p.144
"methods relates to the concrete approaches chosen to carry out a particular piece of research." p.144
"discussions of methodologies and methods have not occupied the same spectacular space in the limelight of feminist theorizing as have debates on epistemologies." p.145
The author believes that "an open-ended, experimental pluralism in the choice of methods is important for Feminist Studies." p.145
Methodological principles in feminist empiricism
Eliminating gender bias from research is an important methodological principal for feminist empiricism.
For feminist empiricists focusing on medicine, natural sciences and quantitively orientated social sciences, eliminating gender bias means stricter assessments of what validity, reliability and relevence means. p.146
Eliminating gender bias can be used in designing new research, but also for re-analysing old research results. p.146
"Methodological key terms for feminist empiricists are 'better normal science' and 'stricter control over the logic of discovery.'" p.146
Methodological principles in classic standpoint feminism
"research founded in classic standpoint feminism will take its point of departure in women's interests and perspectives. For example, research informed by standpoint feminism will define itself as research for, by, about and with women, and this starting point will provide methodological guidelines for the articulation of research questions and for the construction of research designs." p.146
"A 'women's perspective' is defined in different ways by different standpoint feminists. This means the methodological guidelines will also differ." p.147
"The definition of the women's perspective will depend on the particular ontology, understood as the specific theory about the gender order, that forms the context of the analysis." p.147
"the focus framing the methodological guidelines can also be defined as the experiences of a specific group of women, for example black women or lesbian women." p.147 However, standpoint feminist studies can also prioritise an all-encompassing feminist analysis of society instead of individual experiences.
"standpoint feminist methodologies are grounded in a critical realism, that is, in an ontological assumption that there is a real world 'out there', which can be analysed as an entity separate from the researcher and from language and discourse." p.147
"The criteria for the construction of a research design and for the choice of methods are based on the underlying ontological assumptions about a specific social formation, its power differentials and the best paths to social transformation and emancipation." p.147
Postmodern feminist (anti-)methodology
"When fixed epistemological frameworks are called into question within a postmodern framework ... fixed methodological rules and criteria for choice of methods vanish" p.147
Where standpoint feminist research is based on the idea that women's experiences and interests, defined against ontological assumptions about class, race, age etc, should be the focus of research, postmodern feminist research begins from the (anti-)methodological radical skepticism towards the binaries of woman/man, hetero/homosexual, white/black.
"postmodern feminist research is often methodologically guided by a tendency to multiply gender in its intersections with other sociocultural categorisations, or to abandon predetermined categories altogether in favour of open ones" p.147
QUESTION: What does she mean by "to look for excess meanings, undecidable in-between spaces between fixed categories... is also central to the approach" p.148
Questioning the concept of what experience is leads to the postmodern feminist theory that subjects are constructed discursively and narratively, meaning discourse and narrative analysis are central entrance points to subject formations. p.148
"As a result of the linguistic and narrative turn, language, which is considered to be a transparent medium in more traditional understandings of knowledge production and science... is instead perceived as actively creative and always fluid in its productions of meaning." p.149
"This linguistic and narrative turn has been highly influential within Feminist Studies. It means that, in an (anti-)methodological sense, postmodern feminist research is often characterised by a strong tendency to carry out linguistic experiments and explore narrativity as an analytical tool apt to criticise the master narratives of hegemonic power as well as to articulate alternative - non-essentialising- approaches to analyses of resistance and subjective agency" p.149
Rhizomatics and sexual difference as analytical strategy
"What does it mean methodologically to take the body as a normative, but non-essentialising starting point, and to search for alternative feminist figurations in a rhizomatic and affirmative mode?" p.150
"the body is not a static unitary essence, but a dynamic, multiple, non-hierarchical and differentiating process; and it is this bodily process that, according to sexual difference theory, makes up an important methodological hub." p.150
"Braidotti argues that the aim of 'the nomadic or rhizomatic mode in critical theory' is to be able to account for 'processes, not fixed points'."
