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Researching others: epistemology, experience, standpoints and participation
- Authors:
- FAWCETT Barbara, HEARN Jeff
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 7(3), July 2004, pp.201-218.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article examines the possibility and challenges of carrying out research, especially qualitative and ethnographically-orientated research, into areas such as gender, disability, ethnicity and racialization, without the researcher having direct experience of those specific social divisions and oppressions. Discussion of these questions is framed by four differential understandings of the concept of 'otherness' and linked with debates in the areas of research methodology, epistemology, ontology and research practices. Issues of experience, 'standpoint' and participation are specifically focused on. The resulting discussion leads to the conclusion that in 'researching others' attention has to be paid to historical context and to the maintenance of a critical relation to the research topic. A sustaining focus on the self-reflexivity of the researcher as author and the continual interrogation of the social bases of knowledge, together with a detail understanding of political agendas, are also important. In paying attention to these aspects of research, materialism and critical discourse analysis are to be seen as part of the same broad socio-political project rather than as opposing and mutually exclusive perspectives.
Research and 'disability': accounts, biographies and policies
- Authors:
- FAWCETT Barbara, HEARN Jeff
- Journal article citation:
- Research Policy and Planning, 19(2), 2001, pp.27-44.
- Publisher:
- Social Services Research Group
This article reviews and re-evaluates a qualitative research project carried out in England in the late 1990s. The project was informed from its inception by the social model of disability, and explores how 'disability' is conceptualised within the accounts of participants defined by others as disabled. It also examines participants' views of community care services. As part of this discussion, notions of collaborative and emancipatory research are appraised. The implications of the findings for policy and practice in the field of social work and social care are discussed.