Harika E. Dauth
ANT 520 Feminist Ethnography
Summer Term 2009, final paper
Lecturer: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan Gedik
Thinking with the heart - feminist methodologies and strategies
In the following paper I am going to outline in two chapters the meanings and implications of
method and methodology1 for contemporary feminist researchers. Doing qualitative social research,
what kind of critiques and which alternative research methods and approaches have been suggested
by feminists who paying much attention to gender2 relations? Focusing on interviews, I am trying to
to give answers to the following questions in the second chapter: What kind of discontents did
feminists express and what kind of new strategies did they develop? How do feminist constitute
relationships between researcher and researched? How do they perceive their interviewee’s verbal
and nonverbal expressions?
I. Feminist methodology and epistemology
Feminist scholarship reached the point where calls for a feminist methodology of its own sake are
raised that differ eminently from "patriarchal research" (Rutledge Shields and Dervin 1993: 65).
The need for developing a guideline of method, methodology and epistemology in feminist research
process is a result of the concern that were articulated within the 'feminist critique'3 of existing
methodology.
Apart from the highly diverse methods feminist scholars across disciplines have been discussed,
and that will be partly outlined in the following chapter, there are certain common features,
1 The two terms are used referring to Stanley and Wise (1990), who define 'method' as techniques, or specific sets of
research practices, such as surveys, interviews, ethnography, life histories and the like while 'methodology' is
associated with a perspective, or a very broad theoretical framework, such as functionalism or structuralism.
2 For the concept of gender in the following essay I am adopting the definition by Gal who perceives gender as a
"system of cultural constructed relations among men and women" (Gal 1991: 176).
3 According to Stanley and Wise feminist critique contained basically one or more of the following propositions. First,
feminist research as such was defined as a focus on women, carried out by women who were feminist
representatives for other women. Second, there was an emphasis on the distinction between quantitative 'male'
methods and qualitative 'female ones. Third, the intention of feminist research was strongly political and committed
to changing women's lives (Stanley and Wise 1990: 21, emphasis in original).
1
"themes", values, intentions or even a quintessence that can be both extracted and implemented
from and of these methods.
The first common assumption of feminist scholarship is that gender - and sex, as Butler4
argues, is in general a socially and politically constructed reality. Gender5 relations, as feminist
scholars (Moore 1973) define it, is something that we use to learn and not something that we are
born with. Hence, to work with the category of women means to assume an ontological basis.
This basis, according to Stanley and Wise, is rooted in the second common assumption of feminist
scholars, which is a set of 'experiences of oppression' in the material, personal and social world. The
scholars however stress that these common experiences do not refer to the same experiences that are
shared by women. Rather the oppressions that women experience in all day life vary due to the
social and regional contexts they are embedded, an assumption that derives from the fact, that we do
not all share the same single material reality (Stanley and Wise 1990: 21f). Oppression in this
context, as the scholars observe, is widely used as an equivalent term for having no power. In
contrast they argue that oppression should be seen as an "extraordinarily complex process in which
women are only rarely and in extremis totally powerless and in which, ordinarily, women use a
range of resources - verbal, interactional and other - in order to 'fight back'" (Stanley and Wise
1990: 22, emphasis in original).
The third feminist supposition is (self-)reflexivity of the researcher who must be consciously aware
of her biases, position and background and be able to situate that information in relation to the
experience and broader historical constructions of race, class and culture of the researched.
Which takes us to the fourth feminist theme: "the reciprocal sharing of knowledge and experience
between the the researcher and the researched" (Rutledge Shields and Dervin 1993: 67). On the
basis of this kind of research value, which is also widely known as intersubjectivity, the
dichotomous relationship between the two is substituted by a dialectical one, where the researched
become collaborators, or as Diane Bell (1993) expressed it 'co-researchers during' the field work
and the process of 'writing up' (ibid.).
Finally, the fifth and last feminist supposition is emancipation which is supported in differentiating
4 Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge
5 Gender, as I use it in this paper refers to "a pervasive social organizer that is the effect of and is constructed in
culture" (Rutledge Shield and Dervin 1993: 66). This implies that gender is something that we do, tat is to say a set
of social practices, and something that we think with, namely a system of cultural meanings (see Duelli Klein,
Renate (1983). How to do what we want to do: Thoughts about feminist methodology. In: Gloria Bowles and Renate
Duelli Klein (eds.). Theories of Women's Studies. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul). pp. 88-104
2
degrees by feminist scholars. With this, feminists intend to bring an end to the social and economic
conditions that are oppressive to women. Central to this notion is an educative intention where an
responsible researcher wants to help his or her subjects to perceive more clearly their position in the
world and who is able to offer tools to improve their situation.
