: Free Association, Narrative and the Interview Method. Hollway, Wendy, & Jefferson, Tony. (2000). London, Thousand Oak, and New Delhi: Sage.
Introduction: the Need to do Research Differently (pp.1-6)
The authors question the veracity of accounts that a research subject tell during interview. For them, one of the reasons for believing is democratic and related to power differentials between researcher and researched. Feminists, according to the author, have been conscious of this issue of power differentials and advocated the principles of giving voice to voiceless women. However, the authors claim that researchers cannot give voice to others, quoting a statement by Reissman (1993, Narrative Analysis, p. 3):
"we cannot give voice" since we "do not have direct access to another's experience. We deal with ambiguous representations of it--talk, text, interaction and interpretation"
[This argument is not logical. Giving voice does not mean directly accessing someone's experience.]
From the standpoint of critical realism (Bunge, 1993; Watkins, 1994-5), the authors argue that researchers interpret their subject's experience only through ambiguous representations of it, yet there is a relationship between people's representations and their experiences. Here the emphasis is given to that the relationship, tracked only by the researcher, depends on the researcher's particular view.
Producing Data with defended subjects (26-54)
From their pilot studies, the authors delineate four distinct approaches to interview: traditional, feminist, narrative, and clinical case-study. While traditional approaches focus on interview technique, feminists are conscious of power balance between interviewer and interviewee. In narrative approaches, an interviewee becomes a story-teller, thus the interview agenda is open to development, depending on the interviewee's experiences. Clinical case-study emphasizes a researcher's reflexivity on their own involvement in the interview process, such as anxiety, personal experience, etc.
The authors propose biographical-interpretative method. It emulates a biographer's role to listen to someone's story and make a coherent account out of the story-telling, Gestalt, explaining, "a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, an order or hidden agenda" (p. 34). The authors propose four principles of this method: (1) the more open the better, (2) elicit stories (i.e. Tell me about a time when you feel unsafe.), (3) avoid why questions to obtain concrete meanings from the interviewee. Why questions usually induce empty, cliché-ridden discussion, the authors assert. (4) Follow up using respondents' ordering and phrasing by taking a note.
The authors emphasize free association that comes unconsciously during interview.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality
Song, Sarah. (2005).American Political Science Review, 99 (4), 473-489.
Attentive to debate on multiculturalism and gender inequality, emphasized by Okin in particular, Song agrees with a general assumption—either defenders or critiques of multiculturalism—that problems of gender inequality in minority groups originate partially from internal struggles within the groups, but contests that this internal view overlooks how intercultural interactions shape gender status. In this regard, she rightly points out that the debate over gender and culture within the practice and theory of multiculturalism focuses on ways in which minority norms and practices threaten gender equality within majority culture. Instead she calls attention to the reverse influence. She states:
Majority norms and practices also pose obstacles to the pursuit of gender equality within minority cultures. What is of particular concern for the debate on multiculturalism is that the mainstream legal and normative frameworks within which minority claims for accommodation are evaluated have themselves been informed by patriarchal norms, which in turn have offered support for gender hierarchies within minority cultures. (p. 474)
Thus she calls for a critical examination of both minority and majority norms and practices in claiming minority cultures.
Song insinuates that the current debate is grounded in the view that culture is well-bounded and self-integrated, as Kymlicka suggests. She argues,
Cultures and cultural identities emerge, change, and are maintained through social interactions and political struggle…To get at cultural differences, we need to examine the processes by which cultural identities get constructed. This requires attention to historical context and to collective discussions and struggles within a community, as well as to interactions between members and outsiders—–in particular, to the role of states in shaping cultural identities. (p. 474)
In responding to Kymlicka’s influential view of multiculturalism and preservation of minority cultures, Song continues to stress looking at cultural interchange between majority and minority groups and how minority cultures are shaped and continuously developed through the interchange. In this way, she calls attention to the politics of cultural construction, conflicts and identities. (She notes that cultural interactions are further fueled by global economy, transnational communication network and migrations of people across borders.) She states:
“Cultures vary in the degree of fluidity, contestation, and permeability, but even in relatively closed groups the content of cultures is not determined purely “from the inside.” Rather, cultures have developed through interactions and struggles with other cultures. This suggests the need to examine more closely the role of interactive dynamics in shaping the identities and practices of majority and minority cultural communities.” (p. 476)
Song categorizes the interconnections between majority and minority cultures: congruence effect, boomerang effect and diversionary effect.
