(Post)Critical Methodologies: The Science Possible After the Critiques: The Selected Works of Patti Lather

377 Pages·2017·2.903 MB·English

by  Patti Lather

(Post)Critical Methodologies:
The Science Possible After
the Critiques
In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves
compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts
from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical
contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers
will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes
to the development of the field.
(Post)Critical Methodologies forms a chronology through the texts and concepts
that span Patti Lather’s career. Examining (post)critical, feminist and poststructural
theories, Lather’s work is organized into thematic sections that span her 35 years of
study in this field. These sections include original contributions formed from Lather’s
feminism and critical theory background. They contain her most cited works on
feminist research and pedagogy, and form a collection of both early and recent
writings on the post and post-post, with a focus on critical policy studies and the
future of post-qualitative work.
With a focus on the implications for qualitative inquiry given the call for sci-
entifically based research in education, this compelling overview moves through
Lather’s progressive thoughts on bridging the gap between quantitative and quali-
tative research in education and provides a unique commentary on some of the
most important issues in higher education over the last 30 years. This compilation
of Lather’s contribution to educational thinking will prove compelling reading to
all those engaged in student learning in higher education worldwide.
Patti Lather is Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, Department of
Educational Studies, where she taught qualitative research, feminist methodology
and gender and education from 1988 to 2014. She is the author of four books,
has lectured widely in international and national contexts and held a number of
distinguished visiting lectureships.
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Learning, Development and Education: From learning theory to education
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The selected works of Knud Illeris
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(Post)Critical Methodologies:
The Science Possible After
the Critiques
The Selected Works of Patti Lather
Patti Lather
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
 2017 P. Lather
The right of P. Lather to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Lather, Patricia, 1948- author.
Title: (Post)critical methodologies : the science possible after the
critiques : the selected works of Patti Lather / Patti Lather.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035790 (print) | LCCN 2016054888
(ebook) | ISBN 9781138666115 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781138285743 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315619538 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Feminism and education. | Postmodernism and
education. | Qualitative research.
Classification: LCC LC197 .L39 2017 (print) | LCC LC197 (ebook)
| DDC 370.82—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035790
ISBN: 978-1-138-66611-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-28574-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-61953-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
About the author vii
Acknowledgments viii
Permissions x
Introduction: not yet finished 1
PART I
Forewords: the validity papers: validity has been very
very good to me 9
1. Research as praxis (1986) 13
2. Fertile obsession: validity after poststructuralism (1993),
excerpted 2004 33
3. The validity of angels: interpretive and textual strategies in
researching the lives of women with HIV/AIDS (1995) 39
4. Validity, qualitative (2007) 63
5. Validity, qualitative (2011) 69
6. Afterwords – tribute: Egon Guba (2008) 70
PART II
Forewords: feminist research and pedagogy 73
7. Feminist perspectives on empowering research methodologies (1988) 81
8. Post-critical pedagogies: a feminist reading (1991) 97
9. Postbook: working the ruins of feminist ethnography (2002) 112
10. Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching
research in education as a wild profusion (2006) 134
vi Contents
11. Afterwords – still lost: the summons of the archive as process (2007) 155
12. Getting lost: critiquing across difference as methodological
practice (2008) 165
13. (Post)feminist methodology: getting lost OR a scientificity we
can bear to learn from (2008) 176
14. “Becoming feminist”: an untimely meditation on football (2012) 184
15. Troubling the angels redux: tales of collaboration
towards a polyphonic text (2009) 189
WALTER S. GERSHON, PATTI LATHER AND CHRIS SMITHIES
PART III
Forewords: with/in the postmodern: (post)critical
social science and policy studies 219
16. Critical frames in educational research: feminist and post-structural
perspectives (1992) 223
17. Postmodernism, post-structuralism and post(critical)
ethnography: of ruins, aporias and angels (2001) 239
