{"id":186,"date":"2018-07-23T11:23:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T11:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socp3.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=186"},"modified":"2019-05-03T12:03:49","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T12:03:49","slug":"feminist-methodology-in-sociological-research","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/chapter\/feminist-methodology-in-sociological-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Feminist Methodology in Sociological Research"},"content":{"raw":"
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  1. Objective<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

    In this module you will learn how feminist praxis and theory pose challenges to the dominant trends of social\/sociological research methodology. Being aware of the hierarchies inherent in research, feminists tend to go beyond such constrains.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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    1. Introduction<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

      The feminist sociologists, using the tools of the very discipline, bring up a forceful critique. They tend to address women\u2019s everyday experiences and concerns, reveal the gender-based stereotypes and biases, and retrieve the subjugated knowledge forms. They draw attention to the hegemonic trends inherent in the basic structures and ideologies of the ma(in)le stream social research processes. Feminist methodology involves an overlapping multi-disciplinary approach. They remain unified not by shared solutions, but by mutual commitments to the problems. Feminist research aims at the emancipation of the women and other marginalized groups from patriarchal domination.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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      1. Methodology: an epistemological question<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

        Let us begin with three inter-related concepts: method, methodology and epistemology referring to three different aspects of the research process. Research methods are the tools or techniques (ways of proceeding) of bringing together facts, information, data, evidences, suggestions, silences and hushes which constitute the social. Methods of inquiry include observing, examining texts (written, audio-visual) and interviewing or administering questionnaires of various kinds. A researcher could arrange these methods either\/both in qualitative and\/or quantitative means as per the demands of her\/his research question. Methodology, on the other hand, addresses the theoretical questions about a particular research. \u201cA methodology is a theory and analysis of how research does and should proceed\u2026\u201d (Harding 1987: 3). It deals with how a specific research question could be looked at \u2013 from which theoretical perspective(s) or concepts. Research involves a sensible synchronization, not a blind application, of methods. The same method, for instance, interview, can be used diversely while addressing different research problems from different theoretical structures. Methodology outlines the rationale as well as the orientation of the research methods. Epistemology is simplistically the \u201ctheory of knowledge\u201d that outlines a set of presumptions about the social world involving institutions, interactions and discourses. It is about: who can be a \u2018knower\u2019 or who has the authority to know? What can be \u2018known\u2019 or what are the parameters of knowledge? Who decides what is to be known? How, on what basis is this decision taken? Based on these assumptions an individual researcher has to decide upon what s\/he can\/not study, and how s\/he can\/not conduct the study. Methodology, addressing \u2018how\u2019 we produce knowledge, or the \u2018terms\u2019 of knowledge production, thus, remains an epistemological question. The epistemological-methodological question of knowledge production is inevitably a political one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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        1. Methodology: a political question<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

          There are at least three ways in which epistemology-methodology invokes politics. First, the conditions for the production of knowledge reflect social hierarchies of power and privilege. It is the system of hegemony\/authority which determines who can participate in the knowledge producing processes and whose views on knowledge have the potential to gain broader acceptance. Second, a specific body of knowledge mirrors the social location of the particular \u2018knower\u2019. The socio-political identity of the knower bears a substantive weight on the knowledge they produce. Third, a body of knowledge often results in approving or disapproving certain kinds of voices and may legitimise or delegitimize given discursive hierarchies and arrangements of speaking. These three possibilities can mutually coexist, in any given combination. There is a wealth of work that has explored such political effects on epistemology. One of Karl Marx\u2019s significant theoretical contributions is to initiate this critique of philosophy. He emphasizes that the capitalist conditions develop \u2018positivist\u2019 knowledge (denying the influence of socio-political factors on conceptual frameworks) reifying it as absolute. The whole group of Frankfurt School theorists (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer) and the theorists of sociology of knowledge (Karl Manheim, Max Scheler, and Robert K. Merton) make similar observations.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

          The feminist theorists have a different point of intervention. The feminist thinkers point at how the dominant knowledge practices disadvantage women by: (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them of epistemic authority \u2013 denigrating \u2018feminine\u2019 cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (3) representing women as inferior, deviant or important only as the tool to attain patriarchal goals, (4) rendering women\u2019s activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (5) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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          1. The Origin of Feminist Research<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

            Celebrated feminist thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft (English, 1759-1797),<\/strong> Virginia Woolf (English, 1882-1941), Simone de Beauvoir (French, 1908-1986), Betty Friedan (American, 1921-2006) and many others \u2013 over a long stretch of time \u2013 have been speaking on the exclusion of women from the dominant forms of knowledge. The epistemic import, experiential richness, emancipatory concerns of the \u2018woman\u2019 remain invalidated by the hegemonic processes of knowledge production. Feminist theory and praxis contests the hegemonic body of knowledge that assumes the generic term \u2018man\u2019 as inclusive of \u2018woman\u2019. What is true for the dominant groups also holds for women and other oppressed groups. The feminist questioning of the epistemological and methodological tenets of main-stream research draws much from the insights of the feminist thinkers. Though one can make a conceptual distinction between feminist research and feminist methodology, the categories are overtly inter-related. Feminist research is a broader category including any empirical\/theoretical study concerning feminism. Feminist methodology, on the other hand, is explicitly involved in the methodological discussion that emerges from the feminist critique.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Feminist research originated in the backdrop of the second wave feminist movement (1960s and 1970s). \u2018Consciousness raising\u2019 is one of the core events of the second wave movement. In different locations, small groups of women, from different walks of life, would interact with each other. Carol Hanisch states \u201cOne of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time\u201d (1969\/1979: 204-5). The personal is thus political. All relationships between men and women are institutionalized relationship of power; it reveals how male power is exercised and reinforced through the personalized spaces like that of childrearing, love, marriage, sexual practices from rape through prostitution to consenting sexual intercourse. Women\u2019s oppression springs from the control of their sexualities and reproduction: mandatory motherhood and compulsory heterosexualities. The assumption that these institutions and practices are natural or purely individual concerns, as Hanisch notes, conceals the reality of women\u2019s systematic oppression. The personal concerns have structural causes and therefore needed to be addressed in political terms (not on an individual basis). Women\u2019s movements should aim at politicizing these personal issues. Kate Millet argues that \u201c\u2026 sex is a status category with political implications\u201d (2000: 24); hence, the patriarchal power is ubiquitous. There involves a deeply entrenched politics of sexuality, beginning with the reproduction of patriarchy through psychological conditioning in the family, which operates in all economic and social structures. Sexual politics is a paradigm of social power, and like all social power, sexual power controls individual both through ideological indoctrination and violence.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            \u2018Consciousness raising\u2019 provided the women with a systematic empirical mode of analysis. Challenging the existing knowledge forms, it allowed women to learn more from one another (Allen 1973, Combahee River Collective 1982). They could now generate a catalogue of ways in which \u2013 what people know or think they know, can be influenced by their own gender (roles, norms, traits, performance, identities), other people\u2019s gender or by ideas about gender (symbolism). Research efforts eliciting information through personal contact, between the researchers and the research subjects, raise the question of how findings might be influenced by gender relations. Each mode of gendered knowledge raises new questions for epistemology. For example, male and female inquirers have differential access to information about the different facets of a society. Researchers may remain subjected to gender based right of entry to different social spaces. Even when allowed in the same social spaces, the gendered presence of the researcher has different effects on those being observed. Physical objects do not behave differently depending on whether a man or a woman is observing them. But human beings do behave differently according to their beliefs about the gender of who is observing them.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            The \u2018consciousness-raising\u2019 groups, Dorothy Smith observes in a seminal book published in 1987, developed increasing consciousness about the stark incongruities between their lived experiences as \u2018women\u2019 and the ma(in)le stream discourses on theory and research. The focus on methodology gained momentum with the publication of this interdisciplinary anthology edited by Sandra Harding (1987). Though the women\u2019s movement mostly began outside the university, feminists in nearly every discipline \u2013 sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, education, and anthropology, as well as the fields of law, medicine, language, and communication \u2013 soon began to relate its methods to their context and work.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Perspectives like feminist empiricism, standpoint theories, postmodernism and post-colonialism \u2013 embarking on a collective project of critique and transformation \u2013 work on the epistemological and methodological significance of subjugated knowledge forms. Scholars have developed feminist approaches in their adaptations of a wide variety of techniques, as has been enlisted by Marjorie L. DeVault in her 1996 essay, including survey and experimental methods (Eichler 1988), interview research (Oakley 1981), inductive fieldwork (Reinharz 1983), Marxist and ethno-methodological approaches (Smith 1987, Stanley & Wise 1983\/93), phenomenology (Levesque-Lopman 1988), action\/participatory research (Mies 1983, Maguire 1987), oral history (Personal Narratives Group 1989, Gluck & Patai 1991) and others. More recent additions to the list include feminist versions of experimental ethnography, and methods based on poststructuralist insights (Lather 1991, Game 1991, Ingraham 1994). Subverting the conventional modes of knowing, feminist research ends to produce newer meanings. It works \u201c\u2026 right at the limits of several categories and approaches\u201d where \u201cone is neither entirely inside or outside\u2026 incurring constantly the risk of falling off one side or the other side of the limit while undoing, redoing, modifying this limit (Trinh T. Minh-ha 1991: 218).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Self-Check Exercise -1<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Q 1. How is method, methodology and epistemology interrelated?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Method, methodology and epistemology are interrelated aspects of the research process. Research methods are the tools or techniques of collecting information and evidences, suggestions and silences about any social event. Observation, interviews, questionnaires are some basic methods of social research. Methodology involves the logical-theoretical orientation of the methods applied to a research process. It includes the theoretical analysis of the methods and principles linked to a specific or a field of study. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It deals with the sources, conditions, structures and limits of knowledge. Methodology addressing the terms of knowledge production is thus an epistemological question.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Q 2. Do you think methodology is a political question? Why?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Methodology is implicated in politics.The macro-micro structural conditions of social-scientific knowledge invoke the questions of social stratification and power: determining its legitimate producers and consumers. There is an impact of the political processes and cultural discourses on the sociologists\u2019 sense of the plausibility of different ways of thinking about the social. For example, in America the Fordist mode of economic and social regulation, sustains a particular epistemological\/methodological orientation called \u2018\u2018American positivism\u2019\u2019 (causally oriented, universalist and empiricist). Again the social location of an individual sociologist would determine the acceptability of her\/his research. For example, the sociological knowledge produced by an upper class-caste, educated, male elite would be more acceptable in a class-caste based patriarchal society like contemporary India.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Q 3.What is the relationship between feminist research and feminist methodology?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

            Feminist research and feminist methodology remain intricately linked to each other. Feminist methodology draws largely from the arguments of the feminist theories. Yet, the categories can be conceptually distinguished. The wider category of feminist research includes all empirical and theoretical studies relating to feminism. Feminist methodology, on the other hand, specifically deals with the methodological arguments that arise from the feminist critique.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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            1. Feminist methodology<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

              Feminist methodology is not to be defined in fixed terms. It is rather open and provisional. Feminist methodology is a cumulative discourse, always receptive to newer insights, emanating from activist and academic efforts. There are many possible approaches to feminist methodology as there are multiple strands of feminism (Tong 2009). Without conforming to any one of such approaches one can think of some basic issues raised by the feminist methodologists. Feminists seek a methodology that will support research of value to women, leading to social change or action beneficial to women and other marginal categories as well. One can speak on feminist methodology from various angles. In this module, we would talk about two major critiques, of positivism and post-modernism, worked out by the feminist theorists. The basic arguments of feminist methodology in the context of these critiques will be posed.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              6.1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist Critique of Positivism<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\ni) The critique of objectivity\r\n\r\n \r\n

