Table Of ContentSecrecy and Silence in the Research Process
Feminist research is informed by a historyof breaking silences, of demanding
that women’s voices be heard, recorded and included in wider intellectual
genealogies and histories. This has led to an emphasis on voice and speaking
out in the research endeavour. Moments of secrecy and silence are less often
addressed. This gives rise to a number of questions. What are the silences,
secrets, omissions and the political consequences of such moments? What
particulardilemmas and the constraints do they represent orentail? What are
their implications for research praxis? Are such moments always indicative of
voicelessness or powerlessness? Or may they also constitute a productive
moment in the research encounter? Contributors to this volume were invited
to reflect on these questions. The resulting chapters are a fascinating collec-
tion of insights into the research process, making an important contribution
to theoretical and empirical debates about epistemology, subjectivity and
identity in research. Researchers often face difficult dilemmas about who to
represent and how, what to omit and what to include. This book explores
suchquestionsinastimulatingcollectionofessaysfrominternationalscholars.
Róisín Ryan-Flood is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her
research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship and migration. She is the
author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship
(2009). Her current research explores sexuality, citizenship and diaspora.
Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at King’s College,
London. She is author of Gender and the Media (2007) and is currently writ-
ing abook about mediated intimacy.
Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism
Edited by Maureen McNeil,
Institute of Women’s Studies, Lancaster University
Lynne Pearce
Department of English, Lancaster University
Other books in the series include:
Transformations: Thinking Class, Self, Culture
Through Feminism Beverley Skeggs
Edited by Sara Ahmed, Jane Kilby,
Celia Lury, Maureen McNeil and Haunted Nations
Beverley Skeggs The colonial dimensions of
multiculturalisms
Thinking Through the Skin Sneja Gunew
Edited by Sara Ahmed and
Jackie Stacey The Rhetorics of Feminism
Readings in contemporary cultural
Strange Encounters: Embodied theory and the popular press
Others in Post-Coloniality Lynne Pearce
Sara Ahmed
Women and the Irish Diaspora
Feminism and Autobiography Breda Gray
Texts, theories, methods
Edited by Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury Jacques Lacan and Feminist
and Penny Summerfield Epistemology
Kirsten Campbell
Advertising and
Consumer Citizenship Judging the Image
Gender, images and rights Art, value, law
Anne M. Cronin Alison Young
Mothering the Self: Mothers, Sexing the Soldier
Daughters, Subjects Rachel Woodward and
Stephanie Lawler Trish Winter
When Women Kill: Questions of Violent Femmes
Agency and Subjectivity Women as spies in popular culture
Belinda Morrissey Rosie White
Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics Feminism, Culture and
Onthethresholdofthelivingsubject Embodied Practice
Lorna Weir The rhetorics of comparison
Carolyn Pedwell
Feminist Cultural Studies of Science
and Technology Sociability, Sexuality, Self
Maureen McNeil Relationality and
Individualization
Arab, Muslim, Woman Sasha Roseneil
Voice and vision in postcolonial
literature and film Working with Affect in
Lindsey Moore Feminist Readings
Disturbing differences
Secrecy and Silence in the Marianne Liljeström and
Research Process Susanna Paasonen
Feminist reflections
Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill
Secrecy and Silence in the
Research Process
fl
Feminist re ections
Edited by
Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill
Firstpublished2010
byRoutledge
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Secrecyandsilenceintheresearchprocess;feministreflections/[editedby]
RóisínRyan-Flood[and]RosalindGill.
p.cm–(Transformations)
1.Feminism–Research.2.Socialsciences–Research.3.Feministtheory.I.
