Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices

Front Cover
SAGE, 2002 M02 20 - 196 pages
`An accessible, clearly explained review of difficult concepts within this arena as well as relevant debates. Its strengths are in outlining possible considerations that need to be taken into account when making methodological choices. It also clearly explains how these choices impact knowledge production. This book would undoubtedly be of considerable use to anyone seeking to understand and get to grips with feminist methodological issues′ - Feminism and Psychology

Who would be a feminist now? Contemporary ′political realism′ suggests that the essentials of the battle have already been won, and the current generation of women entering University is used to seeing feminism presented as ′old fashioned′, ′extreme′ and ′unrealistic′.

Challenging such assumptions, this important new book argues for the value of empirical investigations of gendered life, and brings together the theoretical, political and practical aspects of feminist methodology.

Feminist Methodology

- demonstrates how feminist approaches to methodology engage with debates in western philosophy to raise critical questions about knowledge production

- shows that feminist methodology has a distinctive place in social research

- guides the reader through the terrain of feminist methodology and clarifies how feminists can claim knowledge of gendered social existence

- connects abstract issues of theory with issues in fieldwork practice.

This timely and accessible book will be an essential resource for students in women′s studies, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, social anthropology and feminist psychology.

 

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
1
Feminisms enlightenment legacy and its contradictions
21
Feminisms Enlightenment Inheritance
23
Chapter 3 Can feminists tell the truth? Challenges of scientific method
41
Chapter 4 From truthreality to knowledgepower
60
Freedom fragmentation and resistance
81
Chapter 5 Escape from epistemology? The Impact of postmodern thought on feminist methodology
83
Feminist methodology and the politics of difference
105
Justifying feminist connections
123
Meeting challenges making choices
143
Doing a feminist research project
145
Chapter 9 Conclusion
165
Glossary
170
References
174
Index
191
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