Response 1/28/2014

For this week, I grappled with the question whether or not it is theoretically necessary for a reflexive, feminist methodology to challenge a positivist epistemology. Hesse-Biber and Piatelli (2007) believe that a reflexive methodology necessarily calls into question the positivist foundations of scientific inquiry (p. 496). I do not intend to refute the feminist criticism that “the social world is one fixed reality that is external to individual consciousness” and the feminist claim that the social world “is socially constructed, consisting of multiple perspectives and realities” (Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, p. 497). However, we have to acknowledge that positivist epistemology does have validation in certain domains and contexts. I am afraid feminist and other socially-oriented methodologies and epistemologies would refrain from claiming that anything is socially constructed and has multiple meanings. It seems fair to say that feminist and social schools of theories and thoughts are valid and only valid in social contexts. Marshall and Rossman (2011, pp. 45, 46) accept Ellingson’s (2009) qualitative-quantitative continuum as more appropriate characterization of the relationship between feminist and positivist approaches to inquiry, differentiating each as bound by specific methodological and epistemological traditions. Much as the feminist critique of positivist methodologies for failing to consider “values and interests” (Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, p. 497) is valid, a positivist critique of feminism for falling short of “replication and neutrality” (p. 496) may be equally persuasive, depending on who is the speaker and who is the audience. Either of the two claims is supported by the same principle of multiplicity. To subordinate the voice of the positivist without offering self-sustained justification may undermine the rigor of feminist arguments.

Feminists are not doing justice to the research product in their strategy that foregrounds the process. Process is rightly problematized. Hesse-Biber and Piatelli (2007) provide a rather comprehensive summary of the “border work” (Trinh, 1991) that ranges from positionality, reflexivity, transformation, participation, dialogicality, etc. Halse and Honey (2005) add with ethical complexity and sensitivity to the list. While Hesse-Biber and Piatelli make the infallible claim that “[p]rocess is as important as product” (p. 504), the latter is either silenced or confused with the overarching purpose of “creat[ing] a more democratic, just society” (p. 508). The reader is left with an unanswered question: What is that something that can be characterized as democratic or just? A fairer representation of the multiplicity of identities of “anorexic” teenage girls (Halse and Honey, 2005) is in itself a REALITY? In this case, that the process is socially negotiated does not exclude the possibility of an absolute TRUTH. A feminist research process, in this example at least, does not necessarily reject a positivist conclusion. We might as well say a dialogical, interactive relationship also exists between the process and the product. This understanding may alleviate the unnecessary tension between a methodological claim on the fluid and reflexive and an epistemological stance on the fixed and neutral.

Mixed methods, taken generally for now, might be the solution. However, in my attempt to problematize the distinction between feminist and positivist methodologies, I suggest that feminists not isolate a methodology as clear cut from alternative methodologies. Benefits of this stance are at least twofold: 1) all the valuable considerations, as listed in Hesse-Biber and Piatelli (2007) might be shared by various domains and methodologies. Ethical sensitivity, for one, is also central to extremely positivist fields of inquiry. Physics, space technology, mechanics, are all inextricably related to general humanity. Even the hardest scientists benefit from reflections on their positionality in the subject-object binary. 2) The validity problem. There seems to be no need to play a word game by claiming to modernize reliability, validity, objectivity, and generalizability into “credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, as quoted in Marshall & Rossman, 2011, p. 41). Incorporating ethics in trustworthiness (Marshall & Rossman, 2011) is barely “worthier” than gaining the IRB approval or a better opportunity to ensure collaboration from research participants. What remains to be answered is how ethics contributes to the research product, as well as the process. Halse & Honey’s (2005) teenage girls benefited from an ethically sensitive approach to “anorexia.” But the validity of the study is equally supported by ethical claims about the research product and the process. I seem to be self-contradictory now, but my point is that validation resides more in the product than in the process. 

Response 1/21/2014

Is feminism a discipline/methodology or a set of perspectives? Both Sally L. Kitch (2007) and Patricia Sullivan & James E. Porter (1997) are cautious not to articulate feminism as a methodology. Kitch is content with discussing the feminist nature of transdisciplinarity (p. 129), and Sullivan & Porter carefully name “[f]eminist approaches to the research process” (p. 58). I sense that researchers might benefit from how they negotiate a definition of feminism in terms of methodology and disciplinarity.

A preliminary question to consider is whether or not gender is the core issue of the feminist research and to what extent. The waves of feminism have progressed from a focus on exclusion of women in the male dominant structures of power and knowledge (Spender, 1981) to “gendered” (Kitch, 2007, p. 131) study of “complex racial, class, sexual, and ethnic distinctions, hierarchies, and mechanisms of control that still structure human experience around the globe” (p. 131). Generally speaking, contemporary feminist researches are in for the complexity and situatedness of gender issues. These issues have encompassed so many fields and considerations that they seem to lose the urgency and freshness of such themes as gender equity. When a field is full blown, should it be time to draw boundaries to accentuate its disciplinary solidarity? Is it also a task for feminist researchers to balance an ever-lasting encroachment into all fields and ask the core issue question? Is it conceptually possible for feminism to finally consolidate as a discipline?