Ryan-Flood,Róisín.II.Gill,Rosalind(RosalindClair)
HQ1180.S4362009
305.4201–dc22
2009009374
ISBN10:0-415-45214-7(hbk)
ISBN10:0-203-92704-4(ebk)
ISBN13:978-0-415-45214-4(hbk)
ISBN13:978-0-203-92704-5(ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors x
Foreword by Professor Sara Ahmed xvi
Acknowledgements xxii
Introduction 1
RÓISÍNRYAN-FLOODANDROSALINDGILL
PARTI
Interpreting and theorising silence 13
1 Choosing silence: rethinking voice, agency andwomen’s
empowerment 15
JANEL.PARPART
2 Forms of knowing and un-knowing: secrets about society, sexuality
and God in Northern Kenya 30
HENRIETTAL.MOORE
3 Unknowable secrets and golden silence: reflexivity and research on
sex tourism 42
JACQUELINESANCHEZTAYLORANDJULIAO’CONNELLDAVIDSON
4 The desire to talk and sex/gender-related silences in interviewswith
male heterosexual clients of prostitutes 54
SABINEGRENZ
5 Silencing accounts of silenced sexualities 67
MEGBARKERANDDARRENLANGDRIDGE
PARTII
The unspoken in the research process 81
viii Contents
6 Silencing differences: the ‘unspoken’dimensions of ‘speaking for
others’ 83
CHRISTINASCHARFF
7 Not telling it how it is: secrets and silences of a critical feminist
researcher 96
BIPASHAAHMED
8 Critiquing thinness andwanting to be thin 105
KARENTHROSBYANDDEBRAGIMLIN
9 Inside ‘doorwork’: gendering the securitygaze 117
KATEO’BRIEN
10 Raising the curtain on survey work 133
REBEKAHWILSON
PARTIII
Silence, secrecy and telling research stories 145
11 Avoiding the ‘R-word’: racism in feminist collectives 147
KATHYDAVIS
12 Suppressing intertextual understandings: negotiating interviews and
analysis 161
ANNPHOENIX
13 Dirty work: researching women and sexual representation 177
FEONAATTWOOD
14 Keeping mum: secrecy and silence in research on lesbian
parenthood 188
RÓISÍNRYAN-FLOOD
15 Silenced by law: the cautionary tale of women on the line 200
MIRIAMGLUCKSMANN
PARTIV
Affective dilemmas 209
16 Animating hatreds: research encounters, organisational secrets,
emotional truths 211
GAILLEWIS
Contents ix
17 Breaking the silence: the hidden injuries of the neoliberal university 228
ROSALINDGILL
18 Silence and secrets: confidence in research 245
SUKIALI
19 Shameful silences: self-protective secrets and theoretical omissions 257
BRUNASEU
20 Living in the real world? What happens when the media covers
feminist research 273
DEBORAHFINDING
21 The place of secrets, silences and sexualities in the research process 291
LYNDAJOHNSTON
Index 306
Notes on contributors
Bipasha Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University
of East London. Her research interests are in the area of critical psycho-
logy, particularly issues relating to ‘race’, class and gender. She is currently
involved in projects on understanding experiences of domestic and sexual
violence within South Asian Communities. Publications include recent
articles in Feminism and Psychology, Journal of Community and Applied
SocialPsychologyandinK.ThrosbyandF.Alexander(eds)(2008)Gender
and Interpersonal Violence: Language, Action and Representation.
Suki Ali is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. Her work
centralises the interplay between gender, sexualities, ‘race’ and class. Cur-
rent research interests focus upon processes of racialisation with specific
regard to ‘racial science’ and technologies, kinship and postcoloniality.
Recentpublicationsinclude aSpecial IssueofEthnic andRacialStudieson
‘Feminism and Postcolonialism’ (2007) and ‘Mixed-Race’, Post-Race:
Gender, New Ethnicities and Cultural Practices (2003).
Feona Attwood teaches Media and Communication Studies at Sheffield
Hallam University, UK. Her research interests include new pornographies,
online sex practices, and controversial images. She is the editor of Main-
streaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (2009) and porn.com:
Making Sense of Online Pornography (forthcoming, 2010) and the co-
editor of journal special issues on ‘Controversial Images’ (with Sharon
Lockyer, Popular Communication, 2009) and ‘Researching and Teaching
Sexually Explicit Media’ (with Ian Hunter, Sexualities, 2009).
MegBarkerisaLecturerinPsychologyattheOpenUniversityandasexand
relationship therapist. She and Darren Langdridge have published Safe,
Sane, Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism (2007)
and are nowediting a new journal, Psychology & Sexuality, with Taylor &
Francis. Her research publications focus on sexualities and relationships.
Kathy Davis is Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for History and
Culture at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Born in the United
States, she has taught psychology, medical sociology and women’s studies
