Research Methodology — A Reading List

As debates on institutional and structural racism resurge across the globe, there is an increasing interest in the longstanding feminist tradition of being reflexive about one’s positionality. Reflexivity has always been central to research and scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies. Feminist scholars remain pioneers in disrupting the notion of an objective, aloof researcher who always remains disconnected yet surprisingly immersed in the multiple layers of power that operate in any life encounter.

As other disciplines begin to emphasize the importance of reflexive researchers and how it informs our interest in decoloniality, feminist contributions to research methodology remain an important starting point.

Below are some African (largely feminist) scholarship that informs my postgraduate teaching on research methods. As always we cannot discuss research and researching without reflecting on the politics of knowledge production.

1. Adegoke, Damilola, and O. Oni. 2017. “Knowledge Production on Peace and Security in Africa: Mapping the Epistemic Terrain of Peace and Security in Africa”. African Leadership Centre.
2. Aidid, Safia, 2015. Can the Somali Speak #Cadaan Studies http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/can-the-somali-speak-cadaanstudies/
3. Amadiume. Ifi. 2017. “Gender Field Experience, Method and Theory”. Journal of West African History, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2017, pp. 131–138
4. Barnes, Teresa. 2007. ‘Politics of the mind and body: Gender and institutional culture in African universities.’ Feminist Africa, 8: 8–25.
5. Bennett, Jane and Pereira, Charmaine (eds). 2013. Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa. Cape Town. University of Cape Town Press
6. Bouka, Yolande. 2018. Collaborative research as structural violence. Political Violence at a Glance. Retrieved from http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2018/07/12/ collaborative-research-as-structural-violence.
7. Bouka. Yolande. 2015. Researching Violence in Africa as a Black Woman: Notes from Rwanda. http://conflictfieldresearch.colgate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Bouka_WorkingPaper-May2015.pdf
8. Bourke, L. Sian Butcher, Nixon Chisonga, Jumani Clarke, Frances Davies and Jessica Thorn. 2009. “Fieldwork Stories: Negotiating Positionality, Power and Purpose” in Feminist Africa.13: 95–105
9. Feminist Africa 8 & 9. 2007. Rethinking Universities I & II http://www.agi.ac.za/agi/feminist-africa/08/
10. Feminist Africa. 2008: Researching for Life: Paradigms and Power | African Gender Institute
11. Gqola, Pumla. 2011. “Whirling worlds? Women’s poetry, feminist imagination and contemporary South African publics”. Scrutiny2, 16(2), 5–11
12. Imam, Ayesha, Amina Mana, & Fatou Sow (eds). 1997. Engendering African Social Sciences. Dakar, CODESRIA.
13. Lazreg, Marnia. 1994. The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question. New York: Routledge.
14. Lewis, Desiree. 2007. “Feminism and the radical imagination”. Agenda, 21(72), 18–31
15. Macharia, Keguro. 2016. “On Being Area-Studied: A Litany of Complaint.” GLQ 1, 22 (2): 183–189.
16. Mama, Amina. 2003. “Restore, Reform but do not transform: The Gender Politics of Higher Education in Africa”. JHEA/RESA Vol. 1 (1) pp. 101–125
17. Mama Amina. 2007. “Is It Ethical to Study Africa? Preliminary Thoughts on Scholarship and Freedom”. African Studies Review, 50: 1–26
18. Mama, Amina. 2011. “The Challenges of Feminism: Gender, Ethics and Responsible Academic Freedom in African Universities”. JHEA/RESA Vol. 9, Nos. 1 & 2: 1–23
19. Mama, Amina. 2011. “What does it mean to do feminist research in African contexts?”. In: Feminist Review. S. e4–e20.
20. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2016. “Between the public intellectual and the scholar: decolonization and some post-independence initiatives in African higher education” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Vol. 17. 1: 68–83
21. Matebeni. Zethu. 2008. “Vela Bambhentsele: Intimacies and Complexities in Researching Within Black Lesbian Groups in Johannesburg” in Feminist Africa11: 89–96
22. Mbilinyi, Marjorie. 1989. “I’d have been a man”: Politics and the labour process in producing personal narratives.’In Personal Narratives Group (ads). Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
23. McFadden, Pat. 2018. Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a Radical African Feminist Life. Meridians, 17 (2), 415–431.
24. Medie, Peace, and Alice J. Kang. 2018. “Power, Knowledge and the Politics of Gender in the Global South.” European Journal of Politics and Gender 1 (1–2): 37–54. doi:10.1332/251510818X15272520831157.
25. Mupotsa, Danai. with L. Mhishi. 2008. ‘This little rage of poetry: Researching gender and sexuality.’ Feminist Africa11: 97–107
26. Mupotsa, Danai. 2011. “From Nation to Family: Researching Gender and Sexuality” in Christopher Cramer, Laura Hammond, Johan Pottier (eds) Researching violence in Africa: ethical and methodological challenges. Brill.
27. Mwambari, David. 2019. “Local positionality in the production of knowledge in Northern Uganda”. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18, 1609406919864845.
28. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo. 2018. Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialisation and Decolonisation. Oxford. Routledge
29. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo. 2015. “Decoloniality As The Future of Africa”. History Compass 13/10 (2015): 485–496, 10.1111/hic3.12264
30. Njeri, Sarah. 2020. “ Race, Positionality and the Researcher”. In: Mac Ginty R., Brett R., Vogel B. (eds) The Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46433-2_26
31. Okech, Awino. 2013. “Researching discourses on widow inheritance: feminist questions about ‘talk’ as methodology” in Bennett, Jane and Pereira, Charmaine (eds). 2013. Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa. Cape Town. University of Cape Town Press
32. Okech, Awino. 2020. ‘African Feminist Epistemic Communities and Decoloniality.’ Critical African Studies. Volume 12, 2020 — Issue 3: 313–329
33. Ouédraogo, Jean-Bernard Cardoso, Carlos. 2011. Readings in Methodology: African Perspectives. Dakar, CODESRIA.
34. Ramugondo, Elelwani. 2018. “Healing work: intersections for decoloniality”, World Federation of Occupational Therapists Bulletin, 74:2, 83–91, DOI: 10.1080/14473828.2018.1523981
35. Rivas, Althea-Maria. 2019. “Vignette 3 — Thinking about race and gender in conflict research” in Althea-Maria Rivas and Brendan Ciarán Browne (eds) Experiences in Researching Conflict and Violence: Fieldwork Interrupted.Policy Press Bristol.
36. Tamale, Sylvia. 2020. Decolonisation and Afro-Feminism. Daraja Press
37. Tripp, Aili Mari, and Hughes, Melanie. 2018. “Methods, Methodologies and Epistemologies in the Study of Gender and Politics.” European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1 (1–2): 241–257.
38. Tsikata, Dzodzi. 2007. “Gender, Institutional Cultures and the Career Trajectories of Faculty of the University of Ghana”. Feminist Africa, 8: 26–41
39. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe and Adebayo Olukoshi (eds). 2004. African Universities in the Twenty-first Century. Volume I: Liberalisation and Internationalisation. Dakar, CODESRIA

