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Mothering and 'insider' dilemmas: feminist sociologists in the research process
Cooper, L. Rogers, Chrissie
Cooper, L.
Rogers, Chrissie
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2015-05
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© 2015 The Authors. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Sociological Research Online, vol 20/issue 2 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved.
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2015-01-12
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Abstract
This paper is about care, insider positions and mothering within feminist research. We ask questions about how honest, ethical and caring we can truly be when placing the self into the research process as mothers ourselves. Should we leave out aspects of the research that do not fit neatly, and how ethical can we claim to be if we do? Moreover, should difficult differences, secrets and silences that emerge from the research process�and research stories that might �out� us as failures�be excluded from research outcomes in order to claim legitimate research? We consider the use of feminist methods as crucial in the reciprocal and relational understanding of personal enquiry. Mothers invest significant emotional capital in their families, and we explore the blurring of the interpersonal and intrapersonal when sharing mothering experiences common to both participant and researcher. Indeed, participants can identify themselves within the process as �friends� of the researcher. We both have familiarity within our respective research that has led to mutual understanding of having insider positions. Crucially, individuals� realities are a vital component of the qualitative paradigm, and �insider� research remains a necessary, albeit messy, vehicle in social research. We consider a growing body of literature that marks out and endorses a feminist ethics of care, critiquing established ways of thinking about ethics, morality, security, citizenship and care. It provides alternatives in mapping private and public aspects of social life as it operates at a theoretical level, but importantly for this paper, also at the level of practical application.
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Cooper L and Rogers C (2015) Mothering and ‘insider’ dilemmas: feminist sociologists
in the research process. Sociological Research Online. 20(2): 1-13.
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