Method, methodology and epistemology in feminist research processes

This chapter discusses six closely related aspects of recent feminist debates concerning method, methodology and epistemology in the social sciences and humanities. The first section, ‘Feminist consciousness and feminist research’, reviews the main relevant arguments and ideas in Breaking Out, a book we wrote together, published in 1983. This is followed, in ‘Feminist method, methodology or epistemology?’, by a discussion of Sandra Harding’s account of feminist epistemological positions and in particular the ‘successor science’ and ‘feminist standpoint’ positions. Other feminist standpoint epistemologies are discussed in the third section, on ‘Silenced feminist standpoints’, while the fourth, ‘The feminist standpoint revisited’, looks at complexities in the work of one of the ‘successor science’ writers, Dorothy Smith.