Contradicting meanings and producing new discourse with refugee women: methodology

Foucault’s (2002a) perspective on truth, which emphasises the operation of representations over any positivist notion of fact, has special implications for researchers. An interdependent relationship between power and knowledge means that one cannot be separated from the other; that is, how, why, where and by whom knowledge is constructed cannot be separated from the nature of the represented knowledge itself. While there may be many tensions between feminism and Foucault, the view that knowledge is partial and perspectival and that power has a role to play in its construction, is shared by both (Foucault 1980; Reinharz and Davidman 1992).