Thomas R. Hilder

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Approx. 10 hrs of learning materials, including:

Introduction

Feminist theory, from the 1970s, has had a huge impact on all academic traditions. Inspired by second-wave feminist philosophers and activists, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, feminist scholars have critiqued a whole range of traditional assumptions and practices in Western science. Such criticisms include the reliance on binary gender hierarchies in literature, the androcentric norms that structure medicine, the male canons of Western art, and not least the domination of academic institutions by men. In particular, feminist theory questioned tropes of scientific objectivity, advocating instead for transparency in positionality. Pushing beyond positivism, feminist theory proposed that knowledge is provisional, contextual, and always partial. Furthermore, feminist scholars critiqued exploitative and unethical research methods, and instead developed more equitable, participatory and liberatory models for undertaking research. Today, many studies applying qualitative methods are fundamentally indebted to feminist thought.

While feminist theory was announced on the musicology stage in the late 1980s by the likes of Marcia Citron and Susan McClary, ethnomusicologists had long been attuned to the social dynamics and hierarchies in the cultural contexts in which they worked. Owing to the greater number of women in the field, ethnomusicologists, such as Ellen Koskoff (1988), inquired about how musical cultures might be structured around local gender ideologies, and how the gender of the researcher impacted on fieldwork experience and thus what ‘data’ was collected. Over the last three decades feminist ideas have played a large role in reshaping the practice of ethnomusicology and brought about significant transformations in the field of music research methods.

This space attends to some important aspects of feminist theory in ethnographic research in music. In Part 1, you will learn about feminist perspectives and how they have impacted on qualitative research methods. Part 2 attends to how feminist ideas and ethics have contributed to ethnographic research in music.

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The learning outcomes of this space are:

  1. to be able to explain the main contributions of feminist thought on qualitative research methods
  2. to be able to appreciate how ethnographic research on music has been shaped by feminist thought
  3. to be able to understand the importance of ethics, responsibility, and reciprocity in interviews and wider project design </aside>

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Keywords: feminism; qualitative research; interviews; ethics; reciprocity

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Part 1

Read the texts by Doucet & Mauthner (2008), McHugh (2014), and Herron (2023) and reflect on the following questions:

  1. How has feminist theory impacted the method of interviewing?
  2. What do feminist scholars strive for in qualitative research?
  3. What is a feminist critique of qualitative research? </aside>

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Part 2

Read the texts by Gaunt (2006), Hellier (2013), and Koskoff (2014) and reflect on the following questions:

  1. How has feminism impacted ethnomusicology?
  2. What are the dangers of applying gender theory in different cultural contexts?
  3. How have feminists transformed ethnomusicological methods? </aside>

Resources

Key Readings

Doucet, Andrea, and Natasha Mauthner. 2008. "Qualitative Interviewing and Feminist Research." The SAGE Handbook of Social Research Methods: 328-343.

Gaunt, Kyra D. 2006. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the ropes from double-dutch to hip-hop. New York: NYU press.

Hellier, Ruth, ed. 2013. Women Singers in Global Contexts: Music, Biography, Identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Herron, Brigette A. 2023. "40 Years of Qualitative Feminist Interviewing: Conceptual moments and cultivating ecosystems of care." Qualitative Inquiry 29 (6): 659-668.

Koskoff, Ellen. 2014. A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

McHugh, Maureen C. 2014. "Feminist Qualitative Research: Toward transformation of science and society." In The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Patricia Leavy, 137-164.