Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections PDF
Preview Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Reflections
Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process Feminist research is informed by a historyof breaking silences, of demanding that women’s voices be heard, recorded and included in wider intellectual genealogies and histories. This has led to an emphasis on voice and speaking out in the research endeavour. Moments of secrecy and silence are less often addressed. This gives rise to a number of questions. What are the silences, secrets, omissions and the political consequences of such moments? What particulardilemmas and the constraints do they represent orentail? What are their implications for research praxis? Are such moments always indicative of voicelessness or powerlessness? Or may they also constitute a productive moment in the research encounter? Contributors to this volume were invited to reflect on these questions. The resulting chapters are a fascinating collec- tion of insights into the research process, making an important contribution to theoretical and empirical debates about epistemology, subjectivity and identity in research. Researchers often face difficult dilemmas about who to represent and how, what to omit and what to include. This book explores suchquestionsinastimulatingcollectionofessaysfrominternationalscholars. Róisín Ryan-Flood is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship and migration. She is the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship (2009). Her current research explores sexuality, citizenship and diaspora. Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at King’s College, London. She is author of Gender and the Media (2007) and is currently writ- ing abook about mediated intimacy. Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism Edited by Maureen McNeil, Institute of Women’s Studies, Lancaster University Lynne Pearce Department of English, Lancaster University Other books in the series include: Transformations: Thinking Class, Self, Culture Through Feminism Beverley Skeggs Edited by Sara Ahmed, Jane Kilby, Celia Lury, Maureen McNeil and Haunted Nations Beverley Skeggs The colonial dimensions of multiculturalisms Thinking Through the Skin Sneja Gunew Edited by Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey The Rhetorics of Feminism Readings in contemporary cultural Strange Encounters: Embodied theory and the popular press Others in Post-Coloniality Lynne Pearce Sara Ahmed Women and the Irish Diaspora Feminism and Autobiography Breda Gray Texts, theories, methods Edited by Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury Jacques Lacan and Feminist and Penny Summerfield Epistemology Kirsten Campbell Advertising and Consumer Citizenship Judging the Image Gender, images and rights Art, value, law Anne M. Cronin Alison Young Mothering the Self: Mothers, Sexing the Soldier Daughters, Subjects Rachel Woodward and Stephanie Lawler Trish Winter When Women Kill: Questions of Violent Femmes Agency and Subjectivity Women as spies in popular culture Belinda Morrissey Rosie White Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics Feminism, Culture and Onthethresholdofthelivingsubject Embodied Practice Lorna Weir The rhetorics of comparison Carolyn Pedwell Feminist Cultural Studies of Science and Technology Sociability, Sexuality, Self Maureen McNeil Relationality and Individualization Arab, Muslim, Woman Sasha Roseneil Voice and vision in postcolonial literature and film Working with Affect in Lindsey Moore Feminist Readings Disturbing differences Secrecy and Silence in the Marianne Liljeström and Research Process Susanna Paasonen Feminist reflections Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process fl Feminist re ections Edited by Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill Firstpublished2010 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon,OX144RN SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada byRoutledge 270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2010RóisínRyan-FloodandRosalindGillforselectionandeditorial material;thecontributorsfortheircontributions TypesetinTimesNewRomanby Taylor&FrancisBooks Printedandboundby theMPGBooksGroupintheUK Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting fromthepublishers. