I ntroduction
I n J uly 1 997. I crossed the border into E l Salvador to begin my fieldwork. After talking about ·do ing research' i n E l Salvador for over two years, I was fi nal ly there. Intense nervousness and fear surged through me as I looked out my bus wi ndow in an attempt to assi m i late aspects of this new environment I would call home for the next seven months. I looked at the rural houses with their red t i led roofs and adobe wal l s, the pol i tical graffi ti that coloured every street corner, the hal f starved dogs and the people who vval ked nonchalantly along the Pan-American highway as our bus sped by. Despi te what l believed to be my · extensive' experience with travell i ng i n the developing world, noth ing could have really prepared me for the shock wrought by attempting to undertake research with a poor kno\vledge of the vernacular in a country sti l l reeling from 1 2 years of civil war. At times, therefore. my research felt l i ke a k ind of madness.
As one of the few New Zealanders to have conducted research i n El Sal vador, I discovered that being from a country with seemi ngly no geo-political t ies to El Salvador did not preclude me from experiencing the warmth and friendship of the Sal vadoran people. the same token, my 'positional ity' as a whi te western feminist researcher seemed to matter l ittle to the women who in their kindness and generosity, offered me a unique opportunity to learn about their l i ves. Thus, i nsofar as my research experience was a kind of madness, it was a madness that enriched and enabled me. In terms of my own abil ity as a researcher, I found the experience very empowering. From what was expressed to me during the course of my fieldwork, I bel ieve many of my research participants also fel t some sense of empowern1ent as a result of the research process.
Chapter Five, through its discussion of methodology, will chart the process o f my research. Beginning with a critical review of feminist research epistemologies, i t will identi fy aspects of feminist research which I chose to draw upon prior to entering the
field. Fol lowing through with the notion of process, Chapter Five will then examine
how these methods were simultaneously used and adapted once I entered the field, and
the dilemmas and debates which arose from this. A d iscussion on the empowering potential of the research process wil l form the last section. Chapter Five wil l thus show
that a form of method was employed in the sometimes mad world i n which I conducted
my feminist research.
Feminist Research
What is Fem i n ist Research?
To state that feminist research i s research · about women' , i s to tell a hal f truth. Certainly in the early days o f my research process, I bel ieved that this was so. After spendi ng al most a year readi ng the considerable l iterature on feminist research,
however, it became more and more difficult to retain such a simplistic view. While
feminist research is. in part, research 'about women' or about women's experiences, its primary focus has been in charting these experiences i n the context of pol itical struggles ( Harding, 1 987:8). What is at i ssue in feminist research is, therefore, an understandi ng of gender as crucial in constructing social relations i n any given society. Women' s experiences are not isolated and cannot b e researched in a vacuum. They are instead, · located . . . in society and hi story . . . [and] . . . embedded within a set of social relations which produce both the possibil ities and the l i mi tations of that experience' ( Ac ker, Barry and Esseveld, 1 99 1 : 1 3 5 ) .
Liberation, then, emerges a s a n essential element of feminist research. Research i s feminist precisely because i t works t o 'end the social and economic conditions that oppress women and the achievement of a free society' (Acker, Barry and Esseveld, 1 99 1 : 1 34 ). Theory and method are reconstructed in feminist research in ways which aim to transform gendered power relations (Staeheli and Lawson, 1 995 : 3 3 3 ) . Hence, feminist research is action orientated or in the much quoted words of Dorothy Smith ( 1 979), i t is research /or women because the researcher i s actively involved i n the fight
1 1 2
against patriarchy ( Alien and Baber, 1 992 :2). I n this vein, femini st research cannot be separated from the goal s and activities of the women' s movement. I n fact, as M ies ( 1 99 1 :6 1 ) has stated, femini st research was made possible because of this social
movement.
To this principle of action orientation, Fonow and Cook ( 1 99 1 :2- 1 2) have added three other themes or goals common in femini st research processes.48 Firstly, femini st scholarship has emphasised reflexivity ( England, 1 994: 8 1 ). In order for research to be a process rather than a fixed event, researchers have been cal led on to critical ly exami ne, re flect and explore analytically every aspect of their · temporal ly, i ntellectually, poli tically and emotional ly grounded understandings of research· ( Stanley and W i se. 1 990:23). Reflexivity, that 'self-critical sympathetic introspection and . . . self-conscious analytical scrutiny of the self as researcher' ( England, 1 994:82). thus allows for both the research question and the methods used to be constantly re-evaluated and transformed.