              Feminist theorists make a strong critique of positivism, one of the dominant paradigms in social sciences developed out of the rationalist and empiricist movements in the late 1800s Europe. The positivists affirm the existence of an objective reality leading to pure, invariable, and universal knowledge or truth. They hold that applying specific scientific methods (following the natural sciences), the objective reality can be captured accurately. For the classical sociologist like Emile Durkheim, a celebrated figure of the positivistic tradition, facts<\/em> lying \u201coutside of the human mind,\u201d having an \u201cindependent existence outside of the individual consciousness,\u201d (Durkheim 1938\/1965: 20) should be differentiated from values<\/em> emanating from individual consciousness. In The Rules of<\/em> Sociological Method<\/em>, Durkheim (1938\/1965) offers a set of methods to ascertain \u201csocial facts\u201d through objective research. Feminist thinkers hold that the hegemony of the positivist paradigm springs not merely from its claim to objectivity or universality. The dominance emanates from the privileged position positivism holds within a range of power relations (including patriarchy).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The feminist way out<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Without repudiating \u2018objectivity\u2019, the feminists tend to give it a different spin. \u201cStrong objectivity\u201d<\/p>\r\n

              (Harding 1987), grounded on strong political commitments, does not call for value neutrality. The starting point for knowledge production, as per strong objectivity, is the \u2018excluded\u2019 experiences and \u2018silenced\u2019 voices of marginalized others (including women).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Alison Jaggar (1997) identifies emotion as a constitutive element of epistemology. She thinks it is na\u00efve to think that values and feelings do not emerge in the research procedures. The emotional elements determine the choice of research question and the methodological orientation of the researchers. The rational and the emotional binary, governing the positivistic discourse, thus stands erroneous. \u201cValues and emotions enter into the science of the past and the present not only on the level of scientific practice but also on the metascientific level, as answers to various questions: What is Science? How should it be practiced? And what is the status of scientific investigation versus non-scientific modes of enquiry?\u201d (Jaggar1997: 393)<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nii) Critique of the binary mode of knowledge\r\n\r\n \r\n

              Positivistic (and all other dominant modes of) sociological theorization rests on paired concepts \u2013 opposed to each other \u2013 like knower-known, subject-object, reason-emotion, science-humanity, science-nature, culture-nature, public-private, occident-orient, self-other, masculine-feminine and so on. Most often, the first of each pair is considered to be the superior and powerful. Such dichotomies work to maintain the dominance of the hegemonizer over the hegemonized. Conceding knowledge as a political process (Ramazanoglu 1992), feminists argue that there is a primacy of the man-woman distinction in the very act of knowing through binaries. Dichotomies are grounded on the division between male\/subject and female\/object (Stanley and Wise 1983\/93).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The feminist way out<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The binary mode of production of knowledge hegemonizes the object of knowledge. It forgets that the \u2018known\u2019 are also \u2018potential knowers\u2019, the research objects are also \u2018doing subjects\u2019. Objective research thus involves a set of intellectual practices that separate people from the knowledge of their own subjectivity (Stanley 1990). Feminist sociologists reject the binaries of theory and practice, object and subject, and researcher and researched. Contemporary sociologists without overt feminist concerns have also pointed out the problems of research, which works through a separation of the knower and the known. In his book New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of<\/em> Interpretative Sociologies<\/em>, Anthony Giddens (1993) insists on an idea that the constitution of this world as \u2018meaningful\u2019, \u2018accountable\u2019, or \u2018intelligible\u2019 depends upon language, which is not merely a system of signs or symbols but a medium of practical activity. The social scientist draws upon the same sorts of skills as those whose conduct s\/he seeks to analyse. The description of social conduct involves a hermeneutic task of penetrating the frames of meaning which the actors themselves draw upon as they constantly re-constitute the social world.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              iii)\u00a0\u00a0 Critique of the qualitative \u2013 quantitative binary<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Traditional positivistic sociological research methodology typifies sociological research endeavour into qualitative or quantitative methods. Quantitative research is about the collection and analysis of numerical data. Some typical methods are associated with each of the two research processes. Qualitative research strategies traditionally include ethnographies, fieldwork, participant observation, content analysis, and analysis of text, unstructured interviews and oral histories. Quantitative methods typically include structured interviews questionnaires, surveys, studying rates and percentages, variables and relationships between social factors. Qualitative research is considered to value subjective, personal meaning and definition. In contrast, quantitative research is constructed in terms of testing theories and making predictions in an objective way where the researcher is detached from both the participants and the research process. One chooses research methods on the basis of what one seeks to understand.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The feminist way out<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              While many feminist sociologists seem to favour qualitative research (Mies 1991, Cancian 1992, Kasper 1994), feminist policy researchers require a feminist standpoint as well as the conventional tools such as cost-benefit analysis (Spalter-Roth & Hartmann 1991). Uma Narayan (1989), while doing research in a non-western setting like India, observes that many non-positivistic \u2018traditional frameworks\u2019 like religion and culture, are more politically oppressive than positivism. Here positivist science can work as a force for liberation (and this seems true for western societies as well). \u201cWe must fight\u201d, she writes, \u201cnot frameworks that assert the separation of fact and value but frameworks that are pervaded by values to which we, as feminists, find ourselves opposed\u201d (ibid<\/em>.: 260).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Sandra Harding (1987) argues that it is not the method that makes feminist research different from what she terms \u2018male stream\u2019 research, but (a) the alternative origin of the problems, which concern women rather than men, (b) the alternative hypotheses and evidence used, (c) the purpose of the inquiry, which is to understand a woman\u2019s view of the world and assist in the emancipation of women, and (d) the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the so-called \u2018subjects\u2019 of her inquiry.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              It is to remember that the overall goal of both the qualitative and quantitative social science research is to capture and convey universal truth, be it in terms of statistics or signification. A claim to truth is inextricably linked to power. The power that produces a regime of truth expels and obliterates everything that it considers to be untrue. Unless and until the universal notion of truth is problematised, it is impossible to comprehend that both qualitative and quantitative research could remain essentially partial in their definitions and depictions of social reality. Both the methods could equally remain ignorant in attending the questions of class, race, ethnicity and gender. Both could be biased and androcentric. So the debate of feminist research versus male stream research crosses paths with the debates on qualitative versus quantitative research.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              6.2 Feminist Critique of Post-modernism<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Feminist methodology tries to work beyond the binary mode of truth seeking male stream positivistic research and \u2018absolute\u2019 relativism of certain postmodern theorizations insisting on multiple truths. How could a knowing subject occupying specific class, gender, ethnic, racial, caste position produce universal truth? They ask. Feminists also tend to question the politics of multiple realities that fails to discriminate between the oppressive and the resistant positions. Postmodern theorizations could as well remain gender-blind, as many such theorists have always been.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Critical theory, poststructuralist, and postmodernist strands of thought hold that knowledge is tentative, fragmented, multifaceted and so not necessarily rational. Socially constructed knowledge is contextual rather than waiting \u201cout there\u201d to be discovered. Knowledge can shift as quickly as the texts, contexts, and locations shift. Postmodernism rejects the view that there is a singular universal voice (e.g. Lyotard\u2019s (1984) critique of the grand meta-narratives of western reason) of knowledge. Rather the argument is for a different reality for each group (or individual) of knower. There being multiple groups of knowers and multiple modes of knowing what constitutes the real, there could be multiple realities existing at the same time.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The critique of relativism<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              \u2018Multiple realities\u2019 (if we can straighten the dense and difficult polemic of what is \u2018real\u2019 to get a flat category like that) is not always a feminist category. Postmodernism offers feminism some useful methodological re-conceptualisations, particularly in terms of a caution against the generalisations that transcend the boundaries of culture and region (Nicholson 1990). But relativism (which could be counted as a marker of the post-modern turn) is not always quite supportive to the feminist cause. Relativism as a problem could as well emerge from the dominant groups\u2019 attempt to pacify the non-dominant \u2018other\u2019 voices. In the process of knowing, the subject\u2019s view is not a view from nowhere but always from some specific location. This makes it possible to think of knowledge being dominant or dominated and also makes it possible, the feminists argue, to think of a politics of knowledge where one takes the standpoint of the dominated.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              The feminist way out<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              \u201cStandpoint theory, along with postmodernist and some postcolonial approaches, can seem to share this debilitating relativism because it, too, acknowledges that all knowledge claims are socially situated. Worse, standpoint approaches argue that some kinds of social values can advance the growth of knowledge\u201d (Harding 2004:11). Yet, standpoint theory is neither an advocate of nor is it \u201cdoomed\u201d to relativism. Feminism needs to resist relativism. For relativism \u201c\u2026is a way of being nowhere while claiming to be everywhere equally. The \u201cequality\u201d of positioning is a denial of responsibility and critical enquiry\u201d (Haraway 2004: 89).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Self-Check Exercise \u2013 2<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Q 1.What is feminist methodology?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              There are several approaches to feminist methodology as there are many versions of feminism. The approaches, though disparate, shares some common concerns. Feminist methodology tends to disrupt the reproduction of power relationships that subordinate women as objects of research. Instead, it considers women as contributors in a joint research work. Feminist methodology tends to produce a collective \u2018culture\u2019 for the respectful sharing of women\u2019s experience. Rather than ascertaining something as an indisputable truth, it tries to contextualise veracity.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Feminist researchers deploy research techniques as per their conception of \u2018feminism\u2019. While some researchers use standard surveys, gather numerical information and carry out statistical computations, others take on secondary analysis of documentary material or policy papers. Yet, others may consider the stories of women (recording oral narratives) using in-depth interviews or ethnographies. Feminist methodology can even involve various groups of women for self-directed research. Diverse methodologies remain subject to internal debates about the ways they may inadvertently continue or come to interrupt the patterns of oppression of women.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Q 2. Write a note on the feminist critique of positivistic methodology.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Before talking about the feminist critique of positivistic methodology one has to recall the basic tenets of positivism. Anthony Giddens (1974) refers to three presuppositions that identify a \u201cpositivist attitude\u201d: a) sociology and the natural sciences use the same method; b) the objective of sociological analysis is to formulate knowledge about the social in the form of \u201claws\u201d; and c) sociology, as do the natural sciences, has a technical character and works with an instrumental reasoning, both of which are \u201cneutral\u201d in relation to values. Feminist researchers critique the positivistic tendency toward dualisms\u2014between rationality and emotion, quantitative and qualitative research, and the subject and object of research. Sandra Harding or Alison Jaggar argue, for example, that by establishing the subject-object binary, whereby the value-neutral researcher is disconnected from the research process, positivistic research processes endorse a researcher-researched hierarchy that mimic patriarchy. They also resist the positivist prohibition of emotions from the research procedures and call for an assimilation of quantitative and qualitative techniques.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Q 3. Write a note on the feminist critique of \u2018post-modern relativism\u2019.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

              Postmodernism proposes the methodological tools to critique the generalizing trends of the social sciences which the feminist helpful. Yet, for a specific group of feminists the postmodern-turn to relativism is not very encouraging. They argue that \u2018relativism\u2019 can also work as the hegemonizer\u2019s strategy of placating the hegemonized voices. As knowledge is always situated it can emanate from the dominant or the dominated positions. The politics of feminism values the standpoint of the dominated as it remains better equipped to conceptualize the social world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

                \r\n \t
              1. Standpoint Theory<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