NON- AFRICAN SCHOLARS ON RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY

1. Chavarro, Diego, Puay Tang, and Ismael Rafols. 2017. “Why Researchers Publish in Non-Mainstream Journals: Training, Knowledge Bridging and Gap-Filling.” Research Policy; SWPS 2016–22. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3014349.
2. Fernandes, Leela. 2013. “Regimes of Visibility and Transnational Feminist Knowledge” in Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, Power. New York, NYU Press
3. Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books.
4. Grewal, Inderpal, Kaplan, Caren (2006): Scattered Hegemonies. Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
5. Hengel, E. (2017). Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review.. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.17548
6. hooks, bell. 1994. “Theory as Liberatory Practice.” In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, 59–76. New York: Routledge.
7. hooks, bell. 2003. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge.
8. Jin, Haritaworn. 2008. “Shifting Positionalities: Empirical Reflections on a Queer/Trans of ColourMethodology”. In: Sociological Research Online. 13 (1), http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/1/13.html [30.01.2014]
9. Kapoor, I. 2004. ‘Hyper-self-reflexive development? Spivakon representing the Third World “Other”.’ Third World Quarterly,25(4): 627–47
10. Khan, Shahnaz. 2005. “Reconfiguring the Native Informant” Signs 30 (4): 2017–2037
11. Lugones, M., 2010, ‘Towards a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypatia vol. 25, no. 4, pp 742–74.
12. Maldonado-Torres, N., 2007. ‘On Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept’, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3): 240–270.
13. Mignolo, Walter D. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
14. Mohanty, Chandra and M. Jacqui Alexander. 2010. “Cartographies of Knowledge and Power: Transnational Feminism as Radical Praxis” in Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar (eds), Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis. New York. SUNY Press
15. Mohanty, T.C. 2002. ‘Under Western Eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles.’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2): 499–534.
16. Quijano, A., 2007. ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3): 168–178.
17. Scott, James. 1987. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.
18. Shohat, Ella. 2002. “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge”. Social Text, 72 (Volume 20 (3):67–78
19. Spivak, Gayatri. 1993. Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge.
20. Swarr, Amanda Lock and Richa Nagar (eds), 2010. Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis. New York. SUNY Press
21. Tuhiwai-Smith, Linda. 2012. Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.London: Zed Books