Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Magical Sign: On the Politics of Inter- and Transdisciplinarity

  Sabine Hark

  • Abstract

    For more than a decade ‘inter’- and ‘transdisciplinarity’ have operated as buzzwords in the abundant debates on the changing nature of knowledge, science, society, and their mutual relations. Both terms call up currently highly invested notions in today’s global knowledge economies such as dynamics, mobility, fluidity, flexibility, excellence, connectivity, and adaptiveness. Contrary to these phenomena, inter- and transdisciplinarity also figure as prominent emblems of knowledge projects that understand themselves as critical, transformative, and transgressive of modern science, knowledge, and the order of academic disciplines. Indeed, one could argue that it is especially Women’s and Gender Studies that most strongly appreciate inter- and transdisciplinarity in the academic universe.
    Inter- and transdisciplinarity thus seem to be able to both fit into models of neoliberal market- and management-oriented reforms of Higher Education and at the same time figure as foundation of the radical and transformative potential of Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies or Postcolonial Studies. Hence, one could indeed argue that inter- and transdisciplinarity function like magical signs, that is, as empty signifiers meaning whatever their users want them to mean.
    Taking this rather inconsistent positioning and claiming of inter- and transdisciplinarity in and for both neoliberal reforms of Higher Education and transformative knowledge endeavours as a starting point, this paper discusses some of the theoretical, methodological, and institutional problems that arise from this at least incoherent if not paradoxical situation. The aim is neither to provide definitions of inter- or transdisciplinarity nor an inter- or transdisciplinary methodology. It is rather a plea that we first need to chart the intricate terrain of the politics of interdisciplinarity before we will be able to develop a transformative inter- or transdisciplinary methodology in/for Gender Studies.

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  • pp. 11–33

• Reply
  Reponse to Sabine Hark

  Nina Lykke

  • No abstract available.
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  • pp. 34–39

• Who’s the expert? On knowledge seeking as praxis: a methodological approach

  Mia Liinason

  • Abstract

    To establish a knowledge seeking that sheds light upon manifoldness without simplifying plurality or further exposing implicit power hegemonies, feminist scholars need to distinguish between forms of rationalist knowledge and knowledge as praxis, calling attention to the fact that scholars need to address how issues of habits, norms, customs and ideas are related to the production of knowledge. Through analyses of an epistemological ranking-list and a methodological check list, I investigate ways of managing plurality and power in contemporary feminist scholarly work and argue that the ambition to avoid power asymmetries in feminist scholarship is a problematic point of departure. By drawing on the works of Sara Ahmed and Chantal Mouffe, I propose a methodology based on the idea of knowledge as praxis, treating knowledge production as action, occupied with investigating the relations we have to the world, intrinsically interwoven with culture, politics and power.

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  • pp. 40–60

• Diffracting Feminist Sex Therapy

  Björn Pernrud

  • Abstract

    The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it seeks to examine how feminist sex therapists have challenged, and articulated feminist alternatives to, conventional approaches to treatment of sexual difficulties. Secondly, it seeks to make a methodological claim and example regarding ways to analytically approach academic literature and claims to knowledge. Drawing on feminist responses to epistemological issues raised in relation to natural as well as social sciences, I seek to develop an analytical approach based on diffraction as an optical metaphor. To that effect, part of my purpose it to exemplify a methodology based on feminist interdisciplinarity by putting it to work in the context of therapeutic inquiry and knowledges. Regarding the case of sex therapies, I claim that feminists have developed convincing critiques of conventional models as well as a promising stance for feminist approaches in sex therapy. Nevertheless, I argue that there are issues concerning the notion of sexual well-being specifically that remain to be addressed by feminist sex therapists in order to properly undo particularly problematic dimensions of the conventional legacy.

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  • pp. 61–79

• Creating Togetherness and Experiencing Difference in Feminist Interviews – Knowing in a post-standpoint way?