                Standpoint feminism is a position taken by feminist theorists that places knowledge at the nucleus of research. It argues for an explicitly woman\u2019s epistemological standpoint. Feminist standpoint epistemology is rooted in research concerning the everyday existence of women. It assumes that in a stratified society the social life is experienced from diverse standpoints. Following the Hegelian conception of the master\/slave dialectic, Nancy Hartsock (1983), one of the key standpoint theorists, emphasizes women as a superior knower. Because of their experiences of oppression, women have a better understanding of life in general. Many sociologists have taken up a version of the standpoint approach (e.g. Reinharz 1983, Stanley & Wise 1983\u20131993, Smith 1987, and Collins 1990).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                Dorothy Smith\u2019s theorisation is possibly the most extensively known in the field of Sociology. Her work since the last two decades is grappling with the \u2018male\u2019 stream Sociology. Sociology emerged as a challenging new discipline keen to illuminate the inequities and stratifications at the core of various social formations (Karl Marx and Max Weber). Yet, it produced its own variety of hegemony by solely focusing on one specific facet of human social life\u2014the male-controlled macro-level public sphere\u2014at the cost of the \u2018world of women\u2019. Smith emphasizes that the standpoint of the men is consistently privileged as against that of the women. Moreover, the standpoint of the (white) male upper class encompasses and controls other worldviews which remain perennially undervalued. The discipline, outlined by the demands of the hegemonic class, is grounded on men\u2019s concerns (Ramazanoglu 1989). Smith tends to unravel and posit women\u2019s experience as the \u2018starting point\u2019 of the social research inquiry.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                Stating that all social situations do not provide equally \u2018effective\u2019 resources for learning about the world, standpoint theory helps to identify one of the many problems of relativism. All social situations are not uniformly institutionalised and hegemonic so as to produce knowledge. For example, much of women\u2019s knowing is marked as unstable, irrational, and pathological. They are often renounced as non-knowledge. Sometimes women\u2019s experience is accommodated within the phallogocentric discourse in such a way that their specificity gets wiped out. So to take on a relativist position is to weaken what is not yet too strong. It rather is a \u2018strong objectivity\u2019 that the standpoint theorists would prefer. They think that \u201c... some social situations are scientifically better than others as places from which to start off knowledge projects...\u201d (Harding 2004: 31).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                Standpoint theorists deem the lives of the marginalised as authentic entry points to critical questionings about the social order. Thoughts that begin from the lives of the dominant groups fail to go beyond the authoritative bias. To begin with, the lives of women, for example, as Harding writes, \u201cwill generate less partial and distorted accounts not only of women\u2019s lives but also of men\u2019s lives and of the whole social order\u201d (Harding 2004: 128). They are nuanced enough to remember they are not seeking for a unitary model of woman\u2019s life. \u201cInstead, one must turn to all the lives that are marginalised in different ways by the operative systems of social stratification\u201d (Harding 2004: 131).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                They have more than one standpoint from which to produce their partial knowledge. \u201cThe alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledge sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversation in epistemology\u201d (Haraway 2004: 89). Pointing at the inseparability of knowledge and power, the standpoint theorists do not make authoritative truth claims. They try to remember the diverse nature of woman\u2019s experiences varying in terms of space, time, class, and race and so on. Sandra Harding in her article Subjectivity, Experience and Knowledge:<\/em> An Epistemology from\/for Rainbow Coalition Politics <\/em>states: \u201cIn so far as women, for example, live in oppositional race, class and sexuality relations to each other, the subject of feminist knowledge will be not just multiple, but also contradictory or \u2018incoherent\u2019\u201d (2004: 175-6).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                7.1 Limitations of the Standpoint Theories<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n

                It is an irony that feminist methodology hardly incorporates the standpoints of women from the \u2018understated\u2019 communities and nations (and their male associates). This happens in spite of the fact that consideration of the racial\/ethnic dissimilarities and joint strategies for fighting racism remains a key theme of the second-wave (Anzaldua 1987, Bulkin, Pratt & Smith 1984). Patricia Hill Collins (1990) is one among a few acclaimed thinkers to work out an analysis of \u2018knowledge making\u2019, in terms of conversation-concern-responsibility, in African-American communities. She underscores that standpoints are always situated and partial. Knowledge that is concededly partial is more responsible than partial knowledge presented as \u2018true\u2019. Kum-Kum Bhavnani (2004) admits that though knowledge is both partial and situated, it is not disembodied. Feminist epistemologies, she points out, respect the differing standpoints women holds in different third world locations. Himani Bannerji (1995) argues for a responsible Marxist and feminist standpoint thinking through the simultaneity of gender, race\/ethnicity, and nationality (the traditional accounts have tried to separate analytically). Chandra Talpade Mohanty\u2019s works (1988, 1991, 1992, and 2003) problematise the hegemonic trends of Western feminism. Much like Bannerji (1995), she considers Dorothy Smith\u2019s theorisations helpful to study the colonial and postcolonial social organisations.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                Conceding its wide acceptance across the globe, one also needs to point at the philosophical impasses of the standpoint epistemology. It has to grapple with several queries. Some of them are: If knowledge ought to take off from the perspective of the oppressed, how can one decide who is more oppressed? Can only women understand women? Why do the peripheral communities\/individuals have a less distorted perspective and in what way does it occur? However, standpoint theory, pregnant with a political charge, is not the only philosophical perspective of feminist research. For some contemporary feminists, postmodernism is attuned to the broader feminist task of addressing the question of \u2018other\u2019 in social research (Hesse-Biber, Leavy and Yaiser 2004). Adrien Katherine Wing (2000) invokes the idea of \u201cmultiple consciousness\u201d to explicate the complex intersectionality, multiple locations of social hierarchy in multiple cultures, within a global context. Chela Sandoval (2000) also acknowledges the significance of multiple consciousness. Her \u2018methodology of the oppressed\u2019 talks about the \u2018other\u2019 in the \u2018neo-colonizing post-modern global formations\u2019.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

                  \r\n \t
                1. The Post-Colonial Turn<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

                  There is an increasing awareness amongst the feminist researchers about the importance of women\u2019s experiences in a global context with respect to issues of imperialism, colonialism, and national identity (Hesse-Biber 2011). Feminists doing international research, trying to voice \u201cthe other\/s\u201d in a global context, should remain responsive to the deep-seated undercurrents of power in the very process itself. While Western feminism and feminist methodology have done a commendable work of problematising several age-old gender binaries, what is remarkable is the continued existence and even valorisation of the dichotomy of the West and \u2018the Rest\u2019 in their discourses. This does not always mean a valorisation of the West, but that of the binary where the \u2018Rest\u2019 may also be valorised. Feminist theories, even if they claim to give \u2018multicultural\u2019 or \u2018global\u2019 perspectives on women, are dominated by Western debates and taxonomies. There is a kind of uniformity on what feminism means in the very diverse cultures of the global South. Diverse cartographies and histories are conflated until differences among women are lost. Multiple struggles of very different women, under very different conditions, are collapsed into one theoretical model. All women are not the same. They are different and so are their politics. Black feminisms, local (African, South Asian, etc.) feminisms, Third world feminisms, and various other forms need to be addressed in their specificities.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Invocation of third-world to feminism is to modify the universality of feminism by history and geography. Third world feminism again is not a homogenous category. There is nothing like a unitary notion of third-world woman. Just as western or white woman cannot be defined as coherent interest groups (Mohanty 2003), Third World woman also do not constitute any automatic or unitary group. Alliances and divisions of multiple axes of discriminations like class, religion, sexuality and history fracture each of these groups. There is no fixed nature of the third-world feminist politics. It remains dependent on a number of factors, contexts and contingencies. One \u2018third world feminism\u2019 is thus not interchangeable with another. In this module, we have talked about two feminist thinkers, rooted in India, who have strongly critiqued the epistemological-methodological renditions of the dominant western feminism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  8.1 Chandra Talpade Mohanty<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Chandra Talpade Mohanty\u2019s works have been widely accredited as a major challenge to the mainstream Western feminist thought. Mohanty\u2019s seminal work, \u201cUnder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses\u201d (originally published in 1986), condemns the inherent euro-centrism of the radical western feminist discourses. She deals with the problem of the ideological production of the cultural discourse of what is called the \u2018third world\u2019. This discourse, as reflected in the western feminist texts, produces the \u2018third-world woman as a systematised and homogenised category, as a singular monolith\u2019.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Mohanty states that the methodology which involves the production of this monolithic subject is that of generalisation, de-contextualisation and an assertion on the basis of number. In dominant discourses events are generalised on the basis of the number of their occurrences. For example, the larger the number of instances of wearing veil, the more universal is the (validation of) sexual control over Muslim women. The Western feminist writers fail to consider the varied and often contradictory significance of wearing veils in Islamic cultures. For them, Islam is a unified religion crystallized in a homogeneous empty time. It quite resembles the classical Orientalist (discursive) strategy of the construction of the \u2018oriental other\u2019. Without paying any heed to the geographical or historical contexts, the feminist texts grossly generalise the analytical concepts like gendered division of labour, family, marriage, household and patriarchy.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  8.2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on the other hand, talks about the problems of representation of the third world\/subaltern women. Can the subaltern speak? She asks (1994) and complicates the whole question of feminist methodology. One can relate her thesis to the knower-known divide we had been talking about. Research questions addressing the \u2018other\u2019 woman tend to forget and often efface her ability to \u2018know\u2019 or \u2018speak\u2019. There could at least be two possible modes of dealing with a \u2018subaltern subject\u2019. First, the researcher can think of her object of research as an autonomous \u2018subject\u2019. If the researcher thinks that a subaltern woman is an independent subject capable of free self-representation, s\/he would outweigh the voice of the subaltern. Without being responsive to the specificities of the subaltern voice, the researcher would be speaking her own terms, on their behalf. Much of Western feminist concerns have hegemonised the third world woman aiming to speak for them. Second, the researcher might think that the subaltern woman is so \u2018different\u2019 that the universal\/western feminist methodologies fail to reach her. The subaltern woman must be left alone to be \u2018empowered\u2019 on her own efforts. This is problematic as for the subaltern woman the basic requirements of life are at stake. It is rather unwise not to work for them from within the universal methodologies of feminist research. What Spivak intends to underline here, rather than a denial of the ability of the subaltern to speak out, is the risk inherent in the research efforts to conceptualise the subaltern as essentially distinct from the dominant discourses and institutions. The subaltern can actually speak, but they cannot be heard. Once they can speak they are not subalterns any more (Spivak 1990).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  To address this theoretical\/political impasse, Spivak proposes a tentative methodological way out: \u201cstrategic essentialism\u201d (1987). The way out is tentative in two senses. First, strategic essentialism is logically tentative as it is just as strategy subject to constant alteration. Before the colonized\/subaltern woman repudiates the dominant discourses and institutions, often the source of a basic\/na\u00efve benefaction, she has to see how the universalising discourse could be useful for her. She has to go on to see where that discourse meets its limits and the challenges it pose for her. It brings about a sort of provisional solidarity among different\/contending groups agreeing temporarily upon an \u2018essentialist\u2019 stance to work together. Second, fundamentally concerned with heterogeneity, Spivak opts for a universal discourse as a tentative deconstructive strategy (of following the logic of the dominant and reaching at its limits). Interestingly, while other scholars keep working upon her concept of \u2018strategic essentialism\u2019 Spivak has, ever since, withdrawn from the use of this notion.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Self-Check Exercise - 3<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Q 1. What is standpoint epistemology?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Feminist standpoint epistemology takes up the Marxist and Hegelian idea that the material and lived experiences of the people shape their comprehension of the social world. Feminist standpoint scholars argue that the woman\u2019s place within society, structurally subjugated in relation to the dominant group or men, offers a better perception of the social. Dorothy Smith (1987), an early advocate of the standpoint perspective, emphasized the necessity of beginning research from the women\u2019s experiences. Research should take into consideration women\u2019s every day\/night experiences discovering the gaps that crop up when the women attempt to accommodate their lives into the dominant mode of conceptualizing women\u2019s situation.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Q 2. What is strong objectivity?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  The notion of strong objectivity was first articulated by the feminist philosopher Sandra Harding. Strong objectivity argues for the academic, political and ethical significance of the experiences of those who have been excluded from the realm of knowledge. Harding (1986) states that knowledge created from the standpoint of the marginalized groups may put forward a \u2018stronger objectivity\u2019 due to the increased motivation for them to comprehend the views of those in positions of power. Strong objectivity tends to reveal the relations of power that remain concealed in main-stream processes of knowledge production.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Q 3. How do the feminists situated in the post-colonial spaces negotiate with the western feminist methodologies?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  It is insincerity on the part of the western feminists that they fail to address the standpoints of the third-world or post\/colonial women. Chandra Talpade Mohanty theorizes how the dominant feminist methodology \u2013 through the processes of generalisation, de-contextualisation and an assertion on the basis of number \u2013 constructs the \u2018third-world\u2019 woman as a monolithic subject. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on the other hand, points out how the very research processes attending to the colonized woman fails to remember or even obliterate her capability of knowledge and speech.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Q 4. What is strategic essentialism?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987) developed \u2018strategic essentialism\u2019 as a provisional deconstructive strategy of following the logic of the dominant and reaching at its limits. It is a subaltern mode of negotiating with the dominant discourses. Prior to the act of discarding the dominant forms of knowledge the subaltern woman needs to judge whether that is beneficial for her.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                    \r\n \t
                  1. Summary<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