18. Applied Derrida: (mis)reading the work of mourning in
educational research (2003) 261
19. This is your father’s paradigm: government intrusion
and the case of qualitative research in education (2004) 273
20. Scientism and scientificity in the rage for accountability (2009) 289
21. What kind of science for what kind of politics? Feminist (post)critical
policy analysis and the democratization of knowledge (2010) 302
PART IV
Forewords: (post)qualitative research in the afterward 315
22. Methodology-21: what do we do in the afterward? (2013) 319
23. The work of thought and the politics of research:
(post)qualitative research (2015) 331
24. Top ten+ list: (re)thinking ontology in (post)qualitative
research (2016) 344
Afterwords: what I was meant to make (2015) 353
Index 356
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patti Lather is Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, Department of Educa-
tional Studies, where she taught qualitative research, feminist methodology and
gender and education from 1988 to 2014. She is the author of four books, Getting
Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy With/In the Postmodern (1991 Critics
Choice Award), Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS, co-authored
with Chris Smithies (1998 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title), Getting Lost:
Feminist Efforts Toward a Double(d) Science (2008 Critics Choice Award) and
Engaging (Social) Science: Policy from the Side of the Messy (2010, 2011 Critics
Choice Award). She has lectured widely in international and national contexts and
held a number of distinguished visiting lectureships. Her work examines various
(post)critical, feminist, and poststructural theories in the context of research meth-
odologies. She was the recipient of a 1989 Fulbright to New Zealand. She is a
2009 inductee of the AERA Fellows and a 2010 recipient of the AERA Division B
Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015, she was awarded the International Congress
of Qualitative Inquiry Lifetime Achievement Award.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I give thanks in this volume to those who have fed my work along the way, but
in terms of this collection, I want to thank the various folks at Routledge who
have helped, some in deep background. At Jim Scheurich’s suggestion, I turned to
Duncan Waite who stepped in at a crucial step. It has taken a village to get to this
point and I thank all involved.
This project has provided great pleasure and structuring as I transitioned from
professor to retiree. As said by a great good old friend, long lost in the AIDS crisis,
“everybody has to do something.” This has been my something for some time and
I tried to slow down to savor the various steps involved. First was the going over of
everything I had written as an academic, leaving me with the feeling of “no wonder
I am so tired.” I have always thought of myself as a slow producer but I was struck
with the volume of what I had dumped on my basement floor after clearing out my
university office.
Once I had the sweep of it in mind, the next step was curating and producing
a working outline. This was the most painful part: winnowing, featuring, remem-
bering. Some pieces were obvious candidates, but some of the “culled” did not go
easily into that good night. And that does not even begin to address the call of the
projects half begun or only dreamt of that I discovered in my files.
I decided to tackle the least pleasurable aspect of securing copyrights early on.
Although publishers, once contact is figured out, are generally quite happy to have
an author re-publish their own work in their own book and the Copyright Clearance
Center helps enormously, the older pieces, especially, often required quite strung-
out efforts. As publishers always say, you cannot begin this process too soon.
Writing the forewords was great fun and inspired by Laurel Richardson’s Fields
of Play (1992) with its structure of forewords and afterwords. There was also a
dinner or three along the way where Laurel indulged my stories and issues. While
I mostly stuck to forewords that provided preview and context for each piece in
each section and decided not to excerpt longer pieces as Laurel did, she was a good
sounding-board and inspirational in her own graceful move into retirement.
Other sounding-boards include Janet Miller who helped me sort out publishing
issues and Bettie St. Pierre whose particularly timely 2016 invitation to speak to
the book at the University of Georgia to a great audience including, delightfully,
Cynthia Dillard, pushed me to write and write and write. And my local posse of
Malcolm Cochran and Debbie Smith-Shank sometimes fed and always listened
to me.
Acknowledgments ix
My lovely girlfriend, Janet Russell, put me up in Minnesota for weeks at a time
when I arrived with boxes of material and bottles of good wine. I always thought I
could only write at my home, but she proved me wrong with delightful patterns of
end of day domesticities to which my long living alone lifestyle has not been much
accustomed.
It’s all been so much fun I hate to see it end.