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This book addresses wide-ranging dilemmas that social researchers may face as a result of silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their research. In every research endeavour, thoughts, intuitions, biases, feelings or sensations may be left aside as the researcher attempts to come to terms with the complexities of material and figure out what the 'main issue' is. Researchers may pay attention to their own emotional responses during the interview, but often only in their field notes. Rarely do feelings of shock, irritation, boredom or, for that matter, amusement, excitement and delight find their way into the analysis itself. In addition, researchers are all susceptible to blind-spots, often unaware of what is being avoided in research or omitted from it. However, reflection about precisely these gaps or silences may prove essential for developing new and interesting questions as well as comprehensive, responsive, and responsible research practices. In this volume, an international, cross-disciplinary cohort of researchers think critically about the silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their own work, and offer insights for enhancing research practices. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in research methods and methodology.
List of contents
Introduction Part I: Silences 1. The Silence of Gold: Feelings about Money in Field Relationships 2. Keeping Quiet: Doing Research When You're Woman, Feminist & Black 3. Navigating Race - Expectations Before, During, and After Research 4. Do Lawsuits Silence? Legal Harassment in Corporate Crime Research Part II: Neglected Feelings 5. "Bad Feelings": Reflections on Research, Disciplines, and Critical Methodologies 6. The Shamefulness of Boredom: Are Good Researchers Allowed to be Bored? 7. In Praise of Suspicion 8. The Botanical Sublime: Thinking and Feeling with Plants Part III: Blind-spots 9. Coming to Terms with the Present: Difficult Feelings in Post-Shoah Germany 10. 'We Will Sue You If You Dare Publish Our Pictures!': Discovering Myopia in a Feminist, Participatory Photo-voice Project with Sex Workers in Ethiopia 11. From Myopia to Clarity: Missed Opportunities and New Directions in an International Research Setting Concluding Conversations Studying Those Who Hate Us: Fear, Anxiety and Blind-spots in Researching the Right
About the author
Kathy Davis is Senior Research Fellow in the Sociology Department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is the author of
Reshaping the Female Body,
Dubious
Equalities and Embodied Differences,
The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders and
Dancing Tango: Passionate Encounters in a Globalizing World.
Janice Irvine is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. She is the author of
Marginal People in Deviant Places: Ethnography, Difference, and the Challenge to Scientific Racism;
Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States, and
Disorders of Desire: Sex and Gender in Modern American Sexology.
Summary
This book addresses dilemmas that social researchers may face as a result of silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their research, considering the ways in which omissions or silences may prove essential for developing new and interesting questions as well as comprehensive, responsive, and responsible research practices.