Secondly. feminist scholarship has stressed the need to give attention to the emotional components of research. an aspect particularly perti nent to my own research proj ect ( Powel l , 1 996: 1 ). In a radical break from the obj ectivity of positivism, feminist research uses the emotions generated in the field to i n form the reflective process ( Fonow and
Cook, 1 99 1 : 1 0- 1 1 ). Feminist research denies positivism · s obj ective/subj ective
dichotomy and · l ocates the researcher on the same critical plane as the experienci ng, researchi ng, theori sing people she [sic] deal s with . ' ( Stanley. 1 99 1 :205).4q Rather than rendering feminist research less val id than traditional social inquiry then, it can be argued that attention to the subj ective in the research process actual ly i ncreases its val idi ty:50
48 See also M ies ( 1 983 : I 1 7- 1 39) and A l ien and Baber ( 1 992:2), for brief descriptions on the uniqueness of fem inist research.
4 q There is some debate in the literature on the paucity of men conducting fem i nist research (see for
example, Reinharz, 1 992: 1 4- 1 7; Scheyvens and Leslie, 1 999, forthcoming). While I fee l this is an important area of d iscussion, It is not directly related to my research project and thus w i l l not be discussed in this thesis. Hence the use of the conciliatory b inary she/he when referring to the fem i nist researcher. It should be acknowledged, however, that both men and women can be participants in a fem inist research project ( Reinharz, 1 992 : 1 42).
the beliefs and behaviours of the researcher are part of the empirical evidence for (or against) the claims advanced in the results of research. This evidence too must be open to critical scrutiny no less than what is traditionally defined as relevant research. Introducing this "subjective " element into the analysis in fact increases the objectivity of research and decreases the "objectivism " ·which
hides this kind of evidence from the public (Harding, I 987: 9)
To deny the existence o f emotion i n the multitude o f relationships formed during the research process is also, I believe, to commit an i nj ustice to one's sel f and o ne ' s research participants. The expression of emotion in, for i nstance, a n i nterview situation, al lows for that much needed reciproc ity that is another cornerstone of fem inist inquiry ( England. 1 994 : 82). For research pa11icipants agonising over the disclosure o f some kind o f traumatic event, the sight of a researcher' s stony face must be a reflection on the researcher' s commitment ( or lack of) to making these experiences visible. Personal invol vement i s not therefore. a dangerous bias. but one of the mechanisms by v;hich people get to know each other and allow each other to enter the pri vate worlds that constitute their l ives ( Oakley, 1 98 1 : 58).
Personal involvement, and the emotions it triggers, I S also a way o f protecting
participants from harm in the research process. Feeling guilty, embarrassed, or even shameful is a positive thing in that it ensures that we as researchers do not go too far and place partici pants in a si tuation which could be potentially disastrous (Josselson, 1 996: 70). In the final analysis. emotion is not only cruc ial to the ' success· of research projects then, but also, to the action-orientation of feminist research itself:
Time spent in analysing emotions and uncovering their sources should be viewed, therefore, as neither irrelevant to theoretical investigation nor even as a pre-requisite for it; it is not a kind of clearing of the emotional decks . . . it is necessQ/y to our theoretical investigation. Critical reflection on emotion is not a self-indulgent substitute for political analysis and political action. It is, itself, a kind of political theory and political practice, indispensable for an adequate social t he01y and social transformation (Jagger, 1 99 2: 13 6).
Finally, femin ist research makes use of the situation at hand. Feminist researchers use the 'taken for granted' or the mundane aspects of everyday life as study topics because it is precisely these routine aspects that act to sustai n gender i nequal ities ( Fonow and Cook, 1 99 1 : 1 1 ). Feminist researchers are also adept at recogni sing the research
1 1 4 potential of ' unforeseen settings to study otherwise-hidden processes' (ibid: 1 2). This i nnovatory strategy is particularly useful when researching in settings where there may be limited access to records, people and activities. Thus, making use of the situation at hand may be nothing short of a survival mechanism for fem i ni st researchers (ibid: 1 3)
To understand why fem inist research has emphasised the above commonalties, however, it i s necessary to be cognisant with the historical roots of feminist research and i n particular, the epi stemological chal lenge by feminism to the very nature of social scientifi c inquiry. Below we take up this task.
