Notes on: Hammersley, M (1994). On Feminist Methodology: a Response. Sociology. 28 (1): 293 – 300 Dave Harris  Ramazonoglu is wrong to say that the whole of feminism is rejected, and instead he is rejecting a distinctly feminist methodology. Other arguments may well be valid although they can all be questioned. Like all new research paradigms based on new epistemological and political claims, they have problems. One is that the transformation of gender relations is the point of feminist research as R claims. But the point of research is to produce knowledge not political results. The claim that knowledge is intrinsically political can highlight some features but obscure others. Political activity is about persuasion and the most effective and ethical means to do this, including playing down doubts or suppressing relevant information, even 'deception and manipulation' (294). These are not reasonable in research, or rather they should not be. It should be possible to come to rational conclusions about factual and maybe even many value issues, and scholarly enquiry is the best option. But this is not his view held uncritically, as R suggests: he is well aware of arguments against it and the need to clarify the rational basis. There can be disagreement, but this does not mean that a position is uncritical or irrational. The split between the goals of science and the goal of commitment is held to be useful, but there may be no difference in importance between these goals. However only the former 'can be rational', that is that different courses of action are rational in each one. Feminism cannot be dismissed just for being political or dogmatic and he did not claim this, nor did he claim that non-feminist research is superior. He is not denying that his own views have been shaped by his situation including his gender, but he does not think that this has had an inevitable effect or a damaging one. Instead 'we all have the capacity for approximating forms of reason that are universally valid', even though interests can be expected to vary [shades of Popper and Third World knowledge here]. R's distinction between reason and commitment means that politics is irrational [but not irrelevant]. Current conceptions of rationalism might well be less than ideal but we need them and there is no working alternative, certainly not one offered by feminism. Most of the ideas in fact are parallel to conventional research and methodology — there can be no sharp line drawn around feminist methodology. R believes there can but provides no evidence and assumes that terms like reason and emotion are unproblematic and universally accepted, but they are not homogeneous any more than positivism is. There might even be an essentialist view of non-feminist ideas here, some idea of a long tradition of sexist and racist views. No doubt some of the views in Western scholarship can be sexist and racist, as some of those found elsewhere, but they are not so tightly defined that 'sexism or racism in one corrupts all the rest'[as in dominant ideology] (295). Women have been excluded from the Academy, but this is not the same as arguing that therefore the knowledge produced by the Academy must be sexist: that is as crude as arguing that it must be bourgeois. There was a bias, and sometimes knowledge was used for exclusion, but it is not warranted to say that therefore the whole of knowledge is bourgeois ideology. R argues that he sees no relationship between gender and power, and has no theory of power when discussing sociological theory, but offers no evidence — he just takes a different view. She does no more than offer a declaration with an implied determinism, which threatens the basis for any rational discussion. Gelsthorpe makes more specific arguments and these are not fundamentally different from his own, although he accuses him of exaggerating the emphasis on women's experience. This is accepted although it reflects the public discussions of feminist methodology. G argues that there is still a need to be critical rigourous and accurate, but one problem here is the term objectivity — one interpretation refers precisely to rigour and accuracy, and for him, there is a necessary implication that 'the things we describe, explain, et cetera are for the most part... independent of our accounts of them' (296) although of course there are philosophical problems. G says standpoint theory is not mutually exclusive or fixed, but the versions he was criticising are and claim privilege knowledge for women or feminists. G's argument is more general that different social positions offer different insights, but this implies that men as well as women can have distinctive sources of insight, and many feminist standpoint theorists 'would not be prepared to accept' this. So there is substantial agreement overall with G, but he was surprised with her conclusion that he has demolished the case that did not exist, since most of the articles he cites to argue that there is a convincing case for feminist methodology and indeed R believes this, and so does Williams. Willams endorses R's rejection of his view of knowledge and says that he operates with narrow binary divides, that he says that sociologists have no choice to either aim at science or politics and personal commitment, either reason or emotion. He does make such distinctions but is not clear whether she thinks that can be overcome, are too binary, or should be reinterpreted differently. The complexities are seen in her response to his discussion of experience and method. She says he identifies experience with the subjects of research, but he was saying that participant experience should not be treated as privileged, but nor is the method and experience on the part of the researcher sufficient. Nor is the distinction between science and politics a simple binary. It's not clear how Williams would approach the task, and she is too quick to accuse him of writing in a political and committed way. She also says that feminist sociology is not homogenous, but he never asserted that. He was more interested in the case for a distinctive methodology. Nor can he agree that conventional social science offers a rigid unilinear approach. Other claims about his work are simply wrong — that he thinks that feminists have neglected issues of power, although he does say that nonhierarchical forms of research are problematic. He is not denying that method is prominently discussed in some feminist ethnographers. He is not particularly against democratising research relationships, although what is proposed is open to criticism. he does not think that all feminists hold notions of oppression unthinkingly, and has drawn attention to some feminists due to see the problems. He has discussed ways in which feminists have proposed to avoid subordination, and although arguing that subordination is unavoidable in some cases, except that it is not in others. Some feminists prefer qualitative data collection, he has argued. He agrees that the everyday world has access to sociology and that both worlds use ideas creatively and critically. For Williams to argue to the contrary is a sign that she 'has constructed a straw man' (298). He is appealing to the intellectual authority of elite sociologists, but he does not say that they must be necessarily male [bit of a weasel here — easier to defend me!]. Williams does not clarify what she means by intellectual authority — she must have some version of it in contributing an article to a refereed journal, and in taking part in the whole circus of teaching and research. Authority is associated with an elite — although he did not specifically say this, especially if it means 'a single elite ruling group whose authority is absolute and omni- relevant'(299). It is instead based on expertise and is admitted to be fallible and open to assessment. That is another difference with standpoint theory. The three critics differ in their views about whether there is or is not a distinctively feminist methodology .R thinks there is, G seems to think there is not. Williams sides with R, but also stresses diversity, leaving common elements as 'minimal' (299). All the critics disagree with him, at least partly, and two disagree at a fundamental level. However, positions may not be 'incommensurable, intractable though they may currently be', because there is a view that matters worth discussing and this can be a precondition for clarification and maybe even eventual resolution