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Shifting horizons

Reflections on qualitative methods

University of Manchester, carol.smart{at}manchester.ac.uk

This article addresses the challenges of developing methodologies which build on the insights of early feminist research and methods, but which also incorporate some of the new innovations in sociological, qualitative research. Feminist research has emphasized the need to capture the everyday lives of women (and others) but this is not so easy once it is realized how ‘messy’ everyday life may be and that we may also not have tools adequate to the art of listening and the task of ‘story telling’. In particular there is a need to incorporate a wide range of sensibilities into the creation of feminist/sociological accounts of everyday lives. These include accounting for emotions, memories, intersubjective meanings, and other intangibles. Finally, the article argues that debates over methodologies should not stop with questions of collecting and analysing data, but must also address the problems of how to write the lives of people differently.

Key Words: everyday life • feminist research • knowledge production • qualitative methodologies • sociological imaginations

Feminist Theory, Vol. 10, No. 3, 295-308 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1464700109343253


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