Choosing a research method can be bewildering.

How can you be sure which

methodology is appropriate, or whether your chosen combination of methods is
consistent with the theoretical perspective you want to take? This book links
methodology and theory with great clarity and precision, showing students and
researchers how to navigate the maze of conflicting terminology. The major
epistemological stances and theoretical

From an ego-psychological perspective it can be seen how women will form

their personal identities from the same identity mechanisms as those of men
but by interacting with a cultural environment which denies them, as women,
the imaginary models that nurture competence, genius, and transcendence.
—Marissa Zavalloni
How to speak of developmental and relational processes in ways that privilege
women's experiences is central in feminist writings. Lacking in most of this literature
is a dynamic psychological language capable of sharpening the critical edge of the
feminist analyses of women's subjectivities and relational experiences. Furthermore,
many feminist authors are highly suspicious of the constructive potential of
psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Self psychology weathers the feminist critique of psychoanalysis. It offers the
weight of an experientially based theory in which to situate the feminist concerns of
conceptualizing subjectivity as

"The foundations of social research"- Choosing a research method can be

bewildering. How can you be sure which methodology is appropriate, or whether your
chosen combination of methods is consistent with the theoretical perspective you
want to take?
The Foundation of Social Research links methodology and theory with great clarity
and precision, showing students and researchers how to navigate the maze of
conflicting terminology. The major epistemological stances and theoretical
perspectives that colour and shape current social research are detailed: positivism,
constructionism, interpretivism, critical inquiry, feminism and postmodernism. Crotty
reveals the philosophical origins of these schools of inquiry and shows how various
disciplines contribute to the practice of social research as it is known today.

Introduction; Positivism; The March of Science; Constructionism

The Making of Meaning; Interpretivism; For and against Culture
Interpretivism; The Way of Hermeneutics; Critical Inquiry; The Marxist Heritage;
Critical Inquiry; Contemporary Critics and Contemporary Critique; Feminism; Re-
Visioning the Man-Made World; Postmodernism; Crisis of Confidence or Moment of
Truth?
Conclusion

The Foundations of Social

Research
 Michael Crotty
Chapter 8
Feminism: Re-visioning the Manmade
World

The Foundations of Social Research

•All previous epistemological and
theoretical positions have been
characterized by pluralism, contradiction
and conflict
•Feminism is no different.
•In keeping with Crotty’s tendency to
connect each of the chapters, why do you
suppose he followed Freire up with
feminism?

The Foundations of Social Research

•Is it possible for a man to be afemin ist?
•Why does Crotty argue that for women to
attain equality they must lead the
movement and constitute its core?
•What does Crotty mean when he says
“patriarchy and sexism are not fetters
worn by females only; they severely limit
human possibility for males as well.”
•What is patriarchy?
–A system in which men dominate because
power and authority are in the hands of adult
men.
•What is Sexism?
–One of the systems/-isms that facilitate
privilege and inequality, subordination and domination on the basis of gender (Notice
I didn’t say sex).

Varieties of Feminism:

Liberal Feminism privileges the autonomy of a woman and views the just
society as a system of individual rights that safeguard personal autonomy and
allow self-fulfillment. This acquired individualism enables her to reject
traditional sex roles and asking for sex equality. It is a reformative movement.

Marxist Feminism: revolutionary, not reformist

without radical change to the class structure, the equal opportunity sought by
feminists is a chimera. Capitalism is patriarchal and sexist. Domestic (private
labor as unpaid, undervalued labor). Its main goal is a class structural change,
concentrates on the productivity of women in the workforce.

Radical Feminism claims that the oppression of women is the oldest, most profound
and widespread form of oppression. Oppression of women tends to cause more
suffering than any other form. Model of oppressing women is necessary to
understand all oppression. Separatist feminism demands separation from male culture,
in literature, science and religion. It may also include female sexuality where in
lesbians and heterosexuality relations as well as issues like abortion, prostitution, rape
and sexual harassment. Most don’t “hate” men, but hate patriarchy, and
some believe that men cannot escape patriarchy.
1.
Psychoanalytic Feminism, Freud and the women’s psyche, it grounds women's
oppression in the depths of the female psyche. Oppression arises out of
sexuality. Their feelings of deficiency because they don’t have that mescaline part of
the body. Psychoanalytic feminism challenges the Freudian notion that men's sense of
justice and morality is more highly developed than women. In other words reject
sexism. Feminism therefore distinguishes between the word sex an, which refers to
our biological construction as female and male, and the word gender, which refers to
our cultural programming as feminine or masculine.