However, there have been major critiques of these "quintessential" assumptions, especially
from the anthropological discipline concerning the last two kinds of values, from both, outside and
within the field of feminist scholarship. Critiques emerged particularly from the discipline of
anthropology (see Strathern 1987) and sociology (see Stacey 1988), the latter who voices her
discontent, for example, on the notion of collaborative research and the thereby related hierarchy:
"no matter how welcome, even enjoyable the field worker's presence may appear to the 'natives',
field work represents an intrusion and intervention into a system of relationships that the researcher
is far freer than the researched to leave" (Stacey 1988: 23). Other remarks 6 have been, whether
gender alone is a strong enough factor to bridge understanding between women researchers and
researched women or whether factors such as race, age, class and ethnicity are not relevant for a
successful research as well. As a response to these critiques new methodologies have been
developed, such as the Sense-making methodology7 which serves "a need for alternative approaches
that are actor-centered, but at the same time resist being intertwined with the subjects' entire
personal lives" (Rutledge Shields and Dervin 1993: 78).
Taking such a new approach into consideration, what is the basis of a feminist methodology?
How can such a methodology be developed? What are the underlying paradigms of a broader
theoretical frame as offered by feminist methodology?
Epistemology8 can be seen as the foundation for method and methodology. Sandra Harding
identifies two different 'transitional epistemologies': feminist empiricism and feminist viewpoint
which others (Rutledge Shields and Dervin 1993) also call feminist perspectives. Feminist
6 see for example Radway, Janice (1989). Ethnography among elits: comparing discourses of power. In: Journal of
Communication Inquiry. Vol. 13, No.2. pp. 3-11
7 In the Sense-making methodology, as conceived by Brenda Dervin (1983), the interviewees are systematically asked
to describe the patterns she or him has constructed in their living and therefore treats each respondent as a theorist
whose theoretic work is living. Moreover, the interviewer needs to try as little as possible to intervene in the
narrator's story but guiding the narrator in such a way that the results are systematically illuminating both for the
researcher and the researched (see Rutledge Shields and Dervin 1993: 78f).
8 Epistemology is the knowledge about knowledge and focusses on questions such as: How do we know what we
know? Who can be a knower? What does constitute knowledge? What is the relationship between one`s knowledge
and one`s being? (see Stanley and Wise 1990: 26).
3
empiricism9, as she sees it, is the feminist response to the main features and problems of traditional
science, that acknowledges 'inner tensions'10 and the assumption that the 'context of discovery'
during one's research is constructing knowledge as well as theories and research products do.
Research norms and conventional scientific method is questioned, if not rejected, since it overlooks
overt sexism and hidden androcentrism (Harding 1987 cited in Stanley and Wise 1990: 27).
Feminist viewpoint on the other hand takes its knowledge from a "committed feminist
exploration of women's experiences of oppression" (ibid.) and is therefore more radical and more
practical since it craves for the engagement in intellectual and political struggle "to see natural and
social life from the point of view of that disdained activity which produces women`s social
experiences instead of from the partial and perverse perspective available from the 'ruling gender'
experience of men. Both epistemologies claim feminist knowledge as the better and truer since it is
observed by outsiders who see the respective forms of oppression of what they really are (ibid.).
Exactly this is questioned by feminist postmodernist epistemology that has its origins in feminist
scepticism of all universal claims in general.
Deriving from semiotics, psycho-analyses and deconstructivism and their rejection of any
notion of a 'more authentic self', feminist postmodernists got particularly prominent through black
women, who rejected in particular that all women do share the same experiences (Stanley and Wise
1990: 28). Experience seen from this perspective is relativized, since it is based within micropolitics which is localised but organised through meta-narratives and more grounded ideological
discourses (ibid.) Pat Caplan points out that postmodern and reflexive anthropology, which is
concerned with the interpretation of text and how ethnographic authority is constituted, has often be
accused in lacking a moral, critical centre. Examples for that can be symbolist ethnographers such
as Clifford Geertz, who sees, for example, the predominant function for religion as giving meaning
to people's life, and suggests in a Durkheimian perspective, that religion functions to harmonize and
unify society. However, nowhere Geertz is mentioning the political dimension of religion, such as
its ideological features.