Perhaps a more relevant question is what feminism intends to do after it achieves its ultimate goal. Answers to this question may differ on whether to see feminism as a movement or as a knowledge domain. Kitch (2007) argues for creating “a new epistemology” (p. 131) that reshapes the conceptual, epistemological, and political structures of feminism. However, the way researchers frame their questions and methodologies reveal what seems to be an internal flaw. While feminism takes as its primary mission to critique male-dominated narratives, to describe the field of feminism in gendered (feminist) ways is equally detrimental. Take for example Kitch’s (2007) characterization of transdisciplinarity:

At its best, such transdisciplinarity carves out new territory, fills in gaps between existing knowledge domains, creates new intellectually coherent entities that both emerge from the fusion of fields and transcends them, and expands the opportunities for new knowledge to transform the actual conditions of women’s lives. (p. 131)

Please note the language that is definitely the opposite of masculine, but at the same time not as ambitious as the movement itself claims to be. Words and phrases like “carves out,” “fills in gaps,” “emerge from,” “the fusion,” “expands,” and “transforms” represent an image that is less than confident. Is it a conceptual sin for feminist researchers to phrase their mission claims in more vigorous terms? Does the discourse of feminism have to be masculine to be intellectually rigorous?

These two questions also bring up the issues of rigor in feminist methodology. While we are cautioned against foundational epistemologies (Sullivan & Porter, 1997), the feminist methodology has to answer the validity question. Sullivan and Porter’s heuristic of the praxis has definite value in terms of the implications of research methodology in everyday life, but it may have to explain a procedural question. As the 10,000-hour-rule article points out, experts have the experience that non-experts lack. For this reason, the heuristic may be a privilege of the experienced few in the academic community. In the heuristic system, the basic question of how to proceed in research is still a mystery.

The major concerns in feminism, including complexity, social constructiveness, praxis, transdisciplinarity, politics, etc., are valuable in their own terms. Yet, before articulating a set of intellectually coherent methodological systems, feminism will continue to remain a collection of significant perspectives that influence knowledge building.

But, are we satisfied with being a para-discipline that lacks a rigorous core and methodology? Speaking of creating maximal benefits as a result of research, would it be really beneficial for feminist researchers to refrain from making disciplinary claims but, instead, explore the endless opportunities of perspectives?

Note: I intended this response to approach feminism from the negative side for the purpose of better appreciating the contributions of feminism.

Response 1/14/2014

In response to Charles Bazerman’s (2008) recount of Robert Merton’ (1963) theories of the middle range, I would argue that researchers in writing studies pay special attention to disciplinary boundaries as socially constructed and negotiated. (Inter)Disciplinary awareness may help us understand and apply the middle range theory.

The three questions that are constituent of the middle range theory can be determined by relating them to the concerns and serious stakes in the discipline of literacy and writing studies. While the questions correspond to levels of generality, they are not to be treated as simplistic and reductive levels of conceptual generality. The way the class conceptualized the originating question as centering on literate practice, for example, is not merely a matter of locating an overarching question, but rather a major, general concern of the field. It would be more productive to see an originating question as representing the common concerns of a discipline, hence a communal sense in the construction of an originating question.

The same reasoning can apply to the formulating of the empirically specifying and site-specific questions. What is acknowledged as a researchable question is deeply rooted in the practices and methodologies that a discipline adopts. For example, while the mental process of an individual writing might warrant a cognitive study, his or her literacy history might be validate a writing study. In the pragmatic term, whether a practice, a method, or a set of data is marketable in employment and publication has a lot to do with the “serious stakes” of an academic discipline.

Seeing the questions in terms of disciplinary relevance may help produce a set of criteria for forming the questions themselves, locating a strategic research site, adopting a methodology, and deciding on approaches to collecting data. Take Bazerman’s (2008) example of conducting a study on political representation of a social problem (p. 309). Does a researcher start out by looking at a dataset and then decide on which conceptual framework to guide further data collection, sampling, and analysis? Or, a researcher has already taken a certain stance before he or she looks at a dataset and asks questions. In the case of political representation, researchers might have different disciplinary and institutional affiliation, professional and academic training, and empirical research experience that result in their choice of conceptual questions that fall in various political, social, historical, or linguistic disciplines. This differentiation largely determines further research questions, methodologies, and practice. It seems fairly reasonable to claim that before an originating question is formulated, the researcher has already chosen to subscribe to a certain epistemological/disciplinary frameworks.

Researchers might benefit from a critical awareness of their epistemological/disciplinary stance by exploring interdisciplinary possibilities. Literacy studies may well benefit from a rhetorical/discourse perspective, much as Bazerman’s historical study benefited from a textual study of archived data. In the same spirit, cognitive studies may inform literacy studies by lending a rich terminology and conceptual perspectives on the idiosyncratic processes of an individual writer.

This utopian notion of the research methodology may open up opportunities for more productive research. It may challenge Peter Smagorinsky’s (2008) emphasis on the systematic coherence across major sections in a research paper. A protocol analysis, in an interdisciplinary research heuristic, might inform a social or textual design (hopefully the thinking process of a less experienced writer would reveal the cultural, ethnic, economic, and social constraints that occur in his or her process of writing). Smagorinsky’s sense of coherence might be moot if taken by its face value. Instead of structural coherence, conceptual relevance might do a better service to ensure that a study is replicable. A research that represents the complex internal dynamics of a practice, rather than the logic in the social construct of a research methodology, calls for inclusiveness in design.

Back to Bazerman’s (2008) rather mystified statement on “serendipity” (p. 304). Obviously, experienced researchers are more likely to have a moment of serendipity. However, researchers might have a clear clue to a “treasure map” (Bazerman, 2008, p. 315) if they start out with clear identification with a particular epistemology. Preliminary thoughts like these compelled me to ask: Is research design a science? Or, is it political and social?

Bazerman, C. (2008). Theories of the middle range in historical studies of writing practice. Written Communication, 25(3), 298-318.

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. Written Communication, 25(3), 389-411.