Machine generated contents note: I Introduction
Introduction
Three challenges to feminist methodology
What is gender?
What is feminism in the twenty-first century?
Are feminists women?
What is methodology in social research?
Is feminist methodology distinctively feminist?
The structure of the book
PART I FEMINISM'S ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS
2 Reason, science and progress: feminism's Enlightenment
inheritance
Introduction
Enlightenment thought
Reason, science and progress: how Enlightenment thought has
shaped feminist approaches to methodology
Modem humanism
The long shadow of the Enlightenment: challenges and
contradictions at the roots of modem feminist methodology
Conclusion
3 Can feminists tell the truth? Challenges of
scientific method
Introduction
Feminist research as a quest for valid knowledge of social
realities by a knowing subject
Feminist objections to scientific method in social research
Objectivity, subjectivity, relativism: competing paths to truth
Conclusion
4 From truth/reality to knowledge/power: taking a feminist
standpoint
Introduction
The knowing feminist at the limits of modern methodology
A methodological continuum: slipping and sliding on
Haraway's greasy pole
What is a feminist standpoint?
Nancy Hartsock: achieving a feminist standpoint as a vantage
point on male supremacy
Dorothy Smith: taking women's standpoint; beginning in
experience
What problems remain?
Conclusion
PART II FREEDOM, FRAGMENTATION AND RESISTANCE
5 Escape from epistemology? The impact of postmodern
thought on feminist methodology
Introduction
Postmodern thought
Postmodern freedoms: sweeping away the foundations of
feminist methodology
Thus far but no further? Feminist resistance to postmodern
thought
Conclusion
6 Researching 'others': feminist methodology and the
politics of difference
Introduction
Confronting difference in feminist social research
Being different: the constitution of 'otherness'
Being different: experiencing and resisting 'otherness'
Complications of difference
The politics of representing 'others': the privileged researcher
The power of interpretation: data analysis
Reflexivity in the research process
Conclusion
7 Knowledge, experience and reality: justifying feminist
connections
Introduction
The case against taking experience as a source of knowledge
A case for taking experience as a source of knowledge
The difficulties of connecting experience and material realities
Should feminists specify criteria of validity?
The idea of a feminist epistemic community
Conclusion
PART III MEETING CHALLENGES, MAKING CHOICES
8 Choices and decisions: doing a feminist research project
Introduction
What makes social research feminist?
The research process
Situating your research question
Face to face with the research: data production
Face to face with the researched: putting reflexivity into practice
Face to face with the data: analysis and conclusions
Face to face with a blank sheet: writing up
Conclusion
9 Conclusion
Glossary
References
Index.