When taking a feminist perspective to research, issues of power should be addressed (Skeggs 2013). It is impossible to discuss gender without also discussing power:
gender exists as a category that enforces differences that create and preserve power for one group while depriving another group of access to that power. (Ryle 2012:470)
Researchers affect the process of research. As a researcher I too have impact and am affected by intersectional ties of gender, class and race (Skeggs 2013, Ryle 2012, Phoenix 1994).
4.7.1 My Power as a Researcher
As the researcher, I hold power within the research; this power is derived from delivering the PAR workshops ‘in my territory’ on the university campus, and beginning the workshops standing at the front of the group. Within the research setting, even in the interviews, I controlled the pace of the interview and the tone, and I asked most of the questions. In the ethnographic setting, I was distinguished by my class and accent – I was clearly an outsider. Service users and workers asked me who I was – although welcomed, it was clear that I was not from the area. The identity of the researcher cannot be dropped entirely (Hooks 1990a, Collins 1990):
when we enter ethnography we enter it with all our economic and cultural baggage, our discursive access and the traces of positioning and history that we embody. (Skeggs 2013: 433)
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As a reflexive feminist participatory ethnographer I needed to be sensitive to the way that I framed the research questions, selected participants and interacted with them to produce the observations and field work notes:
through personal accounting, researchers must become more aware of how their own positions and interests are imposed at all stages of the research process – from the questions they ask to those they ignore, from who they study to who they ignore, from problem formulation to analysis, representation to writing – in order to produce less distorted counts of the social world. (Hertz 1997:VIII)
The use of reflexivity during fieldwork can ‘mute the distance and alienation built into conventional notions of “objectivity”’ (Wasserfall 1997:152). In an interview context intersectionality is important, as the differences between men and women cannot be separated from wider systems of inequality; ‘women are not all equally oppressed, nor oppressed in the same ways’ (Ramazanoglu 1989:433).
4.7.2 Critiquing Reflexivity
There is a power in the interpreting of information as part of the research process:
If we are not just a single person, but rather a multitude of possibilities … as ethnographers we could be about utilising these multiple selves to create multiple texts. (Lincoln 1997:42)
One must consider concerns of bias, objectivity and the validity of the research. Concerns regarding bias have led some feminists to argue for reflexive accounts about the researcher’s own role in research (Holland and Ramazanoglu 1994, Phoenix 1994, Fine 1992, Warren 1988). However, reflexivity can be critiqued in that it
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can become viewed as the antidote to the crisis in legitimisation and representation. Brueggemann (1996) states that there are limits to reflexivity; self-reflexivity,
turning as it does on issues of representation, risks turning reflexivity into a solipsistic, rhetorical position in which the researcher (the self) – ah, once again – usurps the position of the subject (other). (Brueggemann 1996:33)
The process of engaging in reflexive analysis is not simple and the ambiguous nature of reflexivity can be contested. An overly reflexive preoccupation with one’s emotions and experiences can skew findings in ‘undesirable directions’ (Finlay 2002:541). The researcher’s position can become all-encompassing, blocking participants’ voices. There is a balance to be found between self-awareness and navel-gazing (Finlay 2002).
Reflexivity in this context can be critiqued; reflexivity allows readers little opportunity to verify the reflexive account, complete self-knowledge is unattainable, reflexive accounts are therefore highly subjective and the reflexive approach still assumes that the researcher is passive, placing bias as an issue aside (Hardy et al. 2001: 535). The growth of postmodern and post-structuralist work has undermined these premises – that subjects could exist in any ‘real’ sense, and that they could be objectively researched (Gergen 1991, Rorty 1989). Postmodernised, post-structuralised perspectives argue that there are then no objective observations, only observations that are socially situated from the seat of the observer of the observed (Chia 1996, Denzin and Lincoln 1994). The reflexive researcher’s task is therefore fraught with ambiguity. Any reflexive analysis can only ever be a ‘partial, tentative, provisional account’ (Finlay 2002:543).
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Reflexivity can also be critiqued in that concerns have been raised that highly reflexive accounts fail to address hidden structures of oppression (Gorelick 1991) and can unwittingly replicate androcentric perspectives (Scheper-Hughes 1983). Feminist researchers have discussed objectivity in its most positivist scientific terms (Hirsh and Olsen 1995) alongside objectivity, whilst maintaining social justice research aims (Holland and Ramazanoglu 1994). In terms of validity, feminism has generally broken with the term in its most positivist, scientific understanding. However, validity is discussed by feminist research in terms of authenticity of voice (Manning 1997, Richardson 1993, Lincoln and Guba 1985).
4.7.3 Power and Identity
In feminist research, power must be recognised in terms of the impact of the researcher upon the research and within the research process. In recognising the intersectional ties of power within the research process as well as within the research environment, my thesis seeks to identify a feminist perspective on austerity within the VCS.
Having considered how my research was conducted and the theoretical basis for my research I now consider accessing the field. .
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