Agential realism and situated knowledges as analytical strategy
Agential realism is "where the subjects and objects of research, knower and known, are part of the same context and not fenced off from each other." p.151
"According to Barad, the researcher subject and the object of research are not a priori bounded off from each other. Instead they are always to be considered as parts of the same world and reality and involved in continuous intra-actions with each other." p.151. However, the cuts and boundaries are necessary for science and knowledge production, so provisional, momentary cuts and boundaries are created, defining and contextualising both the researcher and the object of research.
Siting and sighting: the former means the researcher must reflect on their position (time, space, body, history, intersecting power differentials). This encourages the researcher to reflect on and take responsibility for the context of the research. The latter, sighting, implies that the research technologies and their effects are visible to all. It also means that the material and conceptual dimensions of research technologies/apparatuses are involved in constant intra-action with the researcher and the researched.
Haraway's ontological starting point for the 'imploded object': "The world must be understood as a complex, process-based network, which makes it analytically problematic to separate our subjectivity from objectivity, human from non-human, organism from technology, discourse from materiality, fact from fiction, macro-analysis from micro-analysis and so on." p.153
Imploded object: "how entities that appear to be fixed, stable and self-evident can be analytically unlocked and genealogically traced back to the dynamic process of transformation of which they are momentary products." p.153
Diffraction: "an alternative methodology to critical reflection" p.154 It is used in the space of reflection. Instead of being self-reflexive, researchers practice diffraction which creates continuously new patterns of difference. "diffraction is useful to analyse change or dynamism related to processes of sociocultural transformation, liberation, emancipation" p.155
"Diffraction is the production of difference patterns in the world, not just of the same reflected - displaced - elsewhere." (Haraway, 1997, 268)
"Objects of research can be interpreted as imploding objects or phenomena, and the analysis can be made more diverse and multi-faceted, if the methodology of diffraction is included in order to make the foreground and background of the phenomena shift." p.155
Epistemology and ethics
"feminist empiricism is built on the belief in positivist ideals about value neutrality" p.156
"In classic feminist standpoint epistemology, questions of political values and social justice are central and outspoken." p.156
"There is a clear connection between the standpoint epistemological focus on women's experiences as a critical social and political point of departure and the emphasis on these 'feminine' values as an epistemological and ethical-moral foundation" p.156
"Within a postmodern framework, there is no final, universally given truth about 'the good,' 'the just,' 'the morally correct' and so on. Categories are unstable, multi-layered, incalculable and they 'leak', that is their meanings spill over into each other and cannot be unambiguously defined." p.157
Postmodern feminist anti-ethics stance believes that lack of ambiguity and universalism results in the exclusion of diversity and a confirmation of the logic of the same. p.157
"Scientific research produces realities and worlds, and precisely because research, for good and for bad, is never without real effects, the researcher cannot allow herself or himself to avoid taking moral co-responsibility for the consequences." p.159 "the researcher is situated in and is part of the reality she or he investigates." p.159
Pluralism of methods and feminist hermeneutics
"the landscape of Feminist Studies in terms of methods is characterised by a broad diversity of approaches" p.160
"An experimental and innovative perspective on issues of methods is, in one way or another, integral to a major part of feminist research." p.160
"Feminist Studies has critically challenged biological determinism and cultural essentialism in the production of scientific and scholarly knowledge about intersectional gender/sex. In addition it has highlighted how gender/sex has been ignored under the cover of a focus on gender-neutral ideas about 'the human'." p.160
"the innovative force of Feminist Studies will only operate in optimal ways if it maintains an experimental, unorthodox and open approach to the issue of methods." p.161
"analytical strategies drawing on critical feminist theorizing should be seen as able to interfere with all kinds of research methods - qualitative and quantitative methods, methods characteristic of the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as methods used in biology and medicine" p.161
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