Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process

Feminist research is informed by a history of breaking silences, of demanding that women’s voices be heard, recorded and included in wider intellectual genealogies and histories. This has led to an emphasis on voice and speaking out in the research endeavour. Moments of secrecy and silence are less often addressed. This gives rise to a number of questions. What are the silences, secrets, omissions and and political consequences of such moments? What particular dilemmas and constraints do they represent or entail? What are their implications for research praxis? Are such moments always indicative of voicelessness or powerlessness? Or may they also constitute a productive moment in the research encounter? Contributors to this volume were invited to reflect on these questions. The resulting chapters are a fascinating collection of insights into the research process, making an important contribution to theoretical and empirical debates about epistemology, subjectivity and identity in research. Researchers often face difficult dilemmas about who to represent and how, what to omit and what to include. This book explores such questions in an important and timely collection of essays from international scholars.

Róisín Ryan-Flood is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, kinship and migration. She is the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship (2009). Her current research explores sexuality, citizenship and diaspora.
Rosalind Gill is Professor of Subjectivity and Cultural Analysis in the Faculty of Social sciences, The Open University. She is author of Gender and the Media (2007) and is currently writing a book about mediated intimacy.

Introduction, Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill Section 1: Interpreting and Theorising Silence 1. Choosing Silence: Rethinking Voice, Agency and Women’s Empowerment, Jane L. Parpart 2. Forms of Knowing and Un-knowing: Secrets about Society, Sexuality and God in Northern Kenya, Henrietta L Moore 3. Unknowable Secrets and Golden Silence: Reflexivity and Research on Sex Tourism, Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor and Julia O’Connell Davidson 4. The Desire to Talk and Sex/Gender Related Silences in Interviews with Male Heterosexual Clients of Prostitutes, Sabine Grenz 5. Silencing Accounts of Silenced Sexualities, Meg Barker & Darren Langdridge Section 2: The Unspoken in the Research Process 6. Silencing Differences: The ‘Unspoken’ Dimensions of ‘Speaking for Others’, Christina Scharff 7. Not Telling it How it is: Secrets and Silences of a Critical Feminist Researcher, Bipasha Ahmed 8. Critiquing Thinness and Wanting to be Thin, Debra Gimlin and Karen Throsby 9. Inside ‘Doorwork’: Gendering the Security Gaze, Kate O’Brien 10. Raising the Curtain on Survey Work, Rebekah Wilson Section 3: Silence, Secrecy and Telling Research Stories 11. Avoiding the ‘R-Word’: Racism in Feminist Collectives, Kathy Davis 12. Suppressing Intertextual Understandings: Negotiating Interviews and Analysis, Ann Phoenix 13. Dirty Work: Researching Women and Sexual Representation, Feona Attwood 14. Keeping Mum: Secrecy and Silence in Research on Lesbian Parenthood, Róisín Ryan-Flood 15. Silenced by Law: the Cautionary Tale of Women on the Line, Miriam Glucksmann Section 4: Affective Dilemmas 16. Animating Hatreds: Research Encounters, Organisational Secrets, Emotional Truths, Gail Lewis 17. Secrets, Silences and Toxic Shame in the Neoliberal University, Rosalind Gill 18. Silence and Secrets: Confidence in Research, Suki Ali 19. Shameful Silences: Self-protective Secrets and Theoretical Omissions, Bruna Seu 20. Living in the Real World? What Happens when the Media covers Femenist Research, Deborah Finding 21. The Place of Secrets, Silences and Sexualities in the Research Process, Lynda Johnston