Researching others: epistemology, experience, standpoints and participation

Abstract

This article examines the possibility and challenges of carrying out research, especially \nqualitative and ethnographically-orientated research, into areas such as gender, disability, \nethnicity and racialization, without the researcher having direct experience of those specific \nsocial divisions and oppressions. Discussion of these questions is framed by four differential \nunderstandings of the concept of ‘otherness’ and linked with debates in the areas of research \nmethodology, epistemology, ontology and research practices. Issues of experience, \n‘standpoint’ and participation are specifically focused on. The resulting discussion leads \nto the conclusion that in ‘researching others’ attention has to be paid to historical context \nand to the maintenance of a critical relation to the research topic. A sustaining focus on the \nself-reflexivity of the researcher as author and the continual interrogation of the social bases \nof knowledge, together with a detail understanding of political agendas, are also important. \nIn paying attention to these aspects of research, materialism and critical discourse analysis \nare to be seen as part of the same broad socio-political project rather than as opposing and \nmutually exclusive perspectives.

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