ASW 311 study guide: Chapter 12

In this chapter Reinharz looks at feminist research projects that claim to use 'original' methods. By this is often meant that you don't actually 'invent' a particular method, but that at the same time, different (groups of) people in different places around the world are experimenting with the same method perhaps for the first time (read Reinharz's own experience on p. 215). This is exciting because it tells us that 'something "new" is in the air' and that perhaps we are at the beginning of what Thomas Kuhn called a 'paradigm shift' (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1970). It is also called 'being at the cutting edge' of research. Think about how your own research project could be at the cutting edge (be ambitious!!).

There are many inspiring books in the Further Reading section of this chapter, some of which you have already encountered earlier, e.g. Kathy Barry's Female Sexual Slavery; Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology and Beyond God the Father (and her autobiography Outercourse; Belenky et al.'s Women's Ways of Knowing, etc.

Susan Krieger's The Mirror Dance is an especially inspiring study of identity in a lesbian community in the US mid-west. Her methodology chapter is a gem: it is worth reading again and again and you can learn heaps about it for your own research.

Reader

12.1 Vivienne Griffiths (1990), 'Using drama to get at gender' in Liz Stanley (ed), Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 221—235.

12.2 Marianne Wex (1979), 'Let's Take Back Our Space': 'Female' and 'Male' Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures, Frauenliteraturverlag Hermine Fees, Berlin, pp 6-10; 12-13.

12.3 Susan Krieger (1983), The Mirror Dance: Identity in a Women's Community, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, pp. xi-xviii; 180199.

Further reading

Thomas Kuhn (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Bettina Aptheker (1989), Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Experience, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, pp. 253254.

Andree Collard (1991), Rape of the Wild, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p.39.

Patti Lather (1991), Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy with/in the Postmodern, Chapman and Hall, New York, p. xvi.

Marianne A. Paget (1990), 'Performing the Text,' Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 19(1):136-155.

Shere Hite (1976), The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality, Macmillan, New York.

Diana Scully and Pauline Bart (1973), 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Orifice: Women in Gynecology Textbooks,' American Journal of Sociology 78(4): 104~1050.

Kathleen Barry (1979) Female Sexual Slavery, Avon, NY.

Mary Daly (1978), Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Beacon Press, Boston.

Mary Daly (1973), Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation, Beacon Press, Boston.

Mary Daly (1993), Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage, Spinifex Press, Melbourne.

Mary Belenky et al. (1986), Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind, Basic Books, New York.

Ruby Langford (1988), Don't Take Your Love to Town, Penguin, Ringwood.

Sue Middleton (1984), 'On Being a Feminist Educationist Doing Research on Being a Feminist Educationist: Life History Analysis as Consciousness Raising', NZ Cultural Studies Working Group Journal, 8, pp. 29-37.

Rhoda Linton (1989), 'Feminist Research Methodology: Exploration and Experimentation' in Alison Jaggar and Susan Bordo (eds), Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconsiderations of Being and Knowing, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.

Irene Moores (1992), Where is Wungamurrah?, Butterfly Books, Springford.

Sally Morgan, My Place, Arcade, New York, 1980.

Jocelynne A. Scutt, (1987) Different Lives: Reflections on the Women's Movement and Visions of its Future, Penguin, Ringwood.

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