                    By the end of this module we get to know about a number of contending voices questioning the dominant modes of research methodology. What remains common in them is a feminist consciousness that tends to produce possibilities of intellectual and emotional articulations for all women. Feminism works \u2018from the periphery to the core\u2019 questioning the dominant forms of knowledge building that define, in fixed terms, who can be a knower and what can be known.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

                      \r\n \t
                    1. Web Links<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n

                      http:\/\/ggsc.wnmu.edu\/gap\/wadsworth.htm<\/a><\/p>\r\n

                      http:\/\/http-server.carleton.ca\/~adoucet\/pdfs\/Doucet_Mauthner_Feminist_Methods_2006.pdf<\/a><\/p>\r\n

                      www.catunescomujer.org\/catunesco...\/Gender_and_Methodology<\/strong>.doc<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
                      you can view video on Feminist Methodology in Sociological Research<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n\r\n
                      \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nReading Material<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n
                        \r\n \t
                      1. Allen P. \u201cFree space\u201d, in Radical Feminism edited by A. Koedt, E. Levine and A. Rapone. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. p. 71\u201379.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      2. Alcoff, Linda. \u201cOn Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant?\u201d, in Engendering<\/li>\r\n \t
                      3. Rationalities edited by N. Tuana and S. Morgan. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. p 53-80.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      4. Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth Potter (eds.) Feminist Epistemologies. New York: Routledge, 1993.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      5. Anzald\u00faa, Gloria. Borderlands\/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters\/Aunt Lute, 1987.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      6. Bannerji, Himani. Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism and Anti-Racism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1995.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      7. Benhabib, Seyla. \u201cFeminism and Postmodernism\u201d, in Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      8. Bhavnani, Kum-Kum. \u201cTracing the contours: Feminist research and feminist objectivity\u201d. Women\u2019s Studies International Forum 16 (1993): 95\u2013104.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      9. Bulkin, Elly. Minnie, Bruce Pratt & Barbar Smith. Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism Firebrand Books, 1984.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      10. Cancian, F. \u201cFeminist science: methodologies that challenge inequality\u201d. Gender and Society 6, no 4 (1992): 623\u201342.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      11. Collins,\u00a0 Patricia\u00a0 Hill.\u00a0 Black\u00a0 feminist\u00a0 thought:\u00a0 Knowledge,\u00a0 consciousness,\u00a0 and\u00a0 the\u00a0 politics\u00a0 of empowerment Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      12. Combahee River Collective. \u201cA Black feminist statement\u201d in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by G.T. Hull, P. Bell Scott, B. Smith. Black Women\u2019s Studies, New York: Feminist Press, 1982. p.13\u201322.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      13. DeVault,\u00a0 Marjorie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 L.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cTalking\u00a0\u00a0 Back\u00a0\u00a0 To\u00a0\u00a0 Sociology:\u00a0\u00a0 Distinctive\u00a0\u00a0 Contributions\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist Methodology\u201d. Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 29-50.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      14. Durkheim, \u00c9mile. The Rules of Sociological Method (8th ed.). S. A. Solovay & J. H. Mueller, Translated. New York: Free Press, 1965\/1938.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      15. Eichler, M. Nonsexist Research Methods: A Practical Guide Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      16. Game, A. Undoing the Social: Towards a Deconstructive Sociology Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      17. Giddens, Anthony. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies Polity Press, 1993.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      18. Gilligan, Carol.\u00a0 In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      19. Gluck\u00a0 SB,\u00a0 Patai\u00a0\u00a0 D\u00a0\u00a0 (eds.).\u00a0\u00a0 Women\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 Words:\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0\u00a0 Practice\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0 Oral\u00a0\u00a0 History\u00a0\u00a0 New York\/London: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      20. Hanisch, Carol. \u201cThe Personal is Political\u201d, in Feminist Revolution edited by Red stockings. New York: Random House, 1969\/1979.<\/li>\r\n \t
                      21. Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions. New York: Routledge, 1989.\r\n
                          \r\n \t
                        1. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cSituated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective\u201d, in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies edited by Sandra Harding. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. p. 81-101.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/li>\r\n \t
                        2. Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        3. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cIs There a Feminist Method?\u201d, in Feminism and methodology edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. p. 181-190.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        4. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cFeminism, Science, and the Anti-Enlightenment Critiques\u201d, in Feminism\/Postmodernism edited by L.J. Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. p. 83-110.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        5. \u2013\u2013\u2013. Whose science? Whose knowledge? New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        6. \u2013\u2013. \u201cRethinking Standpoint Epistemology: \u2018What is Strong Objectivity?\u2019\u201d, in Feminist Epistemologies edited by Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth Potter. New York: Routledge, 1993.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        7. \u2013\u2013\u2013. (ed.).The Racial Economy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        8. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cComment on Hekman\u2019s \u2018Truth and Method\u2019: Whose standpoint needs the regimes of Truth and Reality?\u201d in Signs 22 (1996): 382-39.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        9. \u2013\u2013\u2013.Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        10. Harding, Sandra. \u201cIntroduction: Standpoint Theory as a Site of Political, Philosophic, and Scientific Debate\u201d, in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies edited by Sandra Harding. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. p. 1-15.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        11. Hartsock, Nancy. \u201cThe feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism\u201d, in Discovering Reality edited by Sandra Harding & Merrill Hintikka. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1983. p. 283\u2013310.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        12. Hesse-Biber and Sharlene, Nagy (ed.). Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and PraxisSage Publications, 2011.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        13. Hull GT, Bell Scott P, Smith B. (eds.). All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. Black Women\u2019s Studies, New York: Feminist Press, 1982.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        14. Jaggar,\u00a0 Alison.\u00a0 \u201cLove\u00a0 and\u00a0 knowledge:\u00a0 Emotion\u00a0 in\u00a0 feminist\u00a0 epistemology\u201d,\u00a0 in\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 social thought: A reader edited by Diana Tietjens Meyers. New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 385\u2013405.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        15. Kasper,\u00a0 A.\u00a0 \u201cA\u00a0 feminist,\u00a0 qualitative\u00a0 methodology:\u00a0 a\u00a0 study\u00a0 of\u00a0 women\u00a0 with\u00a0 breast\u00a0 cancer\u201d.\u00a0 In Qualitative Sociology 17, no. 3. (1994): 263\u201381.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        16. Lather\u00a0 P.\u00a0 Getting\u00a0 Smart:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Research\u00a0 and\u00a0 Pedagogy\u00a0 With\/In\u00a0 the\u00a0 Postmodern.\u00a0 London: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        17. Leveque-Lopman L. Claiming Reality: Phenomenology and Women\u2019s Experience. New Jersey: Rowan & Littlefield, 1988.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        18. Lyotard,\u00a0 Jean\u00a0\u00a0 Francois.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0 Postmodern\u00a0\u00a0 Condition:\u00a0 A\u00a0\u00a0 Report\u00a0 on\u00a0\u00a0 Knowledge\u00a0 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        19. Maguire, P. Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach. Amherst, MA: Cent. Int. Educ., Univ. Mass, 1987.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        20. Mies, M. \u201cTowards a methodology for feminist research\u201d, in Theories for Women's Studies edited by G. Bowles & R. Klein Duelli. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. p. 88-104.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        21. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cWomen\u2019s research or feminist research? The debate surrounding feminist science and methodology\u201d, in Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research edited by M. M. Fonow and J. A. Cook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. p. 60\u201384.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        22. Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1969\/ 2000.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        23. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. \u201cUnder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses\u201d. Feminist Review 30 (1988): p. 61 \u2013 88.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        24. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cIntroduction\u201d to C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds.) Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Bloomington, Ind., and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        25. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cFeminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience\u201d, in Space, Gender, Knowledge edited by L. Mcdowell and J. P. Sharp. London, New York, Sydney, Auckland: Arnold, 1992\/1997.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        26. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cUnder Western Eyes\u201d Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles\u201d.<\/strong> Signs 28, 2 (2003): 499-535.<\/span><\/li>\r\n \t
                        27. Nagy, Sharlene. Hesse-Biber and Yaiser, Michelle L. (eds.). Feminist Perspectives on Social Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        28. Narayan U. The project of feminist epistemology: perspectives from a non-western feminist\u201d, in Gender\/Body\/Knowledge:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Reconstructions\u00a0 of\u00a0 Being\u00a0 and\u00a0 Doing\u00a0 edited\u00a0 by\u00a0 A. Jaggarand S. Bordo. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1989. p. 256\u201369.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        29. Nicholson, Linda, (ed.) \u201cIntroduction\u201d to Feminism\/Postmodernism New York: Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        30. Oakley, A . \u201cInterviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms\u201d, in Doing Feminist Research edited by H. Roberts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. p. 30\u201361.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        31. Personal\u00a0 Narratives\u00a0 Group\u00a0 (ed).\u00a0 Interpreting\u00a0 Women\u2019s\u00a0 Lives:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Theory\u00a0 and\u00a0 Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Ind. Univ. Press, 1989.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        32. Ramazanoglu,\u00a0 C.\u00a0 \u201cOn\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Methodology:\u00a0 Male\u00a0 Reason\u00a0 Versus\u00a0 Female\u00a0 Empowerment\u201d. Sociology 26, 2: (1992): 207-212.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        33. Reinharz S. \u201c<\/strong>Experiential analysis: a contribution to feminist research\u201d in Theories of Women's Studies edited by Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. p. 162-191.<\/span><\/li>\r\n \t
                        34. Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston: North-eastern University Press, 1987.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        35. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        36. Spalter-Roth, RM and Hartmann, H.<\/strong> \u201cScience and politics and the \u201cdual vision\u201d of feminist policy research: the example of family and medical leave\u201d, in Parental Leave and Child Care: Setting a Research and Policy Agenda edited by J.S Hyde and M.J Essex. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991. p. 41\u201365.<\/span><\/li>\r\n \t
                        37. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen, 1987.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        38. Spivak,\u00a0\u00a0 Gayatri\u00a0\u00a0 Chakravorty.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Post-Colonial\u00a0\u00a0 Critic:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Interviews,\u00a0\u00a0 Strategies,\u00a0\u00a0 Dialogues. Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        39. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. \u201cCan the subaltern speak?\u201d in Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A Reader edited by Patrick Williams & Laura Chrismen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. p. 66\u2013111.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        40. Stanley, Liz (ed.). Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Research. London: Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        41. Stanley\u00a0 L,\u00a0 Wise\u00a0 S.\u00a0 (eds).\u00a0 Breaking\u00a0 Out:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Consciousness\u00a0 and\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Research\u00a0 and Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology. London: Routledge, 1983\/93.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        42. Trinh, T. Minh-ha. Framer framed. New York: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        43. Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought. Westview Press, 2009.<\/li>\r\n \t
                        44. Wing, Adrien Katherine (ed.). Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2000.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
                          \"epgp<\/a>
                          \n<\/span><\/div>\n
                            \n
                          1. Objective<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                             <\/p>\n

                            In this module you will learn how feminist praxis and theory pose challenges to the dominant trends of social\/sociological research methodology. Being aware of the hierarchies inherent in research, feminists tend to go beyond such constrains.<\/p>\n

                              \n
                            1. Introduction<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                               <\/p>\n

                              The feminist sociologists, using the tools of the very discipline, bring up a forceful critique. They tend to address women\u2019s everyday experiences and concerns, reveal the gender-based stereotypes and biases, and retrieve the subjugated knowledge forms. They draw attention to the hegemonic trends inherent in the basic structures and ideologies of the ma(in)le stream social research processes. Feminist methodology involves an overlapping multi-disciplinary approach. They remain unified not by shared solutions, but by mutual commitments to the problems. Feminist research aims at the emancipation of the women and other marginalized groups from patriarchal domination.<\/p>\n

