Reviews for Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation and Publication

The average rating for Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation and Publication based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-21 00:00:00 Joseph Dike Kirsch's project surveys "an array of ethical dilemmas that feminist researchers" encounter as they engage with qualitative inquiry, and she creates links between extant scholarship and the significance of that scholarship to composition studies (ix). At the fore is Kirsch's preoccupation with "problems of interpretation and representation," researchers' ethical responsibilities to "participants," and context-dependent power relations that shift over time and culture (ix). On the one hand, Kirsch's book suggests methods of qualitative feminist inquiry that help make feminist contributions to the field (and research participants) clear in aim, scope, and activism directed toward marginalized populations because she interrogates and cites specific examples. On the other hand, Kirsch critiques aspects of qualitative feminist methods and methodologies that reveal chinks in the wall. Put otherwise, Kirsch exposes the vulnerability of the researcher (and participants) in some methods of reportage more than others'authorial 'I' and multi-vocal texts versus quantitative analysis serve as examples in the text. Kirsch does a thorough job of analyzing the affordances and limitations of different approaches to feminist research and dissemination of the potential results. At first glance, Kirsch's treatise may dissuade the new initiate to feminist research methods because of the ethical complexity inherent in feminist qualitative methods and methodologies. Although Kirsch addresses the discouraging facets head-on in her conclusion'via discussion of two roundtable sessions on "Ethical and Methodological Issues in Qualitative Research"'in truth, I find myself less inclined to conduct personal interviews with research participants after I read Kirsch's book. To my mind, aspects of Kirsch's text, corroborate Robin Dunbar's theories about social cohesion and gossip in human groups (see Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language). For example, Kirsch considers how personal disclosures of information by research participants may complicate how a scholar incorporates that personal information in public contexts, but developing enough social cohesion to perform ethnographic-based research requires an openness central to qualitative research. "And so we are left with contradictions," Kirsch notes, "rather than closure, with goals understood yet unfulfilled" (103). It is discomfort that we are left to dwell upon in the final paragraph.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-16 00:00:00 Gerald Leite A bit dry and abstract at times, but raises important issues and presents them concisely, with some engaging anecdotes. Interestingly, author doesn't attempt to apply the approaches she discusses to her own book; I would have been curious to know why. Traditional scholarship may be mired in positivism, elitism, the illusion of objectivity, etc... but from the standpoint of sheer practicality, the collaborative, multivocal, contextualized, author-saturated, politically galvanic research Kirsch envisions sounds like a pretty tall order.