Читать книгу Rural Women in Leadership - Lori Ann McVay - Страница 33

The common factor in both the interviews and participant observation was reflexivity. Reflexivity may be defined as a critical examination of the researcher’s perspectives and experiences as they have the potential to influence her/his research (Fonow and Cook, 2005). Feminist research values the practice for its usefulness in revealing biases that help deconstruct researcher objectivity and shore up experience as ‘a legitimate form of knowledge’ (Pini, 2004b). It is also a key way of recognizing both similarities and differences between researcher and researched and among the researched as a group (Katz, 1996), and is particularly useful to researchers interested in women in leadership (Pini, 2004a). Reflexivity must be recognized and practised, however, as a critical process rather than ‘a simplistic rendering of biography for its own sake’ (Pini, 2004b) or an exercise that falls into the trap of being either too brief (and thus inadequate and ineffective) or too long (and thus narcissistic) (Bourdieu, 2003). Bourdieu (2003) sets forth the requirement that the researcher subject not only her or his experiences, but also his or her relation to those experiences, to meticulous scrutiny – recognizing that the researcher’s location in the realm of academia will also influence research practices and outcomes. Unfortunately, in spite of the reflexive practices of feminist rural sociologists, reflexivity has had limited acceptance in the field of rural sociology (Pini, 2004b), placing it among the ‘sociological subfields’ Rosenberg and Howard portray as ‘stubbornly immune to key feminist insights’ (2008, p. 677).

Reflexivity is often relegated to the latter portions of academic studies. However, Hughes et al. (2000) advocate beginning the (continuous) reflexive process during the research design. Bourdieu (2003, p. 288) echoes Hughes by purporting that, without early reflexivity, researchers run the risk of ‘injecting scholarly thought … into the behaviours of ordinary agents …’. Ramazanoglu and Holland (2002, p. 14) bring this insight to bear on feminist methodology through their recognition of the unfeasibility of compartmentalizing segments of our lives as researchers – the impossibility of separating academia from our ‘everyday life’ – and so admonish feminist researchers to be mindful of the social context within which we operate. Beyond introspection, Naples and Sachs (2000) expand reflexivity to include how the research is presented, choice of contacts, formality or informality in dress and speech, and the researcher’s location during fieldwork – all for the purpose of exposing the process by which research conclusions have been formulated.

In the broader scope of sociology, Bochner (2001) embraces this element of research as humanizing the researcher, making space for the recognition of ways in which the research being undertaken is reflective of the ‘therapeutic’ and ‘scholarly’ intersections in our own lives (p. 138). However, this argument must also be tempered by Pillow’s (2003) admonishment to avoid forms of reflexivity that build false connections between the researcher’s life experience and similar (but not the same) life experiences of the participant. Pini’s (2004b) observation that reflexivity has a constructive role to play in revealing the context of knowledge production in rural research (particularly when examining issues of power) necessitated the acknowledgment of my own positions as both ‘privileged’ researcher (Milbourne, in Hughes et al., 2000, p. 179) and daughter of a farm family, among many others (see Section 3.1.1). To quote Pini (2004b, p. 172): ‘The questions I was interested in as an academic were similar to those which plagued me growing up and in my roles as granddaughter … and daughter to farmers. I could not separate myself as the “daughter of … farmers” from myself as “academic”, as traditional research paradigms would assert is necessary.’ In so identifying her multiple subjectivities, Pini was able to reveal the ways in which they influenced her production of knowledge, and also to acknowledge the limitations of reflexivity in capturing the complexity of shifting and multiple researcher identities (Pini, 2004a). Similarly, I began by practising reflexivity in the design of this research, and incorporated reflection as an on-going part of the research. This continuous practice assisted in analysis, as it revealed relationships between topic, people, social circumstances and methodology (Brewer, 2000).