Writing in the wake of neoliberalism, where human rights and social justice have increasingly been subordinated to proliferating “consumer choices” and ideals of market justice, contributors to this collection argue that feminist ethnographers are in a key position to reassert the central feminist connections between theory, methods, and activism. Together, we suggest avenues for incorporating methodological innovations, collaborative analysis, and collective activism in our scholarly projects. What are the possibilities (and challenges) that exist for feminist ethnography 25 years after initial debates emerged in this field about reflexivity, objectivity, reductive individualism, and the social relevance of activist scholarship? How can feminist ethnography intensify efforts towards social justice in the current political and economic climate? This collection continues a crucial dialog about feminist activist ethnography in the 21st century—at the intersection of engaged feminist research and activism in the service of the organizations, people, communities, and feminist issues we study.

Feminist scholarship is sometimes dismissed as not quite ‘proper’ knowledge – it’s too political or subjective, many argue. But what are the boundaries of ‘proper’ knowledge? Who defines them, and how are they changing? How do feminists negotiate them? And how does this boundary-work affect women’s and gender studies, and its scholars’ and students’ lives? These are the questions tackled by this ground-breaking ethnography of academia inspired by feminist epistemology, Foucault, and science and technology studies. Drawing on data collected over a decade in Portugal and the UK, US and Scandinavia, this title explores different spaces of academic work and sociability, considering both official discourse and ‘corridor talk’. It links epistemic negotiations to the shifting political economy of academic labour, and situates the smallest (but fiercest) departmental negotiations within global relations of unequal academic exchange. Through these links, this timely volume also raises urgent questions about the current state and status of gender studies and the mood of contemporary academia. Indeed, its sobering, yet uplifting, discussion of that mood offers fresh insight into what it means to produce feminist work within neoliberal cultures of academic performativity, demanding increasing productivity. As the first book to analyse how academics talk (publicly or in off-the-record humour) about feminist scholarship, Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship is essential reading for scholars and students in gender studies, LGBTQ studies, post-colonial studies, STS, sociology and education. Winner of the FWSA 2018 Book Prize competition The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315692623, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This is the first ethnographic study ever conducted in a locked ward for learning disabled women. Through making their voices heard, it identifies new ways of interpreting their experiences and unique perspectives on topics such as seclusion, restraint, and resistance.

Feminist Ethnography, Second Edition, is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural introduction to the methods, challenges, and possibilities of feminist ethnography. Dána-Ain Davis and Christa Craven use a problem-based approach—focused on inquiry and investigation—to present a feminist framework for thinking critically about how we document everyday experiences. The book begins with an introduction to feminist perspectives, their meanings over time, and a brief history of feminist ethnography. Then the authors examine feminist methodologies, answering the question, how does one do feminist ethnography, and investigates common challenges such as ethical dilemmas and logistical constraints faced during fieldwork. Finally, Davis and Craven discuss what it means to be a feminist activist ethnographer, including advocacy efforts and engagement with public policy, and ask students to consider: what is your vision for the future of feminist ethnography? New to this Edition: Six new interviews with feminist ethnographers include reflections on the intersections of trans studies, disability studies, and the Cite Black Women movement New section on safety, accessibility, and fieldwork to address the risks all ethnographers face, but in particular those who challenge long-held assumptions that ethnographers are (all) white, Western, able-bodied, well-funded, cisgender, and usually male Enhanced discussion of virtual ethnography in the wake of COVID-19 Added content on transgender/nonbinary experiences and disability studies

A Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographer's imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditional ethnography. The author, a feminist anthropologist, uses three texts developed out of her research in Taiwan--a piece of fiction, anthropological fieldnotes, and a social science article--to explore some of these criticisms. Each text takes a different perspective, is written in a different style, and has different "outcomes," yet all three involve the same fascinating set of events. A young mother began to behave in a decidedly abherrant, perhaps suicidal manner, and opinion in her village was sharply divided over the reason. Was she becoming a shaman, posessed by a god? Was she deranged, in need of physical restraint, drugs, and hospitalization? Or was she being cynically manipulated by her ne'er-do-well husband to elicit sympathy and money from her neighbors? In the end, the woman was taken away from the area to her mother's house. For some villagers, this settled the matter; for others the debate over her behavior was probably never truly resolved. The first text is a short story written shortly after the incident, which occurred almost thrity years ago; the second text is a copy of the fieldnotes collected about the events covered in the short story; the third text is an article published in 1990 in American Ethnologist that analyzes the incident from the author's current perspective. Following each text is a Commentary in which the author discusses such topics as experimental ethnography, polyvocality, authorial presence and control, reflexivity, and some of the differences between fiction and ethnography. The three texts are framed by two chapters in which the author discusses the genereal problems posed by feminist and postmodernist critics of ethnography and presents her personal exploration of these issues in an argument that is strongly self-reflexive and theoretically rigorous. She considers some feminist concerns over colonial research methods and takes issues with the insistence of some feminists tha the topics of ethnographic research be set by those who are studied. The book concludes with a plea for ethnographic responsibility based on a less academic and more practical perspective.

Naples draws on different research topics, such as welfare, poverty, sexual identity, and sexual abuse, to illustrate some of the most salient dilemmas of feminist research: the debate over objectivity, the paradox of discourse, the dilemma of "standpoint," and the challenges of activist research. By linking important feminist theoretical debates with case studies, Naples illustrates the strategies she developed for resolving the challenges posed be postmodern, Third World, postcolonial, and queer studies.