Just Methods

About this book

"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. [This book] covers central topics comprehensively, provides clearly written and substantive introductions with conceptual tools for critically analyzing methodological issues, emphasizes the inseparability of sex/gender constructions from other structures of inequality, such as race, class, and nation, links ethical and political values with epistemic questions of credibility and reliability; surveys 'feminists rethinking' issues such as empiricism, postmodernism, and democratization, and selects key writings by preeminent authors including Lourdes Beneria, Patricia Hill Collins, Stephen J. Gould, Sandra Harding, Naheed Islam, Patricia Maguire, Vandana Shiva, Abigail J. Stewart, Barrie Thorne, and Maxine Baca Zinn, among many more -- 45 authors in all."--Publisher description.