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Week one: Feminist Research Practice - Lecture

Presentation: apply what you learnt through the reading to a case study. Don't summarise the text, use it practically.

Expanded log: take research method and present it in depth.

How did I practice my methodology, epistemology and ontology? What are the rules of my methodological proceeding? What epistemological framework did I use? Which theories did I use?

What constitutes feminist research practice

Diverse field
Multiple goals and politics
Multiple strategies of collaboration & separation
Analysis of power relations & structures of oppression
Norm crticism
Developing alternatives
Intersectionality & Interdisciplinarity

Always about attending to the power dynamics in society

Intersectionality - class, gender, race, ablism. How systems of oppression work together. 80's - when intersectionality was talked about, but 89 when it had a name.

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist thought (1990) - matrix of domination

- Structural domain (laws, economy, religion)
- Disciplinary (bureaucracy, surveillance)
- Hegemony (ideology, values, education, culture, family)
- Interpersonal (relationships, experience of self and others)

Interdisciplinary - how different disciplines support and enrich each other in research. Allows you to work with diverse tools.

How is feminist knowledge produced?

- Empirical research (interviews)
- Theoretical research
- Extraction of knowledge and contributing to the groups you engage with
- Ethics & Politics

Relation of feminist knowledge & ethics?

Research benefits participants
Knowing the power dynamic
Rules and boundaries
Challenging distinction between researcher and research object/subject and working with the difference
Don't homogenise the knowledge from your perspective
"interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal (Audre Lorde in Hesse-Bibbe 2011, 4)

Building blocks of knowledge

Epistemology - criteria for what counts as knowledge
Ontology - relation of knowledge and being
Methodology - rules & procedures for acquiring knowledge
Method - concrete research practices
Ethics - moral principles
Politics - relation to the issues of social justice and inequality

There is no singular approach to feminist research practice, there is always a plurality
Follow what inspires you
Combine approaches, methods, practices
Research practices are not innocent!

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