9
The most often feminist empirical studies in this regard are the action analyses by Mies and the experiential
analyses by Shulamit Reinharz (1983). Experiential Analysis: A contribution to feminist research. In: Gloria
Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein (eds.). Theories of women's studies. Boston: Routledge Kegan. pp. 162-191; and
Maria Mies (1983). Methodische Postulate zur Frauenforschung - dargestellt am Beispiel von Gewalt gegen
Frauen. In: Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis. Vol. 1, No. 1. pp. 41-63
10
The 'inner tensions' refer first, to the Marxist paternal discourse and its emphasis on class and economy and the
exclusion of sex and patriarchy. And second, that once feminist standpoint exist, other alternative viewpoint exist
as well which questions the truth-claim of feminist standpoint (see Stanley and Wise 1990: 27)..
4
Bob Scholte who is arguing in a similar way, remarks that one finds no mentioning of colonial or
even post-colonial violence in Geertz' work. Cultures, he argues, are not solely "webs of
signification" as Geertz suggests, but rather "webs of mystification" since "few do the spinning
while the majority get caught" (see Scholte11 1984: 140 cited in Caplan 1994: 10). To sum up, while
feminists and marxists are eager to point out forms of oppression, symbolists seek for meaning12. In
this regard, anthropology seems to be divided in two opposed field. However, feminist such as
Caplan question this polarization: 'Do we really have to be caught in anthropology between the
dichotomies of meaning of culture and epistemology on the one hand and a critical interest in
uncovering politics and ideology?' she asks. In her point of view we indeed do not have to be
caught. At least as long as we take the feminist scholarship into consideration, we can be both,
reflexive and political (ibid.) Right here, Caplan reminds us of one of the most important aims in
feminist scholarship, which is to break down the boundaries between one discipline and the other,
between private and public, between theory and practice, between objectivity and subjectivity,
between expert and non-expert and so forth. This is simply due to the fact that private becomes
public, for example, in the way the public world of men encompasses the private world of women
(see Moore 1973: 194); theory derives from practice and vice versa; objectivity is completely
relative and positioned (ibid.).
However, other feminist viewpoints such as materialist13 feminism, that are suggested
further on, show that there can be no kind of epistemological hierarchy since each has
epistemological validity, hence each has ontological validity. In fact, the contextually grounded
truths, as I understand it, are one of the main epistemological paradigms of feminism.
II. Feminist methods and research
There are numerous research methods that have been expressed by feminists. In the next chapter I
am going to outline some of the methods that are related to feminist interviews and women's verbal
and coded articulation and analyze them towards a critical understanding of gender relations.
11 Scholte, Bob (1984). Comment on "The thick and the thin" by P. Shankman. In: Current Anthropology, Vol. 25
12 see Guha, R. (1982, 1983). Subaltern Studies I and II. Delhi: OUP
13 Materialist feminism focusses on the "the concrete, 'material', social relations of reproduction which are
responsible for men's generally pre-conscious psychological needs to dominate others rationally" (Harding 1980:
458 cit. in Stanley and Wise 1990: 28).
5
The Interview
Ann Oakely, who conducted a research on motherhood, paraphrases the situation of the professional
asking and response game: "Interviewing is rather like marriage: everybody knows what it is, an
awful lot of people do it, and yet behind each closed front door there is a world of secrets" (Oakely
1980: 31)
She questions the successful adopting of interview strategies as suggested in classical qualitative
research textbooks. She describes, how the recommendations about how social scientists should
obtain their data, are based on a masculine view on social reality, which contradicts the perspectives
of women as social actors. According to this masculine paradigm an interview is "not simply a
conversation. It is, rather, a pseudo-conversation. In order to be successful, it must have all the
warmth and personality exchange of a conversation with the clarity and guidelines of scientific
searching" (Goode and Hatt14 1952: 191, cited in Oakely 1980: 32f). This paradoxical notion of
'being friendly but not too friendly', shows, in the eyes of the feminist scholar, the manipulative
character of textbook based interviews, that treat interviewees as sources of data, who can only be
efficiently squeezed out through interrogation by a certain amount of humaine handling (ibid.). Due
to this classical methodology "the interviewer's personality should be neither over-agressive nor
over-sociable. Pleasantness and a business-like nature is the ideal combination" (Oakely 1980: 34).