•Socialist Feminism: confluence of Marxist, Psychoanalytic and radical streams. Each

by itself is limiting for different reasons (crotty briefs) and these feminists try to
weave together their strengths

Existentialist Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir,

The Second Sex, partners with Jean Paul Sartre,
another existentialist philosopher.
–Poir soi (conscious being) and en soi (being-as-object),
modes of being.
–Self and other distinctions: other=another personal
being. Even though the other person is a conscious
being, we dissociate ourselves from the other person
as a being as object. This is mutual dissociation
leading to perceptions of the “other” as a threat and
an object
Beauvoir construes man as self and woman as
other. The other being a threat to self, woman
must be seen as a threat to man and he needs to
make her subordinate. Hence the oppression of
women.
•Postmodern Feminism: Helene Cixous, Luce
Iragaray, Julia Kristeva; deconstructionist (post-
structuralist)
•Lacan and the imaginary
•Irigaray and “sameness
I’ll add womanism: bell hooks-critique of Betty
Friedan and liberal feminism, critique of Stokely
Carmichael and the subordination of women in
the civil rights movement, focus on race as a
unique experience and significant factor for
women of color, also the knowledge of the
double consciousness, Dubois, The Souls of
Black Folks.
•I’ll add ecofeminism: Maria Mies and Vandana
Shiva, the oppression of women is tied to the
destruction of the environment
Categories as heuristic device…
•The masculine epistemology of typologies,
taxonomies, hierarchies for archiving and
evaluating knowledge
•For feminists, the binaries, particularly
male/female are very problematic and the
male/female binary is primary to the
epistemological and ontological experience of
humans and it has a patriarchal source.
•Is there a uniquely feminine (and by definition,
masculine) epistemology/ontology
What radical feminism offers in terms of critical
theory that differs from that of traditionally
masculine critical theorists
•More optimistic and humane version of change
•And to bring revolutionary change into the
realm of the possible
•But is that truly unique? And, given Adorno’s
critique of the concept, is categorization and
binary thinking uniquely male?

•Seigfried’s caveat: “(feminine traits)…can be understood

as the expression of feminine style without implying that
all women think this way or that no men do.”
•Crotty argues, “The real point is, not that feminists gain
insights never glimpsed by others, especially not by
males, but that, as feminist insights, they are grounded
in, and stem from, a specifically feminist standpoint.
(i.e., Adorno may rail against classification but does so
on different grounds) If you disagree with this, see
Sandra Harding (go to Caryn Riswold).
•What about an epistemic community, as Assiter posits,
p. 173?

Crotty posits that it is not that women

“know” in a fundamentally different way
than men, but that they theorize the act of
knowing in a way different from that of
men. What do you think?
•Are men and womenessentia lly different,
inside and out and what would it mean
either way?

Gilligan: women speak in a different voice…

•Harding: the rational is gendered…
•Fonow and Cook: carefully designed research
grounded in feminist theory and ethics is more
useful to understanding women’s experiences
than allegiance to any one particular method per
say (i.e., quantitative as masculine, qualitative as
feminine).
–A major feature of feminist epistemology is attention
to the affective components of the research act
Fonow and Cook look to Alison Jaggar
•Attention to the realm of emotion-continuous feedback
loop between our emotional constitution and our
theorizing such that each continually modifies the other
and is in principle inseparable from it…(feedback loop,
emotion as heuristic device, sounds also like
hermeneutics in a way)
•Jaggar’s outlaw emotions: conventionally unacceptable
emotional responses…
•Jaggar doesn’t presume that women are more in touch
with or more influenced by emotions than are men…but rejects the idea of the
dispassionate investigator…which she deems racist, classist, and sexist.

Read quotation p. 176 top.

•Jaggar counters this with the idea that many
outlaw emotions are already or potentially
feminist emotions…Emotions become feminist
once they incorporate feminist perceptions and
values, similar to Assiter, a group’s
epistemological stance does not stem from the
identity of the group members, but from sharing
certain values (i.e., undermining oppressive
gender-based power relations) What does that
mean for men then? Can they be part of the
feminist epistemic community from that basis?

So we have covered feminist theory and epistemology, what of

methodology?
•Are their methodologies uniquely feminist?
•For many, it is a question of feminist perspectives entering into
existing methodologies which makes them unique.

•Feminine forms of research v. feminist forms of

research…
•Is uniqueness simply a question of style or something inherently
unique?
•Is it useful to retain the adjective “feminist?”
•Essentialism and its impact on gender/sexuality v. social
constructionism and its impact on gender/sexuality…
•Research as Revision…