Social Research Methods

Week 9, Nov. 24, 2009: Seminar and Classroom Sessions – Reflexivity and Feminist Approaches in Social Research

Reflexivity: Texts for Group Work Assignment

  • Mary Jo Neitz, ‘Walking between the Worlds: Permeable Boundaries, Ambiguous Identities,’ in Spickard, Landres and McGuire (eds.) Personal Knowledge and Beyond: Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion, New YorkUniversity Press, 2002
  • Margaret Poloma, Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism, chapter 10: ‘Narrative and reflexive ethnography: a concluding account,’ Altamira, 2003
  • Ganiel and Mitchell, ‘Turning the categories inside-out: Complex identifications and multiple interactions in religious ethnography,’ Sociology of Religion, 67(1), 2006
  • Kathleen M. Blee, ‘Studying the Enemy,’ in Barry Glassner and rosanna Hertz, eds., Our Studies, Ourselves: Sociologists’ Lives and Work, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
  • R. Stephen Warner, ‘Sojourn in the Field,’ in New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small-town Church, University of California Press, 1988

ReflexivityGroup Work:

Reflexivity is an integral part of qualitative, ethnographic data-gathering and analysis.

Here is a definition of Reflexivity: the idea that the researcher must reflect on her position as a researcher, her standpoints, her different identities, and analyse how this impacts on her data collection and analysis.

Discuss your assigned readings with your partners and then ‘report back’ to the group.

  • Was the researcher(s) in the article an insider or an outsider?
  • Did the researcher(s) reflect on how this impacted their research? Summarise their reflections.
  • Is it important for social science research to include this kind of reflection? Why or why not?
  • What else would you have liked to have known about the researcher(s) experience in the field and ‘writing up’?
  • Did you learn anything that will help you to be ‘reflexive’ in your own research?

In sum, what should self-reflexive researchers be aware of when they undertake a project?

Feminist Approaches

Background Reading:

  • Burns and Walker, ‘Feminist Methodologies,’ in Somekh and Lewin, eds., Research Methods in the Social Sciences, Sage, 2005 [IN FOLDER]
  • Olesen, V. ‘Feminisms and Models of Qualitative Research,’ in Denzin and Lincoln, The Landscape of Qualitative Research, Sage, 2003 [IN FOLDER]
  • Reinharz, S. Feminist Methods in Social Research, chapter 3, Oxford University Press, 1992 [IN FOLDER]
  • Nason-Clark and Neitz, Feminist Narratives and the Sociology of Religion, Altamira, 2001
  • Ferree, M. et al., Revisioning Gender, Sage, 1999
  • Behar, Ruth, ed. Women Writing Culture, University of California Press, 1996

Discussion Topics:

  • What’s distinctive about feminist approaches?
  • Contribution of feminist approaches to the social sciences
  • How does your identity as a researcher affect data gathering and analysis
  • How to bring participants into the research process
  • How to be ‘reflexive’ during data gathering and writing up

What’s distinctive about feminist approaches to social research?

From Burns and Walker (2005: 66): ‘Feminist research has contributed to the development of many key methodological ideas, for example, standpoint, positionality and reflexivity, while also foregrounding critical enquiries into gender, gender relations and society. Feminism and feminist research has been at the forefront of challenging the silencing of women’s voices in society and research and in challenging a narrow, gendered kind of science, which cast women in passive and subordinate roles and excluded them from scientific practices by virtue of them being ‘emotional’ and hence incapable of ‘reason’. Crucially, feminist research aspires to be for women as much as it is about women.’

Burns and Walker quote Weiner’s (1994) three principles as a guide to feminist research:

  • feminist research involves a critique of unexamined assumptions about women and dominant forms of knowing and doing
  • it involves a commitment to improve life chances for girls and women
  • it is concerned with developing equitable professional and personal practices (quoted in Burns and Walker, 2005:66)

However, there are no methods which are specific to feminist research.

Focus on Women’s Voices

This may translate into:

  • Studies by women focusing on women
  • More general studies focusing on women’s perspectives
  • The focus on women’s voices comes from a conviction that women’s perspectives have been silenced or undervalued in the social sciences

Focusing on women’s voices also means paying attention to standpoint, positionality and reflexivity (Burns and Walker)

Standpoint: the idea that women have a broader perspective on social reality because of their understanding of their own gendered oppression (their standpoint), and that the subjectivity of the researcher is crucial in the research design and must be taken into account in her interpretation (67)

Positionality: the implication of the researcher in the production of research (the researcher is seen as producing data along with the research participants, not as extracting it from them)

Reflexivity: the idea that the researcher must reflect on her position as a researcher, her standpoints, her different identities, and analyse how this impacts on her data collection and analysis. Your group work exercise deals with reflexivity.