Social research textbook suggest for cases where interviewees ask questions back, to the
interviewer to laugh such requests off by remarking that his job at the moment is to get opinions not
to have them since his job is the one of a reporter, not an evangelist, a curiosity-seeker or a
debater15. Commenting this suggestion, Oakely gives examples from her interviews where
questions that interviewees asked back16 such as "Why is is dangerous to leave a small baby at
home?" or "Does an epidural ever paralyze women?" could hardly be laughed off with the answer:
"My job at the moment is to get opinions, not to have them" (Oakely 1980: 48).
Thus, Oakely states, social research techniques, as offered by text-books, perceive interviews first
as a mechanical instrument of data-collection, where the interviewees are assumed to be passive
individuals. Second, this methodology acts on the assumption that an interview is a specialised form
of conversation where one asks questions and another gives the answers, which subsumes that the
14
Goode W.J. and P.K. Hatt (1952). Methods in Social Research. New York: McGraw Hill
15
See Stelliz C., M. Jahoda, M. Deutsch and S.W. Cook (1965). Research Methods in Social Relations. London:
Methuen
16
Analysing the 178 tape-recorded interviews she did, Oakely listed 878 questions (concerning information requests,
personal questions, questions about the research and advice questions) that the interviewees had asked back
(Oakely 1980: 42).
6
role of the interviewer is reduced to simply ask questions and deliver a rapport (Oakely 1980: 36f).
A task that the scholar had difficulties to correspond to, mainly because of two reasons. First, her
interviewees asked her a great many questions back. Second, over the time of the repeated
interviews she conducted, she established a personal involvement with the women's experiences of
pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.
Yet, 'proper' interviews, concludes Oakely are based on values such as objectivity,
detachment, hierarchy and 'science', which takes priority over people's individualised concerns.
With the polarisation of 'proper' and 'inproper' interviews, the feminist scholar refers to the
widespread gender stereotyping that occur in (modern industrial) civilisations, where women are,
similar to children, characterised as being immature, weak, sensitive, intuitive, helpless and
exploited in contrast to the superiority of men with their capacity for rational, objetive and scientific
thinking (Oakely 1980: 38f). What she stresses here is that the the dominant male group is
determining "a culture`s overall outlook". Linking to Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, the
dominant group shapes it's cultural philosophy, morality, social theory and last but not least science
itself. "Dominants are usually convinced that the way things are is right and good, not only for them
but especially for the subordinates. All morality confirms this view and all social structure confirms
it" (Oakely 1980: 40). Applying this notion on the interviewer-interviewee relationship, it becomes
clear that interviewers perceive their interviewees as subordinates, where extracting information
becomes more important than providing it. This kind of hierarchy, in the words of Oakely, "is a
rationalisation of inequality" (ibid.).
Speech
While sociolinguistic studies of all day speech have considered talk simply as an index for identity
for a long time, feminist historians understand women's words as synecdoches for 'consciousness'
(Gal 1991: 177). A notion that leads Susan Gal to a harsh critique of postmodern thinkers such as a
Foucault and Bordieu, who, despite their constant stressing of the problematic and coercive
potential of symbolic domination17 and the control of discourse in social interaction and institutions,
"neither notice nor explain the subtlety, subversion, and opposition to dominant definitions which
feminists have discovered in many women's genres, and sometimes embedded in women's everyday
talk" (ibid). In order to get a closer look to women's often veiled and so called muted words, it
appears crucial for Gal to put a stronger focus on researches about women's everyday talk. The
scholar assumes that we do not just get confronted with the former absent women's voices but rather
17
see Bordieu, Pierre (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press
7
with "linguistic practices, that are more ambiguous, often contradictory, differing among women of
different classes and ethnic groups and ranging from accommodation to opposition, subversion,
rejection, or autonomous construction of reigning cultural definitions" (Gal 1991: 178).
An example for differing linguistic practices between gender relations is Goodwin (1980)
study of children's play groups in urban black neighbourhoods18. While boys organize into mere
large hierarchical groups, using direct commands and are engaged in strong competitive verbal
display, that is commented and challenged by those who are not in the center of attention, girls play
in smaller, more exclusive groups, that are also rich in conflict. However, their verbal interactions
deny conflict and hierarchy. If commands are articulated they are proposals for the future. While the
boys are asking questions for information and challenge, girls questions concern the conversational
maintenance19.
