This volume explores the interplay between theory, epistemology and practical methodological decisions in research, and the challenges that the resultant dilemmas present to feminist researchers. Other themes are: the interaction between "law" and "expert" knowledge; how researchers make sense of contradictory narratives as part of academic research; the relationship between women researchers' private/lay practice and public/expert knowledge. The contributors consider ways to achieve high standards of reflexivity and openness in the strategic choices made during empirical work, both during the data collection phase, and during its analysis and writing up.
Jane Ribbens is Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. She is co-author of Mothers and Education: Inside Out? Exploring Family Education Policy and Experience (with D Miriam, R Edwards and M Hughes, 1993), and Mothers Intuition? Choosing Secondary Schools (with D Miriam and A West, 1994). Rosalind Edwards is a professor of sociology and a codirector of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods at the University of Southampton. She is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a founding and coeditor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology. She has published widely on qualitative and mixed methods, including books on Paradata, Marginalia and Fieldnotes (2017, coedited with J. Goodwin, H. O'Connor, and A. Phoenix), What Is Qualitative Interviewing (2013, with J. Holland), and a Qualitative Research special issue on "Democratising Research Methods" (2017, coedited with T. Brannelly). Currently, she is part of a team exploring the feasibility of conducting secondary analysis across existing data from several qualitative longitudinal studies: http://bigqlr.ncrm.ac.uk/
PART ONE: INTRODUCING OUR VOICES Public Knowledge, Private Lives, Personal Experience - Rosalind Edwards and Jane Ribbens Hearing My Own Voice? An Autobiographical Discussion of Motherhood - Jane Ribbens PART ONE: SPEAKING AND LISTENING: REFLECTING MULTILAYERED VOICES Bringing Silent Voices into a Public Discourse - Melanie Mauthner Shifting Layers of Professional, Lay and Personal Narratives - Tina Miller Public and Private Meanings in Diaries - Linda Bell Theoretical Voices and Women's Own Voices - Janet Parr PART TWO: HEARING AND REPRESENTATNG: REFLECTING THE PRIVATE IN PUBLIC Hearing Competing Voices - Miri Song Sibling Research Reflections on a Voice-Centred Relational Method - Natasha Mauthner and Andrea Doucet Representing Voices in Ethnography and Discourse Analysis - Pam Alldred Re/constructing Research Narratives - Maxine Birch Writing the Voices of the Less Powerful - Kay Standing Research on Lone Mothers Epilogue - Jane Ribbens and Rosalind Edward
`This is an excellent book for both undergraduate and graduate students. It contains some useful tips on technique and some striking quotations. There is also a comprehensive bibliography of feminist writing on a wide range of theoretical and practical topics. The care and thoughtfulness of this collection bring together in a stimulating way the philosopher's questions about representation and the empirical researcher's questions about evidence. Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research is a useful and timely book' - Women's Philosophy Review `It is indeed refreshing to find serious, dedicated feminist psychologists who write so expressively about their desires, commitments, limitations and difficulties as researchers, and how they choose to address them.... [This book] offers us a rare oppotunity to thrash through these dilemmas and perhaps gain sufficient practice such that when we are again alone in the thorny thickets of research we shall be better prepared.' - Feminism and Psychology