Historical Roots of Fem in ist Resea rch and Ways of Knowing
Feminist epistemological positions, or theories of knowledge. stem from fundamental critiques of the positivist way knowledge has been traditional ly produced in social sc ienti fic di sciplines ( Bernard. 1 973).51 While femin ist critiques of research practices have roots that extend back into the 1 9th century ( Reinharz, 1 992 : 1 2 ), over the past two decades feminists have been especially active in advancing a multitude of evidence o n the masculine bias present in traditional epistemologies (McDowell, 1 992 :409; Bordo,
1 992 : 1 43 ; Klein. 1 996 : 5 1 ). Not only have women ' s voices been absent from traditional
scienti fie inquiry it is argued, but women's activities and interests have also been excluded as · Jegiti mate' areas of i nquiry ( Oakley. 1 974: 1 -28; Harding, 1 98 7 : 3 ; Westkott. 1 990:59-60; M ies, 1 99 1 :60). Women have been silenced a s agents o f knowledge by men whose power and authority i n the world o f knowing has been preordained since the birth of modem science in the 1 6th century (Riger, 1 992 : 730). From that time on science has sought to contain nature whose i rrational or fem i nine s ide had the potential to annihilate all that was rational and obj ective (read 'good' ) in the world ( Harding, 1 986: 1 25 ) . For Francis Bacon for example, nature was a bride who not
5 1 While fem inist critiques of traditional research follow general critiques of positivism such as those
raised by phenomenological approaches, fem i nist critique is unique in the way it ' addresses political and eth ical considerations head on, as all research is located withi n an ideological and structural context' ( Powell, 1 996:4; see also Mattingly and Falconer-AI-Hindi, 1 995 : 428). Nonetheless, fem i nist epistemologies can be seen to have followed the critical tradition in the way they have rejected the possibil ity of 'objective knowledge' (N ielson, 1 990:9).
only needed to be ' tamed ' , ' shaped' and ' subdued ' by the scientific mind, but even more radically, ' enslaved' for the serv ice o f truth (Fox Kel ler, 1 985:36),
Where tradi tional social scient i fic i nquiry has focused on women i t has been in ways that have emphasi sed the biological determ inism of female behaviour and personal ity in relation to that of men (Stanley, 1 984: 1 94). As a consequence of thi s focus, Stanley further stresses. · women' s l ives and experiences are o ften treated as less than ful ly human because . . . [they are] . . . different from the assumed norm o f male experience' ( i bid.). Early studies on women i n psychology, for i nstance, ignored the soci o-cultural context in which behaviour is constructed in favour of a experimental approach. W ith soc ial and historical factors conveniently bypassed, psychological research has there fore been wel l placed to attribute causes to biological factors i nside the subj ect ( Ri ger, 1 992 : 73 1 ). These biological factors are then constructed as · natural ' . relegated to the social relations of reproduction or the ·pri vate sphere ' and never spoken of again ( Hartsock. 1 983 :23 1 -25 1 ; Nicholson, 1 984:22 1 -230; Harding, 1 986: 86).
Feminism ' s greatest chal lenge to traditional social sci enti fic epi stemologies has thus been in its deconstruction of biological determi ni sm in research about women, and in its redefinition of the ' personal as the pol itical ' ( N i cholson, 1 984:225; Mc Dowe l l, 1 992 :409). Feminist scholarship has responded to traditional social scient i fic cpistemologies, however in a multitude of ways. Hardi ng ( 1 986:24-29) has labelled some of these ways of knowing as femi nist empiricism, femi nist standpoint science and femi nist postmodcrnism. Feminist empiricism, the first approach mooted in thi s tri logy of feminist thought, maintains that sexism and androcentrism i n soci al scientific inquiry are the bias of i ndividual knowers. To eliminate this bias, a stricter appl ication of al ready exist i ng methods i s thus recommended ( H awkesworth, 1 989:535; Moss, 1 995 :443 ). Hence, feminist empiric ism does not rej ect experimentation or other positivist scienti fic methods per se, but rather, the erroneous way in which these methods have traditional ly been applied m research with women (Riger, 1 992:732;
Matti ngly and Falconer-AI-H i ndi, 1 99 5 :429).