While this example seems to suggest strong gendered speech differences that also seem to limit
women's access into the political sphere, other ethnographic instances, demonstrate that for instance
meetings - imagined encounters for political decisions - are not the main site of decision making.
Rather decisions are made and consensus made before and after the meetings during informal
discussions.
Gal offers an example where the linguistic practices of women define political spaces. In her
study of a Hungarian-German bilingual town in Austria women`s use of German is linked with their
general rejection of the peasant way of life that they associate with the Hungarian language.
Interestingly, she interprets their choice of speaking German with their acceptance of wage labor
since women, who are engaged in peasant lifestyle seem relatively powerless to them (Gal 1991:
183).
Lila Abu-Lughod20, who studied the oral lyric poetry (ghinnawas) among intimates of
Bedouins in the Desert of Western Egypt, outlines how women perform their own positioned space
through the use of poetic language. She compares the subversive discourse of 'veiled sentiments',
which is most closely associated with youths and women, in opposition to the system and in
defiance of those who represent it. Here, the poems directly violate and criticize the 'public
language' of honor, autonomy, sexual modesty and personal strength.
18
Studies on other ethnic groups, children as well as adults, come to similar results and seem to support Goodwin's
conclusions.
19
Goodwin, M. (1980). Directive-response speech sequences in girls' and boys' task activities. In: S. McConnellGinet, R. Goodwin and N. Furman. Women and language in literature and society. New York: Praeger
20
Abu-Lughod, Lila (1986). Veiled Sentiments. Berkely, Los Angeles: University of California Press
8
Another striking example is that of Martin21 who compared women's discourse about their
own (folk models of) reproductive processes with the dominant medical science and textbook
discourse on this topic. She outlines that medical textbooks construct the body as a model of
industrial society, with cells as factories that are in charge of of systems of management and control.
The physical processes of menstruation, for example, are presented as failed production and an
alerting collapse of authority in the body. Illuminating enough, Martin compared the women's way
of talking about menstruation with each other and found out that, while middle-class women adopt
the medical model in their discourses, while working-class women of all colour shared "an absolute
reluctance to give the medical view of menstruation" (Martin 1987: 109 cited in Gal 1991: 195).
How the dominant discourse can be reproduced, I want to demonstrate with a last field of
feminist anthropologist inquiry: gossip, probably one of women's most powerful verbal tools.
Sandra Harding22 explains this tool as deriving from being under constant verbal surveillance that
helps to keep women in their places. Therefore, she concludes, it is not simply separation between
women and men, but rather their subordinate position to men, that leads them to develop special
'manipulative' verbal skills (Harding 1975: 103). Yet, although gossip subverts male power by
judging other people by means of values that the male dominant system does not accept, it is on the
other hand partly because of that, condemned by the dominant culture and causes conflicts. Further,
it seems highly problematic, if we consider forms of gossip, where the strategy may seem to aim
resisting male dominance but where on the other hand it is reproduced by the women's gossip (see
Gal 1991: 197).
What can be concluded here is that the verbal relationship between the male and female
domaine is obviously depending on each other - in between the linguistic practices as well among
the dominant and subordinated system and has to be analyzed in the broader context of women’s
social and cultural lifes including men.
Silence
It has been become clear to a wide range of social scientists by now, that conventional language is
neither the only nor a neutral media for representing an already existing reality. While the dynamic
of dominant and subordinated discourses have been discussed by a lot of these researchers, if they
have not been dismissed or perceived as inert by androcentric researchers, feminist scholars have
witnessed the complex worlds of women's models of nonverbal or veiled languages. "Some of us
21 Martin, E. (1987). The women in the body. Boston: Beacon
22 Harding, Sandra (1975). Women and word in a Spanish village. In: R. Reiter (ed.). Toward an anthropology of
women. New York: Monthly Review
9
found discrepancies between our own memories of interviews and the transcripts because the
meaning we remembered hearing had been expressed through intense vocal quality and body
language, not through words alone" (Anderson and Jack 1998: 158). Gal, for example notices, that
"mutedness" is just one of many possible outcomes of gender relations. An interesting aspect of
interviews is that the one, who does not speak, exerts power over the one who speaks23. In fact, she
remarks, does silence highlight close associations between gender, the use of speech and exercise of
power. A necessary consequence as the scholars further proposes, is that "we must focus not
on"mutedness" as a structural product but on processes by which women are rendered "mute" or
manage to construct dissenting genres and resisting discourses" (Gal 1991: 190).