  Hanna-Mari Ikonen and Hanna Ojala

  • Abstract

    In this article we start from feminist interdisciplinarity and focus on the interview method as a site of interaction and production of knowledge. Interviews have traditionally been and continue to be one of the basic data collecting methods in social sciences, and this is especially true for Women’s Studies. Our aspect is in our own PhD research on rural women as entrepreneurs and aged women as students. Both use feminist theories and methodologies and, in addition, one takes place in the discipline of Regional Studies and the other in Adult Education. The material has been collected through two different ways of interviewing: by telephone and face-to-face.
    We discuss what consequences our “dual position” as producers and analysers of research material brings to knowing and how we produce knowledge in this setting. We agree with the idea that knowledge is social. Thus, striving for knowledge means finding shared communities and making use of and accepting differences. We take as our point of departure both standpoint feminism and postmodern ways of practising feminist research when we stress the influence of location, differences and respect. We conclude that our research method is best described as post-standpoint as it relays both standpoint and postmodernist theory to produce knowledge about women’s lives.

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  • pp. 80–103

• German Women Writing about the End of the Second World War: A Feminist Analysis

  Sabine Grenz

  • Abstract

    This article gives insight into a research project still in progress about diaries written by as German acknowledged women during National Socialism, particularly, the Second World War and the period immediately after the War and the breakdown of the NS system. Such research from a feminist standpoint proves to be complicated. On the one hand, women were marginalised by the fascist system. On the other, being acknowledged as German granted them privileges over those considered non-German or degenerated (ranging from being included in the welfare state system to the privilege of not being sterilised and/or murdered). The interest in this analysis is an archaeological investigation of cultural memory of this period still influential. Apart from this discussion the paper entails an example of an interdisciplinary feminist analysis of passages of two diaries written immediately after the breakdown of the system. The methodology is a discourse analytical approach that makes use of studies from different disciplinary contexts in order to show the different discursive layers within the texts such as the image of the female comrade of a soldier and the unfaithful women. In both cases, aspects of a 'new' female German identity become visible in which parts of the 'old' German identity were transformed and re-integrated. This process involved the rejection of aspects clearly linked to the NS system and, not surprisingly, a projection of the immorality of this system onto women who sexually engage with foreign soldiers. Thus, making them responsible for the betrayal of the national German community just as the NS system had done prior.

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  • pp. 105–115

• How do we do it? Methodologies, methods and subject foci in Gender Studies student’s degree projects

  Kerstin Alnebratt

  • Abstract

    This article stresses the issue of methodology in an interdisciplinary field of research and education. The focus is on students and how they handle the situation with teachers coming from a number of traditional disciplines. These teachers bring a variation of research foci, methods and skills. For the students this could result in a wide range of possibilities to approach research from different angles. Yet, problems emerge when they are supposed to carry out their own projects. The article is based on my Master’s thesis. the research interest was on what students in Gender Studies actually do in their degree projects on what is called ‘advanced level I’. A query was how they related to feminist methodologies, which methods and theories they used and what research problems they where interested in interested them. In the projects examined most of the students seem to be familiar with, and use feminist theory. while the same could not be said about the methdology. this article points to a serious lack of methodological awareness, both in a more theoretical sense, but also as practical skills. The students do not seem to articulate very well what they actually do. the article suggests a practically oriented, ongoing discussion on methods in Gender Studies, especially in undergraduate education. Such a discussion should be grounded on methodological and epistemological theories with emphasis on research skills and methods.

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  • pp. 116–131

Book Reviews

• ‘New Feminist approaches to Social Science Methodologies.’ In Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol. 30 no. 4 by Sandra Harding and Kathryn Norberg

  Romaike Zuidema

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  • pp. 131–133

• Women’s Studies on Its Own: A Next Wave Reader in Institutional Change edited by Robyn Wiegman

  Jennifer Lynne Musto

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  • pp. 134–137

• Coming of Age in Academe – Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy by Jane Roland Martin

  Kajsa Widegren

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  • pp. 138–141