Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Feminist methodologies for International Relations
- Part I Methodological conversations between feminist and non-feminist IR
- 2 Feminism meets International Relations: some methodological issues
- 3 Distracted reflections on the production, narration, and refusal of feminist knowledge in International Relations
- 4 Inclusion and understanding: a collective methodology for feminist International Relations
- Part II Methods for feminist International Relations
- Part III Methodologies for feminist International Relations
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Distracted reflections on the production, narration, and refusal of feminist knowledge in International Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Feminist methodologies for International Relations
- Part I Methodological conversations between feminist and non-feminist IR
- 2 Feminism meets International Relations: some methodological issues
- 3 Distracted reflections on the production, narration, and refusal of feminist knowledge in International Relations
- 4 Inclusion and understanding: a collective methodology for feminist International Relations
- Part II Methods for feminist International Relations
- Part III Methodologies for feminist International Relations
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Local women said: no matter
How you sprinkled it, every time
You'd sweep a concrete floor,
You'd get more off it.
As if, deep down,
There was only dust.
I was on my way to a conference with an abstract and a promise. But then I got distracted.
(A. Gordon 2001: 32)Methodology: a personal story
“What method have you adopted for this research?”
This is a persistent question. One asked within a certain tone of voice, an almost imperceptible sigh of relief that the one asking is not the one answering; the sound also of a powerful demand to know, a distanced usually firm utterance capturing in its delivery the authority of the interrogator.
(Weston 2002: 39)When I was a graduate student the question “What method have you adopted for your research?” made me very nervous, especially in its recurrent manifestation: “Is there a distinct feminist methodology?” – a question to which I found it very difficult to provide a definitive answer especially when I suspected that only the answer, “Yes,” followed up with a robust, rationalistic, and conventionally acceptable defense, would suffice. Of course, I could speak at length about the absence of women and considerations of gender in traditional texts in the field of International Relations (IR), and point to the violence that this both does and masks, but this did not convince my questioners.
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- Feminist Methodologies for International Relations , pp. 42 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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