                                \n
                              1. Methodology: an epistemological question<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                 <\/p>\n

                                Let us begin with three inter-related concepts: method, methodology and epistemology referring to three different aspects of the research process. Research methods are the tools or techniques (ways of proceeding) of bringing together facts, information, data, evidences, suggestions, silences and hushes which constitute the social. Methods of inquiry include observing, examining texts (written, audio-visual) and interviewing or administering questionnaires of various kinds. A researcher could arrange these methods either\/both in qualitative and\/or quantitative means as per the demands of her\/his research question. Methodology, on the other hand, addresses the theoretical questions about a particular research. \u201cA methodology is a theory and analysis of how research does and should proceed\u2026\u201d (Harding 1987: 3). It deals with how a specific research question could be looked at \u2013 from which theoretical perspective(s) or concepts. Research involves a sensible synchronization, not a blind application, of methods. The same method, for instance, interview, can be used diversely while addressing different research problems from different theoretical structures. Methodology outlines the rationale as well as the orientation of the research methods. Epistemology is simplistically the \u201ctheory of knowledge\u201d that outlines a set of presumptions about the social world involving institutions, interactions and discourses. It is about: who can be a \u2018knower\u2019 or who has the authority to know? What can be \u2018known\u2019 or what are the parameters of knowledge? Who decides what is to be known? How, on what basis is this decision taken? Based on these assumptions an individual researcher has to decide upon what s\/he can\/not study, and how s\/he can\/not conduct the study. Methodology, addressing \u2018how\u2019 we produce knowledge, or the \u2018terms\u2019 of knowledge production, thus, remains an epistemological question. The epistemological-methodological question of knowledge production is inevitably a political one.<\/p>\n

                                  \n
                                1. Methodology: a political question<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                   <\/p>\n

                                  There are at least three ways in which epistemology-methodology invokes politics. First, the conditions for the production of knowledge reflect social hierarchies of power and privilege. It is the system of hegemony\/authority which determines who can participate in the knowledge producing processes and whose views on knowledge have the potential to gain broader acceptance. Second, a specific body of knowledge mirrors the social location of the particular \u2018knower\u2019. The socio-political identity of the knower bears a substantive weight on the knowledge they produce. Third, a body of knowledge often results in approving or disapproving certain kinds of voices and may legitimise or delegitimize given discursive hierarchies and arrangements of speaking. These three possibilities can mutually coexist, in any given combination. There is a wealth of work that has explored such political effects on epistemology. One of Karl Marx\u2019s significant theoretical contributions is to initiate this critique of philosophy. He emphasizes that the capitalist conditions develop \u2018positivist\u2019 knowledge (denying the influence of socio-political factors on conceptual frameworks) reifying it as absolute. The whole group of Frankfurt School theorists (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer) and the theorists of sociology of knowledge (Karl Manheim, Max Scheler, and Robert K. Merton) make similar observations.<\/p>\n

                                   <\/p>\n

                                  The feminist theorists have a different point of intervention. The feminist thinkers point at how the dominant knowledge practices disadvantage women by: (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them of epistemic authority \u2013 denigrating \u2018feminine\u2019 cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (3) representing women as inferior, deviant or important only as the tool to attain patriarchal goals, (4) rendering women\u2019s activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (5) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology.<\/p>\n

                                    \n
                                  1. The Origin of Feminist Research<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Celebrated feminist thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft (English, 1759-1797),<\/strong> Virginia Woolf (English, 1882-1941), Simone de Beauvoir (French, 1908-1986), Betty Friedan (American, 1921-2006) and many others \u2013 over a long stretch of time \u2013 have been speaking on the exclusion of women from the dominant forms of knowledge. The epistemic import, experiential richness, emancipatory concerns of the \u2018woman\u2019 remain invalidated by the hegemonic processes of knowledge production. Feminist theory and praxis contests the hegemonic body of knowledge that assumes the generic term \u2018man\u2019 as inclusive of \u2018woman\u2019. What is true for the dominant groups also holds for women and other oppressed groups. The feminist questioning of the epistemological and methodological tenets of main-stream research draws much from the insights of the feminist thinkers. Though one can make a conceptual distinction between feminist research and feminist methodology, the categories are overtly inter-related. Feminist research is a broader category including any empirical\/theoretical study concerning feminism. Feminist methodology, on the other hand, is explicitly involved in the methodological discussion that emerges from the feminist critique.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Feminist research originated in the backdrop of the second wave feminist movement (1960s and 1970s). \u2018Consciousness raising\u2019 is one of the core events of the second wave movement. In different locations, small groups of women, from different walks of life, would interact with each other. Carol Hanisch states \u201cOne of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time\u201d (1969\/1979: 204-5). The personal is thus political. All relationships between men and women are institutionalized relationship of power; it reveals how male power is exercised and reinforced through the personalized spaces like that of childrearing, love, marriage, sexual practices from rape through prostitution to consenting sexual intercourse. Women\u2019s oppression springs from the control of their sexualities and reproduction: mandatory motherhood and compulsory heterosexualities. The assumption that these institutions and practices are natural or purely individual concerns, as Hanisch notes, conceals the reality of women\u2019s systematic oppression. The personal concerns have structural causes and therefore needed to be addressed in political terms (not on an individual basis). Women\u2019s movements should aim at politicizing these personal issues. Kate Millet argues that \u201c\u2026 sex is a status category with political implications\u201d (2000: 24); hence, the patriarchal power is ubiquitous. There involves a deeply entrenched politics of sexuality, beginning with the reproduction of patriarchy through psychological conditioning in the family, which operates in all economic and social structures. Sexual politics is a paradigm of social power, and like all social power, sexual power controls individual both through ideological indoctrination and violence.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    \u2018Consciousness raising\u2019 provided the women with a systematic empirical mode of analysis. Challenging the existing knowledge forms, it allowed women to learn more from one another (Allen 1973, Combahee River Collective 1982). They could now generate a catalogue of ways in which \u2013 what people know or think they know, can be influenced by their own gender (roles, norms, traits, performance, identities), other people\u2019s gender or by ideas about gender (symbolism). Research efforts eliciting information through personal contact, between the researchers and the research subjects, raise the question of how findings might be influenced by gender relations. Each mode of gendered knowledge raises new questions for epistemology. For example, male and female inquirers have differential access to information about the different facets of a society. Researchers may remain subjected to gender based right of entry to different social spaces. Even when allowed in the same social spaces, the gendered presence of the researcher has different effects on those being observed. Physical objects do not behave differently depending on whether a man or a woman is observing them. But human beings do behave differently according to their beliefs about the gender of who is observing them.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    The \u2018consciousness-raising\u2019 groups, Dorothy Smith observes in a seminal book published in 1987, developed increasing consciousness about the stark incongruities between their lived experiences as \u2018women\u2019 and the ma(in)le stream discourses on theory and research. The focus on methodology gained momentum with the publication of this interdisciplinary anthology edited by Sandra Harding (1987). Though the women\u2019s movement mostly began outside the university, feminists in nearly every discipline \u2013 sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, education, and anthropology, as well as the fields of law, medicine, language, and communication \u2013 soon began to relate its methods to their context and work.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Perspectives like feminist empiricism, standpoint theories, postmodernism and post-colonialism \u2013 embarking on a collective project of critique and transformation \u2013 work on the epistemological and methodological significance of subjugated knowledge forms. Scholars have developed feminist approaches in their adaptations of a wide variety of techniques, as has been enlisted by Marjorie L. DeVault in her 1996 essay, including survey and experimental methods (Eichler 1988), interview research (Oakley 1981), inductive fieldwork (Reinharz 1983), Marxist and ethno-methodological approaches (Smith 1987, Stanley & Wise 1983\/93), phenomenology (Levesque-Lopman 1988), action\/participatory research (Mies 1983, Maguire 1987), oral history (Personal Narratives Group 1989, Gluck & Patai 1991) and others. More recent additions to the list include feminist versions of experimental ethnography, and methods based on poststructuralist insights (Lather 1991, Game 1991, Ingraham 1994). Subverting the conventional modes of knowing, feminist research ends to produce newer meanings. It works \u201c\u2026 right at the limits of several categories and approaches\u201d where \u201cone is neither entirely inside or outside\u2026 incurring constantly the risk of falling off one side or the other side of the limit while undoing, redoing, modifying this limit (Trinh T. Minh-ha 1991: 218).<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Self-Check Exercise -1<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Q 1. How is method, methodology and epistemology interrelated?<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Method, methodology and epistemology are interrelated aspects of the research process. Research methods are the tools or techniques of collecting information and evidences, suggestions and silences about any social event. Observation, interviews, questionnaires are some basic methods of social research. Methodology involves the logical-theoretical orientation of the methods applied to a research process. It includes the theoretical analysis of the methods and principles linked to a specific or a field of study. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It deals with the sources, conditions, structures and limits of knowledge. Methodology addressing the terms of knowledge production is thus an epistemological question.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Q 2. Do you think methodology is a political question? Why?<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Methodology is implicated in politics.The macro-micro structural conditions of social-scientific knowledge invoke the questions of social stratification and power: determining its legitimate producers and consumers. There is an impact of the political processes and cultural discourses on the sociologists\u2019 sense of the plausibility of different ways of thinking about the social. For example, in America the Fordist mode of economic and social regulation, sustains a particular epistemological\/methodological orientation called \u2018\u2018American positivism\u2019\u2019 (causally oriented, universalist and empiricist). Again the social location of an individual sociologist would determine the acceptability of her\/his research. For example, the sociological knowledge produced by an upper class-caste, educated, male elite would be more acceptable in a class-caste based patriarchal society like contemporary India.<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Q 3.What is the relationship between feminist research and feminist methodology?<\/p>\n

                                     <\/p>\n

                                    Feminist research and feminist methodology remain intricately linked to each other. Feminist methodology draws largely from the arguments of the feminist theories. Yet, the categories can be conceptually distinguished. The wider category of feminist research includes all empirical and theoretical studies relating to feminism. Feminist methodology, on the other hand, specifically deals with the methodological arguments that arise from the feminist critique.<\/p>\n

                                      \n
                                    1. Feminist methodology<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Feminist methodology is not to be defined in fixed terms. It is rather open and provisional. Feminist methodology is a cumulative discourse, always receptive to newer insights, emanating from activist and academic efforts. There are many possible approaches to feminist methodology as there are multiple strands of feminism (Tong 2009). Without conforming to any one of such approaches one can think of some basic issues raised by the feminist methodologists. Feminists seek a methodology that will support research of value to women, leading to social change or action beneficial to women and other marginal categories as well. One can speak on feminist methodology from various angles. In this module, we would talk about two major critiques, of positivism and post-modernism, worked out by the feminist theorists. The basic arguments of feminist methodology in the context of these critiques will be posed.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      6.1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist Critique of Positivism<\/em><\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      i) The critique of objectivity<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Feminist theorists make a strong critique of positivism, one of the dominant paradigms in social sciences developed out of the rationalist and empiricist movements in the late 1800s Europe. The positivists affirm the existence of an objective reality leading to pure, invariable, and universal knowledge or truth. They hold that applying specific scientific methods (following the natural sciences), the objective reality can be captured accurately. For the classical sociologist like Emile Durkheim, a celebrated figure of the positivistic tradition, facts<\/em> lying \u201coutside of the human mind,\u201d having an \u201cindependent existence outside of the individual consciousness,\u201d (Durkheim 1938\/1965: 20) should be differentiated from values<\/em> emanating from individual consciousness. In The Rules of<\/em> Sociological Method<\/em>, Durkheim (1938\/1965) offers a set of methods to ascertain \u201csocial facts\u201d through objective research. Feminist thinkers hold that the hegemony of the positivist paradigm springs not merely from its claim to objectivity or universality. The dominance emanates from the privileged position positivism holds within a range of power relations (including patriarchy).<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The feminist way out<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Without repudiating \u2018objectivity\u2019, the feminists tend to give it a different spin. \u201cStrong objectivity\u201d<\/p>\n

