Abstract
Contemporary Feminist Research From Theory to Practice is a complicated resource dedicated to the exposition of feminist theory and research practices in the social sciences. In three parts, the authors outline forms of feminist theory; describe ways of doing feminist-oriented research; and, finally, detail what to do with the research once the data are collected, analyzed, and interpreted. For most United States psychologists doing academic research, Parts 2 and 3 would seem very familiar territory regardless of their subject matter or theoretical orientation. However, unlike most methods texts, the authors emphasize feminist values and ethics. In this sense, the authors sensitize the reader to the importance of feminism in doing research. The authors take a hands-off attitude toward whatever perspective or theoretical orientation one might take and offer advice on how to do what is necessary to achieve one’s goals, methodologically.
The first section of the book might seem unusual to the average Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ) reader who would not necessarily be conversant in the distinctions the authors make among various theoretical perspectives. The positivist-empiricist approach, which is the dominant force in mainstream psychology, is given scarcely a review, as more diverse postmodern perspectives take center stage. The postmodernist and poststructuralist feminisms stress the centrality of language in knowledge construction. This position rejects objectivity, static identity, and subjectivity as the core values of feminist research. Beyond these approaches lie postfeminism, a movement associated with third wave feminism.
What is hard for me to accept is the uneasy disjunction between the first section and the later two sections. Most of the theoretical material does not lead to the research practices of Sections 2 and 3. Part of the challenge is that the text attempts to cover the theory and research work in all sub-fields of the social sciences. This leaves very little space for any particular discipline, including psychology, as it has been practiced in North America since the 1970s. In the reference section, with 586 entries, there are none from PWQ, although former editor, Jan Yoder, is cited, as well as four entries from Feminism & Psychology, and three books of Michelle Fine, with her co-authors. Valerie Walkerdine is the only feminist psychologist singled out for mention. Given this lack of coverage, the interest of this journal’s readers in the book would primarily be to become more familiar with other social science fields and the theorists who are dominant in these areas.
The first author, Patricia Leavy, is an independent scholar, with a background in sociology, who has specialized in arts-based research. She is a prolific author and editor, as well as the co-founding editor of Arts/Research International. The second author, Anne Harris, from Australia, has a background in intercultural creativity. Both of them tend to emphasize the cultural aspects of the social sciences. It is a heavy task to try to incorporate the nuances of every discipline under a single banner of the social sciences, and this book misses the target in terms of psychological studies.
The book may be particularly interesting to graduate students and scholars who are interested in non-dominant theoretical discourses. As a textbook, I found the prose to be quite heavy in jargon, complex, and piecemeal in structure. Tables are often used to summarize material that is not readily understandable and is never clarified (e.g., Table 4.2 “Some Well-Known Postmodern Feminist Theorists,” which summarizes the work of the French feminist trio of Cixious, Irigaray, and Kristeva plus the philosophers Derrida and Judith Butler). The discussion questions were not very rich in terms of generating dialogue, and they often made assumptions or included material that was not referenced in the chapter.
The task that the authors set for themselves is daunting. Thus, it is not surprising that all of the goals they attempt in the text are not fulfilled. The range of potential readers is too great to totally satisfy any particular group.