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Secrecyandsilenceintheresearchprocess;feministreflections/[editedby] RóisínRyan-Flood[and]RosalindGill. p.cm–(Transformations) 1.Feminism–Research.2.Socialsciences–Research.3.Feministtheory.I. Ryan-Flood,Róisín.II.Gill,Rosalind(RosalindClair) HQ1180.S4362009 305.4201–dc22 2009009374 ISBN10:0-415-45214-7(hbk) ISBN10:0-203-92704-4(ebk) ISBN13:978-0-415-45214-4(hbk) ISBN13:978-0-203-92704-5(ebk) Contents Notes on contributors x Foreword by Professor Sara Ahmed xvi Acknowledgements xxii Introduction 1 RÓISÍNRYAN-FLOODANDROSALINDGILL PARTI Interpreting and theorising silence 13 1 Choosing silence: rethinking voice, agency andwomen’s empowerment 15 JANEL.PARPART 2 Forms of knowing and un-knowing: secrets about society, sexuality and God in Northern Kenya 30 HENRIETTAL.MOORE 3 Unknowable secrets and golden silence: reflexivity and research on sex tourism 42 JACQUELINESANCHEZTAYLORANDJULIAO’CONNELLDAVIDSON 4 The desire to talk and sex/gender-related silences in interviewswith male heterosexual clients of prostitutes 54 SABINEGRENZ 5 Silencing accounts of silenced sexualities 67 MEGBARKERANDDARRENLANGDRIDGE PARTII The unspoken in the research process 81 viii Contents 6 Silencing differences: the ‘unspoken’dimensions of ‘speaking for others’ 83 CHRISTINASCHARFF 7 Not telling it how it is: secrets and silences of a critical feminist researcher 96 BIPASHAAHMED 8 Critiquing thinness andwanting to be thin 105 KARENTHROSBYANDDEBRAGIMLIN 9 Inside ‘doorwork’: gendering the securitygaze 117 KATEO’BRIEN 10 Raising the curtain on survey work 133 REBEKAHWILSON PARTIII Silence, secrecy and telling research stories 145 11 Avoiding the ‘R-word’: racism in feminist collectives 147 KATHYDAVIS 12 Suppressing intertextual understandings: negotiating interviews and analysis 161 ANNPHOENIX 13 Dirty work: researching women and sexual representation 177 FEONAATTWOOD 14 Keeping mum: secrecy and silence in research on lesbian parenthood 188 RÓISÍNRYAN-FLOOD 15 Silenced by law: the cautionary tale of women on the line 200 MIRIAMGLUCKSMANN PARTIV Affective dilemmas 209 16 Animating hatreds: research encounters, organisational secrets, emotional truths 211 GAILLEWIS Contents ix 17 Breaking the silence: the hidden injuries of the neoliberal university 228 ROSALINDGILL 18 Silence and secrets: confidence in research 245 SUKIALI 19 Shameful silences: self-protective secrets and theoretical omissions 257 BRUNASEU 20 Living in the real world? What happens when the media covers feminist research 273 DEBORAHFINDING 21 The place of secrets, silences and sexualities in the research process 291 LYNDAJOHNSTON Index 306 Notes on contributors Bipasha Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of East London. Her research interests are in the area of critical psycho- logy, particularly issues relating to ‘race’, class and gender. She is currently involved in projects on understanding experiences of domestic and sexual violence within South Asian Communities. Publications include recent articles in Feminism and Psychology, Journal of Community and Applied SocialPsychologyandinK.ThrosbyandF.Alexander(eds)(2008)Gender and Interpersonal Violence: Language, Action and Representation. Suki Ali is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. Her work centralises the interplay between gender, sexualities, ‘race’ and class. Cur- rent research interests focus upon processes of racialisation with specific regard to ‘racial science’ and technologies, kinship and postcoloniality. Recentpublicationsinclude aSpecial IssueofEthnic andRacialStudieson ‘Feminism and Postcolonialism’ (2007) and ‘Mixed-Race’, Post-Race: Gender, New Ethnicities and Cultural Practices (2003). Feona Attwood teaches Media and Communication Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her research interests include new pornographies, online sex practices, and controversial images. She is the editor of Main- streaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (2009) and porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography (forthcoming, 2010) and the co- editor of journal special issues on ‘Controversial Images’ (with Sharon Lockyer, Popular Communication, 2009) and ‘Researching and Teaching Sexually Explicit Media’ (with Ian Hunter, Sexualities, 2009). MegBarkerisaLecturerinPsychologyattheOpenUniversityandasexand relationship therapist. She and Darren Langdridge have published Safe, Sane, Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism (2007) and are nowediting a new journal, Psychology & Sexuality, with Taylor & Francis. Her research publications focus on sexualities and relationships. Kathy Davis is Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for History and Culture at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Born in the United States, she has taught psychology, medical sociology and women’s studies
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