                                      (Harding 1987), grounded on strong political commitments, does not call for value neutrality. The starting point for knowledge production, as per strong objectivity, is the \u2018excluded\u2019 experiences and \u2018silenced\u2019 voices of marginalized others (including women).<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Alison Jaggar (1997) identifies emotion as a constitutive element of epistemology. She thinks it is na\u00efve to think that values and feelings do not emerge in the research procedures. The emotional elements determine the choice of research question and the methodological orientation of the researchers. The rational and the emotional binary, governing the positivistic discourse, thus stands erroneous. \u201cValues and emotions enter into the science of the past and the present not only on the level of scientific practice but also on the metascientific level, as answers to various questions: What is Science? How should it be practiced? And what is the status of scientific investigation versus non-scientific modes of enquiry?\u201d (Jaggar1997: 393)<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      ii) Critique of the binary mode of knowledge<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Positivistic (and all other dominant modes of) sociological theorization rests on paired concepts \u2013 opposed to each other \u2013 like knower-known, subject-object, reason-emotion, science-humanity, science-nature, culture-nature, public-private, occident-orient, self-other, masculine-feminine and so on. Most often, the first of each pair is considered to be the superior and powerful. Such dichotomies work to maintain the dominance of the hegemonizer over the hegemonized. Conceding knowledge as a political process (Ramazanoglu 1992), feminists argue that there is a primacy of the man-woman distinction in the very act of knowing through binaries. Dichotomies are grounded on the division between male\/subject and female\/object (Stanley and Wise 1983\/93).<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The feminist way out<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The binary mode of production of knowledge hegemonizes the object of knowledge. It forgets that the \u2018known\u2019 are also \u2018potential knowers\u2019, the research objects are also \u2018doing subjects\u2019. Objective research thus involves a set of intellectual practices that separate people from the knowledge of their own subjectivity (Stanley 1990). Feminist sociologists reject the binaries of theory and practice, object and subject, and researcher and researched. Contemporary sociologists without overt feminist concerns have also pointed out the problems of research, which works through a separation of the knower and the known. In his book New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of<\/em> Interpretative Sociologies<\/em>, Anthony Giddens (1993) insists on an idea that the constitution of this world as \u2018meaningful\u2019, \u2018accountable\u2019, or \u2018intelligible\u2019 depends upon language, which is not merely a system of signs or symbols but a medium of practical activity. The social scientist draws upon the same sorts of skills as those whose conduct s\/he seeks to analyse. The description of social conduct involves a hermeneutic task of penetrating the frames of meaning which the actors themselves draw upon as they constantly re-constitute the social world.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      iii)\u00a0\u00a0 Critique of the qualitative \u2013 quantitative binary<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Traditional positivistic sociological research methodology typifies sociological research endeavour into qualitative or quantitative methods. Quantitative research is about the collection and analysis of numerical data. Some typical methods are associated with each of the two research processes. Qualitative research strategies traditionally include ethnographies, fieldwork, participant observation, content analysis, and analysis of text, unstructured interviews and oral histories. Quantitative methods typically include structured interviews questionnaires, surveys, studying rates and percentages, variables and relationships between social factors. Qualitative research is considered to value subjective, personal meaning and definition. In contrast, quantitative research is constructed in terms of testing theories and making predictions in an objective way where the researcher is detached from both the participants and the research process. One chooses research methods on the basis of what one seeks to understand.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The feminist way out<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      While many feminist sociologists seem to favour qualitative research (Mies 1991, Cancian 1992, Kasper 1994), feminist policy researchers require a feminist standpoint as well as the conventional tools such as cost-benefit analysis (Spalter-Roth & Hartmann 1991). Uma Narayan (1989), while doing research in a non-western setting like India, observes that many non-positivistic \u2018traditional frameworks\u2019 like religion and culture, are more politically oppressive than positivism. Here positivist science can work as a force for liberation (and this seems true for western societies as well). \u201cWe must fight\u201d, she writes, \u201cnot frameworks that assert the separation of fact and value but frameworks that are pervaded by values to which we, as feminists, find ourselves opposed\u201d (ibid<\/em>.: 260).<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Sandra Harding (1987) argues that it is not the method that makes feminist research different from what she terms \u2018male stream\u2019 research, but (a) the alternative origin of the problems, which concern women rather than men, (b) the alternative hypotheses and evidence used, (c) the purpose of the inquiry, which is to understand a woman\u2019s view of the world and assist in the emancipation of women, and (d) the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the so-called \u2018subjects\u2019 of her inquiry.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      It is to remember that the overall goal of both the qualitative and quantitative social science research is to capture and convey universal truth, be it in terms of statistics or signification. A claim to truth is inextricably linked to power. The power that produces a regime of truth expels and obliterates everything that it considers to be untrue. Unless and until the universal notion of truth is problematised, it is impossible to comprehend that both qualitative and quantitative research could remain essentially partial in their definitions and depictions of social reality. Both the methods could equally remain ignorant in attending the questions of class, race, ethnicity and gender. Both could be biased and androcentric. So the debate of feminist research versus male stream research crosses paths with the debates on qualitative versus quantitative research.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      6.2 Feminist Critique of Post-modernism<\/em><\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Feminist methodology tries to work beyond the binary mode of truth seeking male stream positivistic research and \u2018absolute\u2019 relativism of certain postmodern theorizations insisting on multiple truths. How could a knowing subject occupying specific class, gender, ethnic, racial, caste position produce universal truth? They ask. Feminists also tend to question the politics of multiple realities that fails to discriminate between the oppressive and the resistant positions. Postmodern theorizations could as well remain gender-blind, as many such theorists have always been.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Critical theory, poststructuralist, and postmodernist strands of thought hold that knowledge is tentative, fragmented, multifaceted and so not necessarily rational. Socially constructed knowledge is contextual rather than waiting \u201cout there\u201d to be discovered. Knowledge can shift as quickly as the texts, contexts, and locations shift. Postmodernism rejects the view that there is a singular universal voice (e.g. Lyotard\u2019s (1984) critique of the grand meta-narratives of western reason) of knowledge. Rather the argument is for a different reality for each group (or individual) of knower. There being multiple groups of knowers and multiple modes of knowing what constitutes the real, there could be multiple realities existing at the same time.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The critique of relativism<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      \u2018Multiple realities\u2019 (if we can straighten the dense and difficult polemic of what is \u2018real\u2019 to get a flat category like that) is not always a feminist category. Postmodernism offers feminism some useful methodological re-conceptualisations, particularly in terms of a caution against the generalisations that transcend the boundaries of culture and region (Nicholson 1990). But relativism (which could be counted as a marker of the post-modern turn) is not always quite supportive to the feminist cause. Relativism as a problem could as well emerge from the dominant groups\u2019 attempt to pacify the non-dominant \u2018other\u2019 voices. In the process of knowing, the subject\u2019s view is not a view from nowhere but always from some specific location. This makes it possible to think of knowledge being dominant or dominated and also makes it possible, the feminists argue, to think of a politics of knowledge where one takes the standpoint of the dominated.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      The feminist way out<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      \u201cStandpoint theory, along with postmodernist and some postcolonial approaches, can seem to share this debilitating relativism because it, too, acknowledges that all knowledge claims are socially situated. Worse, standpoint approaches argue that some kinds of social values can advance the growth of knowledge\u201d (Harding 2004:11). Yet, standpoint theory is neither an advocate of nor is it \u201cdoomed\u201d to relativism. Feminism needs to resist relativism. For relativism \u201c\u2026is a way of being nowhere while claiming to be everywhere equally. The \u201cequality\u201d of positioning is a denial of responsibility and critical enquiry\u201d (Haraway 2004: 89).<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Self-Check Exercise \u2013 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Q 1.What is feminist methodology?<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      There are several approaches to feminist methodology as there are many versions of feminism. The approaches, though disparate, shares some common concerns. Feminist methodology tends to disrupt the reproduction of power relationships that subordinate women as objects of research. Instead, it considers women as contributors in a joint research work. Feminist methodology tends to produce a collective \u2018culture\u2019 for the respectful sharing of women\u2019s experience. Rather than ascertaining something as an indisputable truth, it tries to contextualise veracity.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Feminist researchers deploy research techniques as per their conception of \u2018feminism\u2019. While some researchers use standard surveys, gather numerical information and carry out statistical computations, others take on secondary analysis of documentary material or policy papers. Yet, others may consider the stories of women (recording oral narratives) using in-depth interviews or ethnographies. Feminist methodology can even involve various groups of women for self-directed research. Diverse methodologies remain subject to internal debates about the ways they may inadvertently continue or come to interrupt the patterns of oppression of women.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Q 2. Write a note on the feminist critique of positivistic methodology.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Before talking about the feminist critique of positivistic methodology one has to recall the basic tenets of positivism. Anthony Giddens (1974) refers to three presuppositions that identify a \u201cpositivist attitude\u201d: a) sociology and the natural sciences use the same method; b) the objective of sociological analysis is to formulate knowledge about the social in the form of \u201claws\u201d; and c) sociology, as do the natural sciences, has a technical character and works with an instrumental reasoning, both of which are \u201cneutral\u201d in relation to values. Feminist researchers critique the positivistic tendency toward dualisms\u2014between rationality and emotion, quantitative and qualitative research, and the subject and object of research. Sandra Harding or Alison Jaggar argue, for example, that by establishing the subject-object binary, whereby the value-neutral researcher is disconnected from the research process, positivistic research processes endorse a researcher-researched hierarchy that mimic patriarchy. They also resist the positivist prohibition of emotions from the research procedures and call for an assimilation of quantitative and qualitative techniques.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Q 3. Write a note on the feminist critique of \u2018post-modern relativism\u2019.<\/p>\n

                                       <\/p>\n

                                      Postmodernism proposes the methodological tools to critique the generalizing trends of the social sciences which the feminist helpful. Yet, for a specific group of feminists the postmodern-turn to relativism is not very encouraging. They argue that \u2018relativism\u2019 can also work as the hegemonizer\u2019s strategy of placating the hegemonized voices. As knowledge is always situated it can emanate from the dominant or the dominated positions. The politics of feminism values the standpoint of the dominated as it remains better equipped to conceptualize the social world.<\/p>\n

