Non-Binary Embodiment, Queer Knowledge Production, and Disrupting the Cisnormative Field: Notes From a Trans Ethnographer (original) (raw)
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Qualitative studies require a queer perspective to challenge stagnant forms of scientific discourse. This paper argues for a deconstruction of hegemonic qualitative practices in order to appreciate and listen to queer and trans subjects when employing qualitative research and methodologies. I focus on qualitative methods from an audiovisual perspective to suggest that there is scientific constraint in the way researchers still approach qualitative methodologies. I propose some foundations for thinking about queer qualitative methods that employs queer theory in relation to a self-reflexive creative perspective towards ethics, research and representation. Moreover, I critically analyze the HBO trans documentary, Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She (Antony Thomas 2005), in order to move beyond complacent documentaries that employ interviews as a way of categorizing and containing gender diversity. I work towards future methodological promises for the exploration of queer and trans subjects. Further, this paper challenges the problems of imposing binary-based categories that not only obscure thorough understandings of gender but also perpetuate social injustice.
'Queer(y)ing Methodologies: doing fieldwork and becoming queer'-Guest editorial
This themed issue contributes to discussions of queer positionalities in the context of doing fieldwork on/with queer-identified subjects. The point of departure being that the term queer has emerged to qualify a specific scholarship that contests normative orders in gender and sexuality, and that queering is a form of critique of multiple power relations that informs knowledge production. Normative sex and gender orders are reflected in the power-knowledge relations that produce 'queerness' as outsider, abnormal and subaltern. In order to challenge these normativities, the production of knowledge must be contested in its conception. Here we present the theoretical framework that grounds our themed issue as well a short summary of the articles in this series.
The Craft of Qualitative Research: A Handbook, 2018
Navigating the contentious “outsider status” in qualitative research can be quite cumbersome and emotionally draining (Bucerius 2013), as seen in cases where researchers learned about Indigenous peoples, immigration reform, ethnic and migrant populations, and women (Armitage 2008; Blix 2015; Watts 2006; Wray and Bartholomew 2010). The literature on outsiders has yet to fully explore the experiences of allies doing research on LGBTTQIA+ communities, let alone answer the question: what obstacles and successes would a straight-white-cisgender man, whose gender and sexuality have remained relatively stable throughout his life, encounter when he undertakes research on transgender people? In attempting to respond to this question, I describe my experiences doing doctoral research on transgender prisoners and students, and negotiating the role of being a gendered outsider in a community where trust is—for good and strong reasons—very delicate and difficult to earn when you are privileged and share very little in terms of your gender identity. My goal is not to provide readers with a strategic manual on how to do research on trans people if you are not trans, but rather to offer some points of reflection to consider throughout any research process when we are engaging with people whose marginalization and modes of resistance and empowerment may be adversely affected by how we disseminate our findings.
Hypatia Reviews Online
The academy has not lagged far behind the increasing social visibility of trans people in North America. The two volumes of The Transgender Studies Reader (Stryker and Whittle 2006; Stryker and Aizura 2013), and the launch of Transgender Studies Quarterly have helped establish transgender studies as a serious, academic enterprise, with many other works critically taking up the specific perspectives of trans and gender nonconforming people (some examples are Enke 2012; Hines 2013). Trans studies are undertaken in various forms, within various departments, on campuses all over Canada and the US. The University of Arizona plans to launch a master's program in transgender studies. And the University of Victoria has announced an inaugural Chair in Transgender Studies. Trans Studies: The Challenge to Hetero/Homo Normativities, is a valuable contribution to the field.
