Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader » (1st Edition)

Alison M. Jaggar is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of Feminist Frameworks, (edited with Paula Rothenberg, 1978, 1984, 1993) (McGraw Hill, 1993); Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Rowman and Littlefield, 1988); Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, (Westview Press 1994); and The Blackwell Companion to Feminist Philosophy, (edited with Iris M. Young, 1998) (Blackwell, 1999).

Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge that is not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality.

Just Methods is designed for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.

A key theme running through the readings is the complex inter-relationship between social power and inequality, on the one hand, and the production of knowledge, on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values.

Acknowledgments     vi
Introduction: The Project of Feminist Methodology     vii
Feminist Critiques of Methodology
The Humanities     3
"The Social Relation of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women's History"     6
"A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adversary Method"     13
"Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale"     21
The Social Sciences     34
"Women's Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology"     39
"Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences: Current Feminist Issues and Practical Strategies"     44
"Research through Imperial Eyes"     58
Economics     68
"Not a Free Market: The Rhetoric of Disciplinary Authority in Economics"     72
"Paid and Unpaid Labor: Meanings and Debates"     80
"Counting for Something! Recognizing Women's Contribution to the Global Economy through Alternative Accounting Systems"     97
Human Biology     105
"Lesbians under the Medical Gaze: Scientists Search for Remarkable Differences"     108
"Critique of The Bell Curve"     118
"Bias in the Science of Evolution"     130
The Health Sciences     147
"Metaphots of Menopause: The Metalanguage of MenopauseResearch"     151
"Don't Use a Wrench to Peel Potatoes: Biological Science Constructed on Male Model Systems Is a Risk to Women Workers' Health"     163
"Evidence-Based Medicine and Justice: A Framework for Looking at the Impact of EBM upon Vulnerable or Disadvantaged Groups"     182
Feminist Studies     191
"The Costs of Exclusionary Practices in Women's Studies"     198
"How Inclusive Is Feminist Political Theory? Questions for Lesbians"     205
"Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism'"     213
Feminists Rethinking Methodology
Feminist Naturalism: Do Women Have Distinctive Ways of Knowing?     229
"Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing"     235
"Black Feminist Epistemology"     247
"Revaluing Science: Starting from the Practices of Women"     257
Feminist Empiricism: Experience and Interpretation     268
"'Experience'"     272
"Talking about Sex and HIV: Conceptualizing a New Sociology of Experience"     282
"Incredulity, Experientialism, and the Politics of Knowledge"     290
Feminist Standpoint Theory: Social Location and Epistemic Privilege     303
"Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought"     308
"The Need for a New Vision: The Subsistence Perspective"     320
"Borderlands Epistemologies"     331
Feminist Postmodernism: Knowledges as Partial, Contingent, and Politically Informed     342
"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective"     346
"Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism"     352
"Qualitative Research, Appropriation of the "Other" and Empowerment     362
Objectivity and Validation     374
"Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology"     378
"Values and Objectivity"     391
"Epistemology Resuscitated: Objectivity as Trustworthiness"     401
Democratizing Research     414
"Feminist Participatory Research"     417
"Democratizing Biology: Reinventing Biology from a Feminist, Ecological, and Third World Perspective"     433
"Feminist Participatory Action Research in the Mekong Region"     445
Feminist Ethics in Research     457
"'You Still Takin' Notes?' Fieldwork and Problems of Informed Consent"     460
"Research as an Act of Betrayal: Researching Race in an Asian Community in Los Angeles"     471
"The Problem of Speaking for Others"     484
Index     496
Credits      515