                                        \n
                                      1. Standpoint Theory<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                        Standpoint feminism is a position taken by feminist theorists that places knowledge at the nucleus of research. It argues for an explicitly woman\u2019s epistemological standpoint. Feminist standpoint epistemology is rooted in research concerning the everyday existence of women. It assumes that in a stratified society the social life is experienced from diverse standpoints. Following the Hegelian conception of the master\/slave dialectic, Nancy Hartsock (1983), one of the key standpoint theorists, emphasizes women as a superior knower. Because of their experiences of oppression, women have a better understanding of life in general. Many sociologists have taken up a version of the standpoint approach (e.g. Reinharz 1983, Stanley & Wise 1983\u20131993, Smith 1987, and Collins 1990).<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        Dorothy Smith\u2019s theorisation is possibly the most extensively known in the field of Sociology. Her work since the last two decades is grappling with the \u2018male\u2019 stream Sociology. Sociology emerged as a challenging new discipline keen to illuminate the inequities and stratifications at the core of various social formations (Karl Marx and Max Weber). Yet, it produced its own variety of hegemony by solely focusing on one specific facet of human social life\u2014the male-controlled macro-level public sphere\u2014at the cost of the \u2018world of women\u2019. Smith emphasizes that the standpoint of the men is consistently privileged as against that of the women. Moreover, the standpoint of the (white) male upper class encompasses and controls other worldviews which remain perennially undervalued. The discipline, outlined by the demands of the hegemonic class, is grounded on men\u2019s concerns (Ramazanoglu 1989). Smith tends to unravel and posit women\u2019s experience as the \u2018starting point\u2019 of the social research inquiry.<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        Stating that all social situations do not provide equally \u2018effective\u2019 resources for learning about the world, standpoint theory helps to identify one of the many problems of relativism. All social situations are not uniformly institutionalised and hegemonic so as to produce knowledge. For example, much of women\u2019s knowing is marked as unstable, irrational, and pathological. They are often renounced as non-knowledge. Sometimes women\u2019s experience is accommodated within the phallogocentric discourse in such a way that their specificity gets wiped out. So to take on a relativist position is to weaken what is not yet too strong. It rather is a \u2018strong objectivity\u2019 that the standpoint theorists would prefer. They think that \u201c… some social situations are scientifically better than others as places from which to start off knowledge projects…\u201d (Harding 2004: 31).<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        Standpoint theorists deem the lives of the marginalised as authentic entry points to critical questionings about the social order. Thoughts that begin from the lives of the dominant groups fail to go beyond the authoritative bias. To begin with, the lives of women, for example, as Harding writes, \u201cwill generate less partial and distorted accounts not only of women\u2019s lives but also of men\u2019s lives and of the whole social order\u201d (Harding 2004: 128). They are nuanced enough to remember they are not seeking for a unitary model of woman\u2019s life. \u201cInstead, one must turn to all the lives that are marginalised in different ways by the operative systems of social stratification\u201d (Harding 2004: 131).<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        They have more than one standpoint from which to produce their partial knowledge. \u201cThe alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledge sustaining the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversation in epistemology\u201d (Haraway 2004: 89). Pointing at the inseparability of knowledge and power, the standpoint theorists do not make authoritative truth claims. They try to remember the diverse nature of woman\u2019s experiences varying in terms of space, time, class, and race and so on. Sandra Harding in her article Subjectivity, Experience and Knowledge:<\/em> An Epistemology from\/for Rainbow Coalition Politics <\/em>states: \u201cIn so far as women, for example, live in oppositional race, class and sexuality relations to each other, the subject of feminist knowledge will be not just multiple, but also contradictory or \u2018incoherent\u2019\u201d (2004: 175-6).<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        7.1 Limitations of the Standpoint Theories<\/em><\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        It is an irony that feminist methodology hardly incorporates the standpoints of women from the \u2018understated\u2019 communities and nations (and their male associates). This happens in spite of the fact that consideration of the racial\/ethnic dissimilarities and joint strategies for fighting racism remains a key theme of the second-wave (Anzaldua 1987, Bulkin, Pratt & Smith 1984). Patricia Hill Collins (1990) is one among a few acclaimed thinkers to work out an analysis of \u2018knowledge making\u2019, in terms of conversation-concern-responsibility, in African-American communities. She underscores that standpoints are always situated and partial. Knowledge that is concededly partial is more responsible than partial knowledge presented as \u2018true\u2019. Kum-Kum Bhavnani (2004) admits that though knowledge is both partial and situated, it is not disembodied. Feminist epistemologies, she points out, respect the differing standpoints women holds in different third world locations. Himani Bannerji (1995) argues for a responsible Marxist and feminist standpoint thinking through the simultaneity of gender, race\/ethnicity, and nationality (the traditional accounts have tried to separate analytically). Chandra Talpade Mohanty\u2019s works (1988, 1991, 1992, and 2003) problematise the hegemonic trends of Western feminism. Much like Bannerji (1995), she considers Dorothy Smith\u2019s theorisations helpful to study the colonial and postcolonial social organisations.<\/p>\n

                                         <\/p>\n

                                        Conceding its wide acceptance across the globe, one also needs to point at the philosophical impasses of the standpoint epistemology. It has to grapple with several queries. Some of them are: If knowledge ought to take off from the perspective of the oppressed, how can one decide who is more oppressed? Can only women understand women? Why do the peripheral communities\/individuals have a less distorted perspective and in what way does it occur? However, standpoint theory, pregnant with a political charge, is not the only philosophical perspective of feminist research. For some contemporary feminists, postmodernism is attuned to the broader feminist task of addressing the question of \u2018other\u2019 in social research (Hesse-Biber, Leavy and Yaiser 2004). Adrien Katherine Wing (2000) invokes the idea of \u201cmultiple consciousness\u201d to explicate the complex intersectionality, multiple locations of social hierarchy in multiple cultures, within a global context. Chela Sandoval (2000) also acknowledges the significance of multiple consciousness. Her \u2018methodology of the oppressed\u2019 talks about the \u2018other\u2019 in the \u2018neo-colonizing post-modern global formations\u2019.<\/p>\n

                                          \n
                                        1. The Post-Colonial Turn<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          There is an increasing awareness amongst the feminist researchers about the importance of women\u2019s experiences in a global context with respect to issues of imperialism, colonialism, and national identity (Hesse-Biber 2011). Feminists doing international research, trying to voice \u201cthe other\/s\u201d in a global context, should remain responsive to the deep-seated undercurrents of power in the very process itself. While Western feminism and feminist methodology have done a commendable work of problematising several age-old gender binaries, what is remarkable is the continued existence and even valorisation of the dichotomy of the West and \u2018the Rest\u2019 in their discourses. This does not always mean a valorisation of the West, but that of the binary where the \u2018Rest\u2019 may also be valorised. Feminist theories, even if they claim to give \u2018multicultural\u2019 or \u2018global\u2019 perspectives on women, are dominated by Western debates and taxonomies. There is a kind of uniformity on what feminism means in the very diverse cultures of the global South. Diverse cartographies and histories are conflated until differences among women are lost. Multiple struggles of very different women, under very different conditions, are collapsed into one theoretical model. All women are not the same. They are different and so are their politics. Black feminisms, local (African, South Asian, etc.) feminisms, Third world feminisms, and various other forms need to be addressed in their specificities.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Invocation of third-world to feminism is to modify the universality of feminism by history and geography. Third world feminism again is not a homogenous category. There is nothing like a unitary notion of third-world woman. Just as western or white woman cannot be defined as coherent interest groups (Mohanty 2003), Third World woman also do not constitute any automatic or unitary group. Alliances and divisions of multiple axes of discriminations like class, religion, sexuality and history fracture each of these groups. There is no fixed nature of the third-world feminist politics. It remains dependent on a number of factors, contexts and contingencies. One \u2018third world feminism\u2019 is thus not interchangeable with another. In this module, we have talked about two feminist thinkers, rooted in India, who have strongly critiqued the epistemological-methodological renditions of the dominant western feminism.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          8.1 Chandra Talpade Mohanty<\/em><\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Chandra Talpade Mohanty\u2019s works have been widely accredited as a major challenge to the mainstream Western feminist thought. Mohanty\u2019s seminal work, \u201cUnder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses\u201d (originally published in 1986), condemns the inherent euro-centrism of the radical western feminist discourses. She deals with the problem of the ideological production of the cultural discourse of what is called the \u2018third world\u2019. This discourse, as reflected in the western feminist texts, produces the \u2018third-world woman as a systematised and homogenised category, as a singular monolith\u2019.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Mohanty states that the methodology which involves the production of this monolithic subject is that of generalisation, de-contextualisation and an assertion on the basis of number. In dominant discourses events are generalised on the basis of the number of their occurrences. For example, the larger the number of instances of wearing veil, the more universal is the (validation of) sexual control over Muslim women. The Western feminist writers fail to consider the varied and often contradictory significance of wearing veils in Islamic cultures. For them, Islam is a unified religion crystallized in a homogeneous empty time. It quite resembles the classical Orientalist (discursive) strategy of the construction of the \u2018oriental other\u2019. Without paying any heed to the geographical or historical contexts, the feminist texts grossly generalise the analytical concepts like gendered division of labour, family, marriage, household and patriarchy.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          8.2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak<\/em><\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on the other hand, talks about the problems of representation of the third world\/subaltern women. Can the subaltern speak? She asks (1994) and complicates the whole question of feminist methodology. One can relate her thesis to the knower-known divide we had been talking about. Research questions addressing the \u2018other\u2019 woman tend to forget and often efface her ability to \u2018know\u2019 or \u2018speak\u2019. There could at least be two possible modes of dealing with a \u2018subaltern subject\u2019. First, the researcher can think of her object of research as an autonomous \u2018subject\u2019. If the researcher thinks that a subaltern woman is an independent subject capable of free self-representation, s\/he would outweigh the voice of the subaltern. Without being responsive to the specificities of the subaltern voice, the researcher would be speaking her own terms, on their behalf. Much of Western feminist concerns have hegemonised the third world woman aiming to speak for them. Second, the researcher might think that the subaltern woman is so \u2018different\u2019 that the universal\/western feminist methodologies fail to reach her. The subaltern woman must be left alone to be \u2018empowered\u2019 on her own efforts. This is problematic as for the subaltern woman the basic requirements of life are at stake. It is rather unwise not to work for them from within the universal methodologies of feminist research. What Spivak intends to underline here, rather than a denial of the ability of the subaltern to speak out, is the risk inherent in the research efforts to conceptualise the subaltern as essentially distinct from the dominant discourses and institutions. The subaltern can actually speak, but they cannot be heard. Once they can speak they are not subalterns any more (Spivak 1990).<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          To address this theoretical\/political impasse, Spivak proposes a tentative methodological way out: \u201cstrategic essentialism\u201d (1987). The way out is tentative in two senses. First, strategic essentialism is logically tentative as it is just as strategy subject to constant alteration. Before the colonized\/subaltern woman repudiates the dominant discourses and institutions, often the source of a basic\/na\u00efve benefaction, she has to see how the universalising discourse could be useful for her. She has to go on to see where that discourse meets its limits and the challenges it pose for her. It brings about a sort of provisional solidarity among different\/contending groups agreeing temporarily upon an \u2018essentialist\u2019 stance to work together. Second, fundamentally concerned with heterogeneity, Spivak opts for a universal discourse as a tentative deconstructive strategy (of following the logic of the dominant and reaching at its limits). Interestingly, while other scholars keep working upon her concept of \u2018strategic essentialism\u2019 Spivak has, ever since, withdrawn from the use of this notion.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Self-Check Exercise – 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Q 1. What is standpoint epistemology?<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Feminist standpoint epistemology takes up the Marxist and Hegelian idea that the material and lived experiences of the people shape their comprehension of the social world. Feminist standpoint scholars argue that the woman\u2019s place within society, structurally subjugated in relation to the dominant group or men, offers a better perception of the social. Dorothy Smith (1987), an early advocate of the standpoint perspective, emphasized the necessity of beginning research from the women\u2019s experiences. Research should take into consideration women\u2019s every day\/night experiences discovering the gaps that crop up when the women attempt to accommodate their lives into the dominant mode of conceptualizing women\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Q 2. What is strong objectivity?<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          The notion of strong objectivity was first articulated by the feminist philosopher Sandra Harding. Strong objectivity argues for the academic, political and ethical significance of the experiences of those who have been excluded from the realm of knowledge. Harding (1986) states that knowledge created from the standpoint of the marginalized groups may put forward a \u2018stronger objectivity\u2019 due to the increased motivation for them to comprehend the views of those in positions of power. Strong objectivity tends to reveal the relations of power that remain concealed in main-stream processes of knowledge production.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Q 3. How do the feminists situated in the post-colonial spaces negotiate with the western feminist methodologies?<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          It is insincerity on the part of the western feminists that they fail to address the standpoints of the third-world or post\/colonial women. Chandra Talpade Mohanty theorizes how the dominant feminist methodology \u2013 through the processes of generalisation, de-contextualisation and an assertion on the basis of number \u2013 constructs the \u2018third-world\u2019 woman as a monolithic subject. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on the other hand, points out how the very research processes attending to the colonized woman fails to remember or even obliterate her capability of knowledge and speech.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Q 4. What is strategic essentialism?<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                          Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987) developed \u2018strategic essentialism\u2019 as a provisional deconstructive strategy of following the logic of the dominant and reaching at its limits. It is a subaltern mode of negotiating with the dominant discourses. Prior to the act of discarding the dominant forms of knowledge the subaltern woman needs to judge whether that is beneficial for her.<\/p>\n

                                           <\/p>\n

                                            \n
                                          1. Summary<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                             <\/p>\n

                                            By the end of this module we get to know about a number of contending voices questioning the dominant modes of research methodology. What remains common in them is a feminist consciousness that tends to produce possibilities of intellectual and emotional articulations for all women. Feminism works \u2018from the periphery to the core\u2019 questioning the dominant forms of knowledge building that define, in fixed terms, who can be a knower and what can be known.<\/p>\n