Carving Out a Niche or Finding a Place at the Table? The Sociology of Transgender Studies
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2019
Over the last decade, transgender studies has benefited from an explosion of interest within academia. Sociology is not immune to these developments in a field of inquiry that has existed for some time. But what does it mean for sociologists to become immersed in a topic that claims no disciplinary boundaries, no agreed-upon methodological strategies, and even a lack of consensus on how to define ''transgender''? Further complicating this field is the fact that it is quickly moving. As Barbara Risman shared in a recent Author Meets Critic session during the 2019 Southern Sociological Society conference, her book was ''dated'' before it even hit the shelves because in the time between data collection and publication so much had already changed in trans studies. Echoing this thought, by the time this essay goes to print, there likely will be new books out in the field that challenge the observations shared here, thus making this essay a tad dated, too. Coupled with the quickly moving nature of the field of trans studies, to refer to one's self as a sociologist of trans studies is still risky business. Often subsumed within the sociology of gender studies, trans studies shares affinities with sexuality studies in that these areas of inquiry are treated as boutique topics reserved for the occasional sociologist who might be interested in quirky areas of study (see also Gamson and Moon 2004). Consider the leading journals in sociology-American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. As of this writing, ASR and AJS have each published one article that centralizes trans people or trans studies. 1 This provokes questions about what it might mean for generalist sociologists to embrace trans studies as something other than an offbeat topic. Yet not all sociologists agree upon a basic premise that defines the field: trans
Trans Forming Research Practice Collaborative Foundations: Trans and Non-Binary Research
On 9th May 2016, we hosted the cross-sector seminar ‘TransForming Research Practice: Towards ‘Best Practice’ in Transgender and Non-binary Inclusive Social Research’ at Strathclyde University. The seminar was conceived in thinking through issues of access, accountability, practice and ‘publics’ – how to make a difference in ‘transgender and non-binary’ inclusive social research? How to stretch research categories and subjects and implicate everyone in the doing of these, rather than as done by certain researchers for certain researched groups (the perpetually ‘hard to research’).
Queer Methods: Four Provocations for an Emerging Field
Imagining Queer Methods (NYU Press), 2019
Queer studies is pivoting toward questions of research design, data, and analysis. However, efforts among scholars to bring into dialogue the notions of “queer” with “methods” has unearthed a paradox: the former celebrates fluidity, ephemerality, and unstable classificatory systems while the latter is defined by order and disciplinary techniques. What productive avenues of inquiry exist between these seemingly orthogonal elements? And what inferential and interpretive possibilities arise at its nexus? This chapter offers four provocations for the emerging field of queer methods: how to identify new types of data (“queer methods”); how to modify existing protocols to better resonate with queer theoretical frameworks (“queering methods”); how to challenge methodological norms of coherence, generalizability, and reliability (“queering methodology”); and how to outline the pedagogical implications of queer methods (“queer pedagogy”). These provocations satisfy the dual mandates for queer methods: to outline the conditions of queer world-making and to clarify, but not over-determine, the conditions that make those lives more livable.
Methodologies Not Yet Known: The Queer Case for Relational Research
The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, 2022
In this chapter, I interrogate the limits of research as a practice within queer rhetorical scholarship, as both remain energized by the whiteness of contemporary queer identity politics (construed as settler colonial futurity). Constellating across cultural rhetorics, de- and anticolonial theory and practice, settler colonial studies, Black and Native studies, and critical university studies, I argue for a divestment from the settler colonial undercurrents of queerness (as identity, practice, lifeway) and, in their place, the advancement of a decolonial horizon within research projects—and a refusal to do research when the queer researcher cannot imagine a decolonial future. I begin by highlighting the interlinked nature of queerness with ongoing colonization in settler colonies (primarily within North American and specifically the United States, my context) via the integration of queerness within settler liberalism, springboarding from this criticism into the leaky potential of de/anticolonial theory to dissolve queer stasis as a force for good—as a means of refusing settler futurity. I conclude this chapter by offering solutions to readers, derived from my community organizing, and approaches to research with(in) marginalized communities. With these questions, I implore readers to begin the work of queerly relational research, or methodologizing in a manner that forecloses the settler imaginary—the totalizing intellectual purview of research—and that advances Black/Indigenous futurity.
Towards a feminist–queer alliance: a paradigmatic shift in the research process
Building on the advances made by feminist reconsiderations of methods, methodology and epistemology, this paper calls for an alliance between feminist social science and the emerging field of queer theory. By challenging traditional scientific approaches to research on sexual minority groups, a distinctly 'queer' approach is advocated that adopts a reflexive position on subjectivity and sexuality. While essentialist approaches privilege gay/lesbian, man/woman, and object/subject, this approach advances a framework of critical sexualities that moves social science into an arena of inclusivity and multiple identities, rather than reductionistic categorical thought. The implications are clear: a rethinking of identity categories that transcend stagnant dualisms. Objectivity is a term given to mean men's subjectivity. (Adrienne Rich) To understand the current reality(ies) and complexities of these postmodern times, the social sciences must continue to move with the changes made possible by a feminist rethinking of methods, methodologies, and epistemologies, so as to recreate and ground our understandings of how individuals make sense of their social worlds. We argue in this paper that the traditional, distinctly modern, social scientific approaches that adhere to objectivity, detachment and clear demarcations of the boundaries between researcher–researched, are inadequate to explore identity formations, such as sexualities, ethnicities, nationalities, genders and their myriad expressions that exemplify social life in these ever changing and uncertain times.