- Describe each of the four methods outlined in Wambui’s article. Add “autoethnography” from the Ellis piece to this list and explain this method. Share your reflections about the podcast.
There are four methods in order to conduct feminist research: interviews, focus groups, case studies, discourse analysis, and lastly auto-ethnography. Interviews are commonly used by feminist researchers. Although they are labor intensive, they are mainly the best way to collect high quality data. But interviews also captures multitudes of subjects’ views in theme so it come to see respondents in the complex social world. Next with focus groups, they are useful in offering two key features that is often suggested as essential. It’s an contextual method, which is to avoid focusing on the individual devoid of social context or to separate from interactions with others. It’s also a non-hierarchy method, when it shifts away the balance of power from the researcher to the participants. But it has the potential to help women to collectively change their consciousness by collecting identities and solidarities. And focus groups mainly facilitates connections by going beyond uncovering existed meanings by constituted subjectives. Next, with case studies, they’re allow the use of multiple methods or triangulation and reflects an attempt to secure a developed understanding of the phenomenon which they questioned. But most likely, it facilitates an understanding of the complexities of the social phenomena under investigation . But it mainly allows women to participate to construct their own realities and arrives at their own truth based on their own life experiences and their terms. Then with discourse analysis, it both reflects and shapes the way we experience and interpret the world around us, and the way we act upon it. And finally, auto-ethnography, which is the approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. But it also challenges the canonical ways of doing research and representing others and treat them as a political, socially-just, socially conscious act. As for my reflection on the podcast, I thought the podcast is very liberating as it stated in the title but also I like how they discussed the issues of how trans people of color are dealing with the problems of employment, housing, and their safety plus how the activists are trying to change the system.
- Discuss each method in relationship to your final project ideas– if you had the time and resources you would need: is the method appropriate? How would you use this method to do your research? Who would your participants/subjects be? And, if the method is not a good fit, why not? This is only a thought experiment — you are not committing to any methods here.
With my final project idea, I say that the methods would be perfect for the idea will be discourse analysis, and auto-ethnography. With discourse analysis, we will be shaping how we experience the world around us and the way we act upon certain topics. And with auto-ethnography, we will be researching while also writing to describe and analyze the personal experiences in order to understand the cultural approach. But it will also challenge the ways of doing the research while treating and representing our participants as a political and socially conscious act.