Being rendered "mute" is a political process that becomes precarious in the cases of silenced
women viewpoints by black feminist women and lesbian women as mentioned by Stanley and Wise
(1990). To be a black woman and a feminist is being 'different', for black standing outside of white
racist society while being a feminist is to make oneself 'Other' to black (male and other nonfeminists). Patricia Hill Collins24 describes this from an emic perspective as being a stranger who is
not yet in and yet not of 'normal social life'. Concerning the theoretical feminist approach of black
feminist women, it is important to stress that theory comes with a small t and not with a capital T.
Black feminists reject the ethnocentrism of white feminist thought claiming that the experiences of
white, middle-class women are not necessarily in accord with their own experiences. Moreover,
voices have been raised25, that with imposing their experiences on black feminist, white feminism
exist in relations of power over blacks. Stanley and Wise therefore break down that the priority of
black feminist is to "change both it and them, the white feminists who speak in other women`s
names while denying their experiences" (Stanley and Wise 1990: 30).
As in the case of black feminists, also for lesbians oppression and liberation mingle. While
women are forced back in general as the Other, to be a lesbian means, as Riley26 put it to be an
'other Other'.
Quite different reasons why women have been described as inarticulate stemmed often from
23
Foucault points out that in institutions where self-exposure is required, such as in modern psychotherapy,
bureaucratic interviews, police interrogation and religious confession it is the silent listener who exerts power
over the one who speaks by judging (Foucault, Pierre 1978. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon. pp.
61-62).
24
Collins, Patricia Hill (1986). Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significaance of Black
Feminist Thought. In: Social Problems. Vol. 33. pp.14-32
25
see Ramazanoglu, Caroline (1986). Ethnocentrism and Socialist-feminist Theory: a Response to Barett and
McIntosh. In: Feminist Review. Vol. 22. pp. 83-86
26
Riley, Denise (1987). Am I that name? Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History. London: Mcmillan
10
the fact that they invented a "cultural commentary of gesture and ritual" (Gal 1991: 193) that simply
rejected words altogether as in the example of the Nigerian Women's War of 1929. Protesting
against taxation of women's property by the colonial government, women performed a locally
practiced custom of obscene dancing called "sitting on men", which they utilized at houses where
men had overstepped social morals that were important to women. Later witnesses27 reported that
women protests included nude marching and lying on the ground while kicking their legs in the air
by making obscene gestures.
Other examples were found by Radway28 who studied American women's consumption of romantic
novels and interpreted their reading as a limited, self-defeating protest since it allows temporary
escape from limited lives, which become more desirable through the texts.
Considering this various forms of coded, veiled and nonverbal protest, how is it possible for
researchers to become more aware of and have a deeper access to these hidden languages?
Asking and Listening
If we want how to listen, we need to pay more attention to the narrator than to our own agendas,
claim Anderson and Jack, who put emphasises on the meaning of respective experiences of the
narrators that engender feelings, attitudes and values (Anderson and Jack 1998: 158).
The feminist scholars, who were conducting oral history interviews among farmer and attorneys
women, stress that, if we want to hear women's perspectives accurately, "we have to learn to listen
in stereo, receiving both the dominant and the muted channels clearly and tuning into them
carefully to understand the relationship between them" (Anderson and Jack 1998: 157). What they
mean by this is, that a women's narrative of her life often combines two conflicting perspectives that
include both, her own and the concept and values that represent men's dominiant position in the
culture which women have internalized, rather than immediate realities of experience. While
conventional interviews are often conducted true to the motto: 'Tell me about your experience but
don't tell me too much', the scholars claim to allow women to tell about their feelings as well as
their activities. Only then, researchers can take the advantage of the opportunity how women use
language in order to express their deeper feelings and contradictions of their familiar stories.