Femi nist standpoi nt science, however, denies that there could ever be an unmediated truth about the world as knowledge is always mediated by a host of factors relating to a
1 1 6 person's h istorical and soci o-political standing ( Hawkesworth, 1 989:536) . Standpoint epistemology, exempli fied i n the work of N ancy Hartsock ( 1 983, 1 987) and Dorothy Smith ( 1 979, 1 98 1 ), goes on to argue, nonetheless, that knowledge based on a person's
feminist standpoi nt is more complete, and i n fact scientifically preferable, preci sely
because it i s less distorted (Stanley and Wise, 1 990:27). As al l knowledge i s situated, women, because of their h istorical ly oppressed position in the world, are therefore more suitably placed than men to reveal aspects of gender bias and di sadvantage ( Mattingly and Falconer-Al-Hindi, 1 995:43 1 ; Hardi ng, 1 986:25; Jagger, 1 992 : 1 3 3 ; H m1sock, 1 98 3 : 23 1 -25 1 ) .
It is preci sely this c l a i m t o a fem inist · standpoi nt", however, that has s o i ncensed proponents of the third approach in H ard i ng ' s trilogy of feminist thought, femini st postmodernism. By essential i sing claims to knowledge or universalisi ng white Western women as ' women · , feminist postmodern ists argue that feminist scholarshi p in general has become part of the problem rather than the sol ution ( Rei nharz, 1 99 2 : 1 2 ; Bell Hooks, 1 98 1 : 1 2 1 - 1 22; Staeheli and Lawson, 1 995:327). Denyi ng women o f colour agency, it i s argued, i s an overtly political act whi ch serves. through its use of dichotomous appositional constructs, to rei n force mechanisms of power and domi nation ( Collins, 1 986: 20-2 1 ; Kobayashi, 1 994 : 77; Lorde, 1 992 :47-54; M m·chard, 1 995 :58) . Feminism ' s over-simpl i stic and ethnocentric focus has not only, therefore, made problemati c the use of gender as an analytical category, but also. homogeni sed diversity
and obscured particularity ( Bordo, 1 990: 1 49- 1 5 3 & 1 992: 1 43 ; Di Ste fano. 1 990:75;
Lawson, 1 995:45 3 ) .
The more universal and essential feminist knowledge c laims have been, i t i s further argued, the more l i kely they are to be fal se ( Speldman, 1 990:9). How i s it possible, for example, to suggest that ' women have been treated like slaves' when some women were or sti ll are slaves ( i bid.)? Similarly, G i l kes ( 1 986:57, cited i n Reinharz, 1 992: 1 2) has pointed to the way in which whi te feminist scholarshi p has excluded research agendas of i nterest and importance to women of colour. ' Why is it' , she states, 'that fem i nist scholarshi p has i gnored the Church, the most important social setti ng that black people control ? ' . Thus, fem i ni st postmodernism stresses a crucial need to come to terms with difference i n all its multifaceted components (ethnicity, age, sexual preference and class
m the fi rst i nstance)52 and, i n the words of Hawkesworth ( 1 989:536), ' to use the
situatedness of each finite observer i n a particular soci o-political, historical context to challenge the plausib i l ity of c laims that any perspecti ve on the world could escape partial i ty' ( my emphasis).
The focus of much of fem inist postmodem research thus has been i n deconstruction. Ideas or soc ial j ustices, the structures on which they are based and the language by which they are expressed, all become subj ect to criticism in the feminist postmodem proj ect ( Tong, 1 989:2 1 9). Here text is the prefened ' field' of research , a safe site where some of the more problematic i ssues of face to face research can be avoided ( Wo l f,
1 996: 8 ) .
I concur with many o f the above tenets of postmodem fem i ni sm and agree that scholars such as Bell Hooks and Lorde have revolutionised fem i n i st scholarshi p by not only their critiques of universal and oppressive feminist discourses but also, by their cal l s for a recognition of the multipl icity of feminist epistemoiogies ( Wolf, 1 996:6). Despite this, I share Hawkesworth · s ( 1 989:5 5 7 ) concerns about the potential damage that such a focus on the particular and such a retreat to intertextual ity has had, and continues to have, o n concrete feminist i ssues and goals:'3
Pas/modernism 's retreat to the text has a political dimension not altogether