Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology

As feminist scholarship has developed, it has become increasingly clear that the practice of feminist research is interdisciplinary. Yet there are very few books in the social sciences and humanities that address the methodological and theoretical issues raised in doing feminist research from an interdisciplinary perspective. This collection is an ideal text for courses in research methods and in women's studies in a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines. A distinct feature of this volume is its interdisciplinary and global orientation. The collection is organized around key issues in feminist theory and empirical research as they have been impacted by post-structuralist dialogue. Several essays address the tensions between disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge building, exposing male biases embedded in disciplinary paradigms. Other essays deal with the politics of identity and experience, presented not as innate and unproblematic, but as constituted by discourse, representation, and the effects of power. Responding to the inadequacy of essentializing modes of feminist thought, some scholars focus on the complex terrain in which difference is used as a tool of oppression and of resistance both inside and outside feminist praxis. The gender dynamics of power and resistance are taken up by several critics whose research encourages the development of a feminist scholarly methodology focused on women's subjective experiences and the ways in which relations of power are mediated. Visual and discursive representations of the female body constitute another major focus of the volume, especially as related to the imposition of compulsory heterosexuality and reproductive norms. The volume concludes with a set of essays which present the reader with some methodological and political dilemmas feminists encounter as they expose the underlying ideological distortions in existing social policies.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction I. Feminist Critiques Within The Disciplines 1.: Emily Martin: The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles 2.: Susan Bordo: Feminist Skepticism and the "Maleness" of Philosophy 3.: Kathleen Canning: Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience II. The Politics Of Identity And Experience 4.: Joan Scott: The Evidence of Experience 5.: Jayati Lal: Situating Locations: The Politics of Self, Identity, and "Other" in Living and Writing the Text 6.: Catherine Raissiguier: The Construction of Marginal Identities: Working-Class Girls of Algerian Descent in a French School III. The Social Construction Of Difference 7.: Patricia Hill Collins: Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought 8.: bell hooks: Eating the Other, 'Black Looks: Race and Representation' 9.: Feminist Criticism, 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' and the Politics in Color America IV. Power And Resistance 10.: Monique Deveaux: Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault 11.: Deniz Kandiyoti: Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective V. Discourses Of The Body 12.: Anne Raine: Embodied Geographies: Subjectivity and Materiality in the Work of Ana Mendieta 13.: Rayna Rapp: The Power of "Positive" Diagnosis: Medical and Maternal Discourses on Amniocentesis 14.: The Psychomorphology of the Clitoris VI. Social Policy and Female Agency 15.: Roberta Spalter-Roth & Heidi Hartmann: Small Happinesses: The Feminist Struggle to Integrate Social Research with Social Activism 16.: Cindy Patton: From Nation to Family: Containing African AIDS Chandra Talpade Mohanty: Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and Politics of Solidarity