Another method of listening that is stresses by the feminist scholars is first, listening to the
narratives about what the culture says the women should need and second, to attend to the subjects'
meta-statements. These occur when the interviewees spontaneously stop, look back and comment
27 Ifeka-Moller, C. (1975). Female militancy and colonial revolt: The Women's war of 1929 eastern Nigeria. In: S.
Ardener (ed.). Perceiving Women. London: Malaby
28 Radway, Janice (1984). Reading the romance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
11
their own thoughts (Jack in Anderson and Jack 1998: 167).
To illustrate how these subjective dimensions of of their mental and physical multiple roles
interviewees can be ignored by researchers, Anderson self-critically evaluates an instance of her
own research. While an interviewee of her had been talking about her relationship with her mother
and half-sister, the informant continued: "I practically had a nervous breakdown when I discovered
my sister had cancer, you know; it was kind of like knocking the pins [out from under me] - and I
had, after the second son was born, I just had ill health for quite a few years (...)" (Elizabeth, cited
in Anderson and Jack 1998: 160). Instead of encouraging her to further reflect on the importance of
the relationship to her sister, Anderson asked her informant: 'What kind of farming did you do right
after you were married?' This question, the scholar admits, did surely not invite the narrator to
expand on upon her feelings towards her beloved sister, neither did it give space to the women to
explain what she meant by term 'nervous breakdown'.
Learning from her mistakes, Anderson concludes that it is important to remember that the
researcher is an active participant that has to permanently reflect on his or her interview methods,
especially in critical areas, where researchers think that they already know what the narrator is
telling, otherwise "I am already appropriating what she says to an existing schema, and therefore I
am no longer listening to her. Rather, I am listening to how what she says fits into what I think I
already know" (Anderson in Anderson and Jack 1998: 165). To avoid this Anderson and Jack argue
in favour of a shift in methodology from information gathering (where the focus is on the right
questions) to interaction (where the focus is on the process), that is able to unfold the interviewee's
viewpoint
(Anderson and Jack 1998: 169). This paradigm shift inevitably affects what the
researcher is regarding as valuable information, which can not only be reduced to transcribed
written words but also has to consider aspects that are not available in written texts such as laughter
and pauses. Thus, it is crucial to ask what women mean by using certain words and to pay attention
to what literary critics call the 'presence of the absence': the silences, hollows, where an expected
activity is missing, hided or coded.
Conclusion
Between the various fields and sub-disciplines where feminist scholars have been involved, it now
seems that ethnography has become the preferred methodology of feminist scholars since it most
likely corresponds with the feminist claims to do (qualitative and quantitative) research that is based
on the experiences of people and their reflections of the social and cultural world they live in. Both,
ethnography as a discipline, and feminsm as a political approach offer methods to embedd one’s
research into a critical analyses of comparative living systems in regard to gender and power
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relations. In this regard I want to argue for a fruitful and mutual relationship of ethnography and
feminism that are able to enrich each other in terms of more critical methodologies and methods as
it has been shown with the example of interviewing women.
Feminist methodologies, as introduced in the paper, highlighted that an interview is not just a
question-answer play between researcher and researched but rather a great pool also of hidden
languages, than can hardly examined with proper, objective interview standards proposed by
textbooks. On top of this, speech, as Gal demonstrated is not simply a reflex or marker for social
identity but a discourse strategy. This implies that not attention has not only be paid to the gender of
the speaker but also to that of the audience and the varying cultural apparences of gender in various
social contexts (Gal 1991: 181). However, strong protest can occur in various, yet non-correlating
ways as outlined in the cases of the silent protest of Women's War in eastern Nigeria or the explicit
public performances of critical poetry among the beduine women in Egypt's western desert.
Hence, ideally, the processes of analysis, should be suspended or at least subordinated in the process
of listening (Anderson and Jack 1998: 157). It is not just the convential verbal words we have to
keenly observe and analyse but also the gaps in the verbal discourses, the pauses and silences and
the body language. If interviwees refuse to give answers to certain questions, we should record this
with the same alertness we pay to the answered ones.
Basically, I want to conclude, feminist methodologies invite us not just to question common,
mainstream epistemologies and gender asssumptions but also to be aware of the hidden words and
to devote our research to the thinking with the heart.
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Bell, Diane (1993). Yes, Virginia, There is a Feminist Ethnography. In: Diane Bell, Pat Caplan and
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Caplan, Pat (1994). Engendering Knowledge: politics of ethnography. In: Shirley Ardener (ed.).
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