1) Congruence effect refers to the reinforcement of (gender) inequality in minority cultures through majority norms. In reviewing the case of Santa Clara Pueblo in 1975, Song argues that gender inequality inscribed in the case—a refusal to matrilineal heritage in the Indian community—reflected the norms of gender inequality of the majority culture: the State endorsed the Pueblo’s amendment of their membership in 1939 that restricts to a patrilineal kinship system and this endorsement, in fact, reflected the current mainstream gender bias. It is only in the 1930s that women attained a right to citizenship independent to her husband. Song writes:
“[T]he gender-biased membership rule of the Santa Clara Pueblo was not “frowned upon by federal policy” in part because the Pueblo rule was congruent with the dominant culture’s own gendered understandings of membership.” (p. 479)
Song examines the congruence effect in the cases of ‘cultural defense’, where cultural evidence is taken into consideration in court decisions in the expense of equal protection to all. After examining cases of rape and wife-murder by immigrants in the 1980s in comparison with the provocation defense in the majority culture—where emotionally provoked criminal charge in intimate relationships is reduced—Song stresses:
“[T]he problem raised by the “cultural defense” cases above has not only to do with minority practices but also with mainstream norms that offer support for those practices…So long as gender-biased norms pervade legal doctrine and practice, minority defendants can continue to find support for patriarchal practices within mainstream law.” (p. 482)
2) Song defines boomerang effect as a reverse influence from minority to majority culture to reinforce patriarchal orders within the wider/mainstream society. Song calls attention to wider practices of patriarchal behaviors among immigrants and mainstream defendants influenced by a growing number of cultural defense cases. She writes:
“In some locales, juries have allowed such defenses to serve as partial excuses for patriarchal behavior among immigrants, and mainstream defendants can and may well point to these “cultural” cases in raising their own criminal defense claims. Given the increasingly diverse immigrant presence in the United States and the increasing use of cultural defenses, it is important to be attentive to boomerang effects.” (p. 483)
3) Song refers to diversionary effect as deflecting attention from unequal gender practices in the mainstream culture by emphasizing special cases of gender inequality in minority cultures. She states:
“[C]ondemnation of various practices among immigrants may help divert attention from majority practices. Focusing on cases of domestic violence or rape in immigrant communities can serve to reinforce the false dichotomy of oppressive minority cultures and egalitarian majority cultures, deflecting attention from the reality of domestic violence and other patriarchal practices within majority cultures” (p. 485)
Thus Song insist on analyzing majority norms and practices alongside those of minority because overlooking the diversionary effect can reinforce gender hierarchies across cultures and fuel the maintenance of the superiority of the mainstream culture.
In conclusion, Song contests that an internal view that regards gender inequality as an intrinsic quality of a culture as a whole fails to capture a range of interactive dynamics that shape cultural conflicts with the sustenance of the state’s role in endorsing the accommodation of minority practices that are congruent with the dominant culture’s own norms and practices. In this way, she disrupts the dilemma of multiculturalism and gender inequality, writing:
If we take a social constructivist view of cultures as not only internally contested but also interactive and mutually constitutive, then the problem for feminists is not so much “multiculturalism versus gender equality” as “patriarchy versus gender equality.” (p. 486)
In so doing, Song insinuates the necessity of looking into non-cultural factors, such as race and class, which impede struggles toward gender equality.
Attentive to debate on multiculturalism and gender inequality, emphasized by Okin in particular, Song agrees with a general assumption—either defenders or critiques of multiculturalism—that problems of gender inequality in minority groups originate partially from internal struggles within the groups, but contests that this internal view overlooks how intercultural interactions shape gender status. In this regard, she rightly points out that the debate over gender and culture within the practice and theory of multiculturalism focuses on ways in which minority norms and practices threaten gender equality within majority culture. Instead she calls attention to the reverse influence. She states:
Majority norms and practices also pose obstacles to the pursuit of gender equality within minority cultures. What is of particular concern for the debate on multiculturalism is that the mainstream legal and normative frameworks within which minority claims for accommodation are evaluated have themselves been informed by patriarchal norms, which in turn have offered support for gender hierarchies within minority cultures. (p. 474)
Thus she calls for a critical examination of both minority and majority norms and practices in claiming minority cultures.