                                             <\/p>\n

                                              \n
                                            1. Web Links<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                               <\/p>\n

                                              http:\/\/ggsc.wnmu.edu\/gap\/wadsworth.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              http:\/\/http-server.carleton.ca\/~adoucet\/pdfs\/Doucet_Mauthner_Feminist_Methods_2006.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

                                              www.catunescomujer.org\/catunesco…\/Gender_and_Methodology<\/strong>.doc<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
                                              you can view video on Feminist Methodology in Sociological Research<\/strong><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
                                              \n

                                               <\/p>\n

                                              Reading Material<\/strong><\/p>\n

                                               <\/p>\n

                                                \n
                                              1. Allen P. \u201cFree space\u201d, in Radical Feminism edited by A. Koedt, E. Levine and A. Rapone. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. p. 71\u201379.<\/li>\n
                                              2. Alcoff, Linda. \u201cOn Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant?\u201d, in Engendering<\/li>\n
                                              3. Rationalities edited by N. Tuana and S. Morgan. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. p 53-80.<\/li>\n
                                              4. Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth Potter (eds.) Feminist Epistemologies. New York: Routledge, 1993.<\/li>\n
                                              5. Anzald\u00faa, Gloria. Borderlands\/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters\/Aunt Lute, 1987.<\/li>\n
                                              6. Bannerji, Himani. Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism and Anti-Racism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1995.<\/li>\n
                                              7. Benhabib, Seyla. \u201cFeminism and Postmodernism\u201d, in Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.<\/li>\n
                                              8. Bhavnani, Kum-Kum. \u201cTracing the contours: Feminist research and feminist objectivity\u201d. Women\u2019s Studies International Forum 16 (1993): 95\u2013104.<\/li>\n
                                              9. Bulkin, Elly. Minnie, Bruce Pratt & Barbar Smith. Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism Firebrand Books, 1984.<\/li>\n
                                              10. Cancian, F. \u201cFeminist science: methodologies that challenge inequality\u201d. Gender and Society 6, no 4 (1992): 623\u201342.<\/li>\n
                                              11. Collins,\u00a0 Patricia\u00a0 Hill.\u00a0 Black\u00a0 feminist\u00a0 thought:\u00a0 Knowledge,\u00a0 consciousness,\u00a0 and\u00a0 the\u00a0 politics\u00a0 of empowerment Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.<\/li>\n
                                              12. Combahee River Collective. \u201cA Black feminist statement\u201d in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by G.T. Hull, P. Bell Scott, B. Smith. Black Women\u2019s Studies, New York: Feminist Press, 1982. p.13\u201322.<\/li>\n
                                              13. DeVault,\u00a0 Marjorie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 L.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cTalking\u00a0\u00a0 Back\u00a0\u00a0 To\u00a0\u00a0 Sociology:\u00a0\u00a0 Distinctive\u00a0\u00a0 Contributions\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist Methodology\u201d. Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 29-50.<\/li>\n
                                              14. Durkheim, \u00c9mile. The Rules of Sociological Method (8th ed.). S. A. Solovay & J. H. Mueller, Translated. New York: Free Press, 1965\/1938.<\/li>\n
                                              15. Eichler, M. Nonsexist Research Methods: A Practical Guide Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.<\/li>\n
                                              16. Game, A. Undoing the Social: Towards a Deconstructive Sociology Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                              17. Giddens, Anthony. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies Polity Press, 1993.<\/li>\n
                                              18. Gilligan, Carol.\u00a0 In a Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.<\/li>\n
                                              19. Gluck\u00a0 SB,\u00a0 Patai\u00a0\u00a0 D\u00a0\u00a0 (eds.).\u00a0\u00a0 Women\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 Words:\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0\u00a0 Practice\u00a0\u00a0 of\u00a0\u00a0 Oral\u00a0\u00a0 History\u00a0\u00a0 New York\/London: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                              20. Hanisch, Carol. \u201cThe Personal is Political\u201d, in Feminist Revolution edited by Red stockings. New York: Random House, 1969\/1979.<\/li>\n
                                              21. Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions. New York: Routledge, 1989.\n
                                                  \n
                                                1. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cSituated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective\u201d, in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies edited by Sandra Harding. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. p. 81-101.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                2. Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.<\/li>\n
                                                3. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cIs There a Feminist Method?\u201d, in Feminism and methodology edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. p. 181-190.<\/li>\n
                                                4. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cFeminism, Science, and the Anti-Enlightenment Critiques\u201d, in Feminism\/Postmodernism edited by L.J. Nicholson. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. p. 83-110.<\/li>\n
                                                5. \u2013\u2013\u2013. Whose science? Whose knowledge? New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                                6. \u2013\u2013. \u201cRethinking Standpoint Epistemology: \u2018What is Strong Objectivity?\u2019\u201d, in Feminist Epistemologies edited by Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth Potter. New York: Routledge, 1993.<\/li>\n
                                                7. \u2013\u2013\u2013. (ed.).The Racial Economy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.<\/li>\n
                                                8. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cComment on Hekman\u2019s \u2018Truth and Method\u2019: Whose standpoint needs the regimes of Truth and Reality?\u201d in Signs 22 (1996): 382-39.<\/li>\n
                                                9. \u2013\u2013\u2013.Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998.<\/li>\n
                                                10. Harding, Sandra. \u201cIntroduction: Standpoint Theory as a Site of Political, Philosophic, and Scientific Debate\u201d, in The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies edited by Sandra Harding. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. p. 1-15.<\/li>\n
                                                11. Hartsock, Nancy. \u201cThe feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism\u201d, in Discovering Reality edited by Sandra Harding & Merrill Hintikka. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1983. p. 283\u2013310.<\/li>\n
                                                12. Hesse-Biber and Sharlene, Nagy (ed.). Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and PraxisSage Publications, 2011.<\/li>\n
                                                13. Hull GT, Bell Scott P, Smith B. (eds.). All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. Black Women\u2019s Studies, New York: Feminist Press, 1982.<\/li>\n
                                                14. Jaggar,\u00a0 Alison.\u00a0 \u201cLove\u00a0 and\u00a0 knowledge:\u00a0 Emotion\u00a0 in\u00a0 feminist\u00a0 epistemology\u201d,\u00a0 in\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 social thought: A reader edited by Diana Tietjens Meyers. New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 385\u2013405.<\/li>\n
                                                15. Kasper,\u00a0 A.\u00a0 \u201cA\u00a0 feminist,\u00a0 qualitative\u00a0 methodology:\u00a0 a\u00a0 study\u00a0 of\u00a0 women\u00a0 with\u00a0 breast\u00a0 cancer\u201d.\u00a0 In Qualitative Sociology 17, no. 3. (1994): 263\u201381.<\/li>\n
                                                16. Lather\u00a0 P.\u00a0 Getting\u00a0 Smart:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Research\u00a0 and\u00a0 Pedagogy\u00a0 With\/In\u00a0 the\u00a0 Postmodern.\u00a0 London: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                                17. Leveque-Lopman L. Claiming Reality: Phenomenology and Women\u2019s Experience. New Jersey: Rowan & Littlefield, 1988.<\/li>\n
                                                18. Lyotard,\u00a0 Jean\u00a0\u00a0 Francois.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0 Postmodern\u00a0\u00a0 Condition:\u00a0 A\u00a0\u00a0 Report\u00a0 on\u00a0\u00a0 Knowledge\u00a0 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.<\/li>\n
                                                19. Maguire, P. Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach. Amherst, MA: Cent. Int. Educ., Univ. Mass, 1987.<\/li>\n
                                                20. Mies, M. \u201cTowards a methodology for feminist research\u201d, in Theories for Women’s Studies edited by G. Bowles & R. Klein Duelli. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. p. 88-104.<\/li>\n
                                                21. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cWomen\u2019s research or feminist research? The debate surrounding feminist science and methodology\u201d, in Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research edited by M. M. Fonow and J. A. Cook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. p. 60\u201384.<\/li>\n
                                                22. Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1969\/ 2000.<\/li>\n
                                                23. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. \u201cUnder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses\u201d. Feminist Review 30 (1988): p. 61 \u2013 88.<\/li>\n
                                                24. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cIntroduction\u201d to C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds.) Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Bloomington, Ind., and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                                25. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cFeminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience\u201d, in Space, Gender, Knowledge edited by L. Mcdowell and J. P. Sharp. London, New York, Sydney, Auckland: Arnold, 1992\/1997.<\/li>\n
                                                26. \u2013\u2013\u2013. \u201cUnder Western Eyes\u201d Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles\u201d.<\/strong> Signs 28, 2 (2003): 499-535.<\/span><\/li>\n
                                                27. Nagy, Sharlene. Hesse-Biber and Yaiser, Michelle L. (eds.). Feminist Perspectives on Social Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.<\/li>\n
                                                28. Narayan U. The project of feminist epistemology: perspectives from a non-western feminist\u201d, in Gender\/Body\/Knowledge:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Reconstructions\u00a0 of\u00a0 Being\u00a0 and\u00a0 Doing\u00a0 edited\u00a0 by\u00a0 A. Jaggarand S. Bordo. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1989. p. 256\u201369.<\/li>\n
                                                29. Nicholson, Linda, (ed.) \u201cIntroduction\u201d to Feminism\/Postmodernism New York: Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\n
                                                30. Oakley, A . \u201cInterviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms\u201d, in Doing Feminist Research edited by H. Roberts. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. p. 30\u201361.<\/li>\n
                                                31. Personal\u00a0 Narratives\u00a0 Group\u00a0 (ed).\u00a0 Interpreting\u00a0 Women\u2019s\u00a0 Lives:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Theory\u00a0 and\u00a0 Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Ind. Univ. Press, 1989.<\/li>\n
                                                32. Ramazanoglu,\u00a0 C.\u00a0 \u201cOn\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Methodology:\u00a0 Male\u00a0 Reason\u00a0 Versus\u00a0 Female\u00a0 Empowerment\u201d. Sociology 26, 2: (1992): 207-212.<\/li>\n
                                                33. Reinharz S. \u201c<\/strong>Experiential analysis: a contribution to feminist research\u201d in Theories of Women’s Studies edited by Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. p. 162-191.<\/span><\/li>\n
                                                34. Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston: North-eastern University Press, 1987.<\/li>\n
                                                35. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.<\/li>\n
                                                36. Spalter-Roth, RM and Hartmann, H.<\/strong> \u201cScience and politics and the \u201cdual vision\u201d of feminist policy research: the example of family and medical leave\u201d, in Parental Leave and Child Care: Setting a Research and Policy Agenda edited by J.S Hyde and M.J Essex. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991. p. 41\u201365.<\/span><\/li>\n
                                                37. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen, 1987.<\/li>\n
                                                38. Spivak,\u00a0\u00a0 Gayatri\u00a0\u00a0 Chakravorty.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Post-Colonial\u00a0\u00a0 Critic:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Interviews,\u00a0\u00a0 Strategies,\u00a0\u00a0 Dialogues. Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\n
                                                39. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. \u201cCan the subaltern speak?\u201d in Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A Reader edited by Patrick Williams & Laura Chrismen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. p. 66\u2013111.<\/li>\n
                                                40. Stanley, Liz (ed.). Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Research. London: Routledge, 1990.<\/li>\n
                                                41. Stanley\u00a0 L,\u00a0 Wise\u00a0 S.\u00a0 (eds).\u00a0 Breaking\u00a0 Out:\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Consciousness\u00a0 and\u00a0 Feminist\u00a0 Research\u00a0 and Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology. London: Routledge, 1983\/93.<\/li>\n
                                                42. Trinh, T. Minh-ha. Framer framed. New York: Routledge, 1991.<\/li>\n
                                                43. Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought. Westview Press, 2009.<\/li>\n
                                                44. Wing, Adrien Katherine (ed.). Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2000.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"menu_order":28,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["dr-ritu-sen-chaudhuri"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[76],"license":[],"class_list":["post-186","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-dr-ritu-sen-chaudhuri"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/revisions\/329"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}