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Week One: Feminist Research Practice - Seminar

Hesse-Bibe: "Through her words, [Harriet] Jacobs demonstrates how the concrete lived experience is a key place from which to build knowledge and foment social change." p.2

hooks "Personal experience is such fertile ground for the production of liberatory feminist theory because usually it forms the base of our theory-making." p.8

 From Hesse-Bibe: Arlie Hochschild wrote an article in their volume that showed that people who hold the cards of the dominant and privileged position often experienced less anger and more love. Women may receive displaced anger from their husband's workplace frustration, while simultaneously experiencing bite-back from women alongside them who are in similar, unfulfilling situations. Hochschild also found that women in clerical positions were required to do fulfil an emotional role at work, due to their gender. They may have to keep the calendar up to date, whilst also making sure everyone in the office is level-headed.

 Postmodernism is an umbrella term for a variety of perspectives in which there is an emphasis in highlighting the experience of the "other".

Post-modern and post-structuralist theorists have also disrupted feminist theory by challenging the essentialist categories of: women, sex, gender, the body. p.12. Some believe by destabilising binary categories, feminist theory is polarised.

Nina Lykke: 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

Presentation: 
Introduction slide: Title of week and authors
Content slide: Definitions, split concepts into three

Epistemology: what is considered to be scientific knowledge (how is it possible)
Methodology: the processes and the procedures and principles that lead to that knowledge
Ontology: what is knowledge, how that knowledge comes into being, is there one reality (how it came to be) (whats in the world and how we define it and how we construct knowledge)

Methods: the particular approach to research
Positivism: 'the god trick' - Donna Haraway - you have a vision of knowledge coming from neutrality, of objectivity, 'good science', relies on dualism such as nature/culture
Feminist epistemology: challenges and problematises this - by challenging this they open up ways to create new ways of producing knowledge. This is shown in different disciplines: sociology, biology etc.
Feminist empiricism: starts from the positivist paradigm: they recognised androcentric bias that has to subordinate groups, to improve scientific methods. It still can produce bias and excludes other forms of knowledge that is not recognised by scientific community. Where does it come from? Marx and Hegelian. Feminists built on that and used a lens to analyse the world around them. 
Feminist epistemology: refers to women experiences and interests, working class interests, relies on the experience of the oppressed. This is problematises by the fact a hierarchy has to be defined before research, and groups have to be essentialised. 
Postmodernism: movement and time that is created in reaction to modernism (positivism, optimism about how knowledge is created, knowledge is objective and universal). Postmodernism critices that, says knowledge is never objective, is influenced by politics and history. "anti-epistemology" Lykke. Criticising fixed categories and fixed structures. Focuses on social justice and oppressed groups and making power relationships visible. 
Empowerment, social change and justice is linked to feminist practice. Broaden scope to allow more intersectionality. 
Postmodernism Feminist epistemology: what is good research. calls into question the dualisms of women/man, homo/hetero, black/white. But so many questions makes it difficult to have a ground to build from. 
Ethics & Practices: Entangled with methods, what is good practice/research. Feminist practice moves away from the objective of interviewer being separate from the interviewee. Ethics are important in every step of the research practice. Where do you come from, what power dynamic is there - reflexivity. Diffraction may be more appropriate before the practice. Haraway says reflection is just looking at the mirror and brings no new perspectives. Creates new patterns, how the different experiences creates new perspectives and reveal constitutive elements of the research (positionality, background, assumptions).
Accountability: what do you leave behind, what will you publish. 

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