Abstract
Joey Sprague, professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, is one of four editors of the Gender Lens Series published by Rowman & Littlefield. Her latest book, the second edition of Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers, is the newest addition to the distinguished series that includes works by Dorothy E. Smith, Judith Lorber, Pepper Schwartz, Joan Acker, and Michael Messner, among many others. Sprague begins her book with a foreword from the editors that explains the mission of the series. As a whole, the series is devoted to three ideas: explicating a sociological understanding of gender, making gender visible by showing how social phenomena affect men and women differently, and defining gender inequality as a component of other systems of inequality.
Reading this statement of purpose carefully, I wonder if it is time to introduce some changes as a result of all the work that has been done on gender in the last few decades. For example, should we speak of “men and women” without qualifications that stem from our study of sexuality and of transgender and other phenomena? (Sprague mentions this in a brief note on page 241 and asks the reader to understand gender as a “whole set of social relations that organize us into different social positions with different advantages and constraints based on our sexual preferences and our parental status.”)
Moreover, should we talk about gender inequality only, or should we attempt to conceptualize contexts that produce gender equality as well? And should we make sure to underscore the ways in which national cultures produce different types of inequalities? Isn’t it time to recognize that race and class do not mean the same thing everywhere?
As the editors write on page ix, the series is devoted to more than new ways of looking at and for gender phenomena. Rather, the series is committed to social change directed toward eradicating inequalities. Thus, Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers is a book that advocates serious research as well as social activism—”better social science and a better society” (p.x) is how they put it. Although I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, I always wonder who has the authority to define what a better society would look like. As we recognized with the 2016 presidential election, the country as a whole has vastly different opinions about what constitutes positive social change.
So too, major feminist organizations are engaged in deep internal schisms as to the kind of change that is preferable. Feminists have long differed about such key questions as whether all prostitution is a form of sex slavery or whether women have the right to engage in sex work. We have disagreed vehemently about whether to accept certain traditional practices such as female genital mutilation as a respect-worthy phenomenon found in cultures other than our own or if we should fight for the rights of girls not to be cut. I remember an unresolved argument I witnessed at a feminist conference. A speaker had just given a talk on gender using highly sophisticated language, syntax, and concepts that were not easily understood by some members of the audience. In the question and answer period, one of these audience members asked the speaker if she could restate her argument in more readily understandable terms. The speaker said, “No.” She claimed that she had the right to deliver her ideas in her own terms, and the audience had the responsibility to understand her. Clearly, there is little agreement about the features of the “better society.”
Contemporary feminist researchers are self-conscious—as we should be—in the way we carry out our studies. We assume that epistemology—the study of knowledge itself, how we acquire it, what it is, and what its limits are—must be defined as a prelude to all research. Sprague defines four epistemological options: positivism (which has little standing in feminist work), postmodernism (which is valued for its emphasis on social construction), critical realism (which combines the philosophies of science and social science to blend the natural and social worlds), and standpoint theory (which attaches knowledge to social position). Sprague concludes that “a sociological perspective leads to a preference for standpoint theory” (p.ix). I wonder where that leaves people with a preference for the other three options.
From an activist perspective, Sprague explains, standpoint theory is not confined to “simple transfers of authority to some select group” by virtue of the fact that researchers have social power, but rather standpoint theory can “bridge standpoints.” After the publication of the first edition of her book, Sprague received comments from its readers that they wanted more explanation of these difficult concepts. Answering that need was her major motivation for producing this second edition.
I believe that these ideas are important for students to grapple with and understand. But I also urge us to teach our students that the power element in a research situation is not always (and should not always be) tilted toward the researcher. Assuming that the researcher is “powerful” or at least more powerful than those she is studying stems, in my view, from the unfortunate fact that sociological researchers are much more likely to study down (i.e., to study the less powerful) than to study up (i.e., the more powerful). Researchers are more likely to be middle-class and those being studied more likely to inhabit a lower class. It’s as if researchers need to have social power in order to do their studies. Sprague touches on this topic on page 202, but I feel it would have been better to include it in discussions throughout the book.
Sprague’s book is a work of enthusiasm for methodology and standpoint theory. She wants students to greet the methods sections of books and articles as being as exciting as the findings. I certainly agree with that! She wants us not only to “see gender” but also to “see power.” As she writes, “all knowledge develops out of specific social contexts and sets of politically relevant interests.” Moreover, “mainstream social science [not defined], like mainstream knowledge more generally, tends to assume the position of privileged groups, helping to naturalize and sustain their privilege in the process” (p.2).
Aside from the Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments, Notes, Bibliography, Index, and About the Author sections, the book has seven chapters. These include “The Field of Vision,” “Seeing through Science: Epistemologies,” “Authority and Power,” “How Feminists Count,” “Qualitative Shifts: Feminist Strategies in Field Research,” “Whose Questions? Whose Answers?” and “Changing Sociology: Changing the World,” which she also defines as her chapter on ethics. These chapter titles should give the reader of this review a sense of the topics Sprague examines and her approach.
A final word—the book’s title. Sprague’s work is titled “Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers.” I don’t believe that Sprague defined “critical researchers,” but perhaps she was simply pointing to researchers as a whole, asking us all to be self-critical, critical of society, and critical of the way we go about our work as sociologists. In that sense, the title fits and thus the book should be useful to all sociological researchers.