Song insinuates that the current debate is grounded in the view that culture is well-bounded and self-integrated, as Kymlicka suggests. She argues,
Cultures and cultural identities emerge, change, and are maintained through social interactions and political struggle…To get at cultural differences, we need to examine the processes by which cultural identities get constructed. This requires attention to historical context and to collective discussions and struggles within a community, as well as to interactions between members and outsiders—–in particular, to the role of states in shaping cultural identities. (p. 474)
In responding to Kymlicka’s influential view of multiculturalism and preservation of minority cultures, Song continues to stress looking at cultural interchange between majority and minority groups and how minority cultures are shaped and continuously developed through the interchange. In this way, she calls attention to the politics of cultural construction, conflicts and identities. (She notes that cultural interactions are further fueled by global economy, transnational communication network and migrations of people across borders.) She states:
“Cultures vary in the degree of fluidity, contestation, and permeability, but even in relatively closed groups the content of cultures is not determined purely “from the inside.” Rather, cultures have developed through interactions and struggles with other cultures. This suggests the need to examine more closely the role of interactive dynamics in shaping the identities and practices of majority and minority cultural communities.” (p. 476)
Song categorizes the interconnections between majority and minority cultures: congruence effect, boomerang effect and diversionary effect.
1) Congruence effect refers to the reinforcement of (gender) inequality in minority cultures through majority norms. In reviewing the case of Santa Clara Pueblo in 1975, Song argues that gender inequality inscribed in the case—a refusal to matrilineal heritage in the Indian community—reflected the norms of gender inequality of the majority culture: the State endorsed the Pueblo’s amendment of their membership in 1939 that restricts to a patrilineal kinship system and this endorsement, in fact, reflected the current mainstream gender bias. It is only in the 1930s that women attained a right to citizenship independent to her husband. Song writes:
“[T]he gender-biased membership rule of the Santa Clara Pueblo was not “frowned upon by federal policy” in part because the Pueblo rule was congruent with the dominant culture’s own gendered understandings of membership.” (p. 479)
Song examines the congruence effect in the cases of ‘cultural defense’, where cultural evidence is taken into consideration in court decisions in the expense of equal protection to all. After examining cases of rape and wife-murder by immigrants in the 1980s in comparison with the provocation defense in the majority culture—where emotionally provoked criminal charge in intimate relationships is reduced—Song stresses:
“[T]he problem raised by the “cultural defense” cases above has not only to do with minority practices but also with mainstream norms that offer support for those practices…So long as gender-biased norms pervade legal doctrine and practice, minority defendants can continue to find support for patriarchal practices within mainstream law.” (p. 482)
2) Song defines boomerang effect as a reverse influence from minority to majority culture to reinforce patriarchal orders within the wider/mainstream society. Song calls attention to wider practices of patriarchal behaviors among immigrants and mainstream defendants influenced by a growing number of cultural defense cases. She writes:
“In some locales, juries have allowed such defenses to serve as partial excuses for patriarchal behavior among immigrants, and mainstream defendants can and may well point to these “cultural” cases in raising their own criminal defense claims. Given the increasingly diverse immigrant presence in the United States and the increasing use of cultural defenses, it is important to be attentive to boomerang effects.” (p. 483)
3) Song refers to diversionary effect as deflecting attention from unequal gender practices in the mainstream culture by emphasizing special cases of gender inequality in minority cultures. She states:
“[C]ondemnation of various practices among immigrants may help divert attention from majority practices. Focusing on cases of domestic violence or rape in immigrant communities can serve to reinforce the false dichotomy of oppressive minority cultures and egalitarian majority cultures, deflecting attention from the reality of domestic violence and other patriarchal practices within majority cultures” (p. 485)
Thus Song insist on analyzing majority norms and practices alongside those of minority because overlooking the diversionary effect can reinforce gender hierarchies across cultures and fuel the maintenance of the superiority of the mainstream culture.
In conclusion, Song contests that an internal view that regards gender inequality as an intrinsic quality of a culture as a whole fails to capture a range of interactive dynamics that shape cultural conflicts with the sustenance of the state’s role in endorsing the accommodation of minority practices that are congruent with the dominant culture’s own norms and practices. In this way, she disrupts the dilemma of multiculturalism and gender inequality, writing:
If we take a social constructivist view of cultures as not only internally contested but also interactive and mutually constitutive, then the problem for feminists is not so much “multiculturalism versus gender equality” as “patriarchy versus gender equality.” (p. 486)
In so doing, Song insinuates the necessity of looking into non-cultural factors, such as race and class, which impede struggles toward gender equality.
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