Focus on Power Relationships

Feminist researchers have focused on power relationships within society, politics, and so on; they also have focused on power relationships between researchers and participants in the research. Many feminist researchers see it as a key task that their research contribute to the dismantling of unjust power relationships.

A Participatory Approach to Research

Many feminist researchers are committed to making their research as participatory as possible. This means that research participants are not viewed as objects from which to extract information and data on a one-time basis. Rather, the participants should be kept informed of the research at various stages, and have the opportunity to comment on the researcher’s work and analysis. This approach therefore has as an aim the empowerment of participants. The researcher can benefit when the participants disagree with her analysis, or point out things she might have missed.

I have taken this approach in my research on the multiracial congregation in South Africa. When I went to study the congregation, I asked permission of the elders. They specifically asked me if I would give them some feedback on my research. This has taken several forms, and included feedback not only for the elders but for others who participated in the research. For instance, shortly before I left Cape Town I drew up a report on the research and presented it to the elders, where they had the opportunity to voice concerns about my findings. I also gave a similar report to my ‘cell group’ in the congregation. When I have written journal articles based on the research, I have emailed them to the people I interviewed before I submitted them for consideration for publication.

Techniques for Participatory Research:

  • Sharing documents
  • Focus Groups
  • Personal conversations
  • ‘User Workshops’

Group Work: Read the examples of feedback I received from people at JubileeCommunityChurch, Cape Town, and answer the following questions:

Example 1, white South African woman: You encapsulated everything well and your conclusions were brilliant and should help our elders to put something in place in 2006 re: leaders training, etc. You can send this paper on to anyone without being concerned that you are offending in any way. I think it will also help the four people who you interviewed who left Jubilee a few years ago. I am so grateful to God for sending you to us and helping us to open the way for discussion again. Since you left I have been able to have four very meaningful discussions with [an elder] which has opened the way for us to pick up the ‘storytelling’ component which is so necessary that people from each race group tell their stories and are listened to without interruptions or explanations. Thereafter there needs to be workshops to talk through what we have heard. He is very open to this so I reckon that Jubilee is now ready for the next, and deeper step, into reconciliation. I am chuffed about this!

Example 2, coloured man: Thanks for sending the attached document; please forgive the late reply. You have clearly put a lot of work into this draft by getting round to interview a range of people. I have no problem with the quotes that you have attributed to me (I think). For me, probably the most important part of the document involves the last paragraph, which acts as a summation of all that was discussed before, and is effectively the ‘take home’ message. For those who are academically inclined this acts as the final analysis of your research. Understandably, all conclusions in a context such as this will have an element of subjective interpreting; therefore you would be aware that any other astute reader will also bring to bear his/her analysis and subjective interpretation. As subjective as one is allowed to be, however, it remains important to be able to stand back from the document, and interpret the data in the broader context of South Africa – its political history, the history of the Church, the progress made since democracy, etc. And this has to be done by considering fundamental issues, not just the ‘trimmings on the outside.’

With this in mind, I must say that I am surprised at the upbeat tone of the summation. There are some reservations, admittedly, that are made – recognizing that reconciliation has not been ‘completely realized’ and encouraging dialogue, for instance, but it is undeniable that the message is a relatively enthusiastic one for the course chosen for the church in question. I am uncertain whether this is a reflection of the analysis of your data or the push to find a positive message in your research that can be exported to other contexts.

In truth, though, this is subject to interpretation. I would contend that, for an objective reader, the conclusions may be very different. When the progress made by the church is taken into consideration in the context of the society then the gains that it has made seem far less substantial. When the casual, informed reader looks at your data in the broader context of South Africa (someone who knows a bit about the country), they are likely to ask a few pertinent questions, such as ‘How is it that, more than a decade after democracy (not that that should be the yardstick for the church, which should have been proactive long before that), one has a church in which there is not a single black South African elder?’ Surely this should point to a systematic and unattended issue? Why has there been an exodus of many black people from the church (in unrelated incidents)? Why does the progress in this church not match up to that seen by almost every other secular institution in the country? Is this really the model for South Africa and beyond to learn about how it is possible for ‘racial reconciliation to take place within the context of a congregation’ – in a parochial, white-led fashion, more than a decade after the advent of democracy allowed governmental institutions, sports bodies, educational institutions, news media, and businesses to listen to, be informed by, be changed by, and be built by black South African people, who actually account for 90% of the population? Why should the church be different? Is there any justification, theological or practical, why this should be the case in the church? By all my understanding of theology, politics and societal interactions, I would say no.

Questions:

  • What’s your immediate reaction to these responses?
  • Would you integrate them into your analysis?
  • How?
  • What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of participatory research?

The Contribution of Feminist Approaches to Social Science Research

From the discussion today, what do you think are the main contributions of feminist approaches to social science?

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