Introduction: Making meanings

This book aims to look at the ways and means by which Sri Lankan feminist activist researchers inhabit, engage with, represent and construct the multiple realities of women and society through research. In particular, it explores ways of meaning-making for the political, ideological and ethical purposes of promoting individual and social change. However, it does so with the understanding that the possibility of representing and constructing complete knowledge of realities is highly problematic and debatable; and that the ultimate aim of social transformation is equally incomplete and relative. Given the play of subjectivity and human capacity, knowledge can only be partial and situated, rather than transcendent (Haraway 1988), and social action conditional and pragmatic. The following sections of the Introduction will acquaint the readers with its topic and structure, give definitions of concepts and terms, and provide rationales for the book. As introductions from a modernist perspective,1 they will presume to offer a formal beginning to the book and an epistemic construction of my assumptions; while from postmodern2 perspectives, they will construe fragments of my understandings, subjective positionings and hegemonic authority. In Sri Lanka, as in many other countries, interest in women’s rights and

issues came to a head with the institution of the United Nations International Year of Women (1975) and the United Nations Decade of Women (19751985). Since then, WR research has boomed in many disciplinary directions, encompassing various interdisciplinary subjects. Yet, on the whole there has been little research that has looked specifically at research methodology in Sri Lanka (for instance, at how Sri Lankan realities are represented / constructed in research; or at the theories or ethics of knowledge and meaning-making). An overview of WR research literature indicated that there were a few, sporadic exceptions (see Goonatilake 1985; Wanasundera 1995). These problematised aspects of research methodology per se, such as using feminist frameworks (de Alwis 1994b; Bandarage 1998; de Alwis 2004a; Emmanuel 2006) or participatory methods (Schrijvers 1996; Jayatilaka 1998); or constructing a women’s archive from memories and testimonies (de Mel 2007).

Literature that theorised holistically on research methodology was virtually non-existent. One possible reason for this is that research methodology has usually been understood as research methods, and therefore of secondary importance. Many researchers were inclined to include writing on the theoretical and methodological aspects of their work as an ancillary part of other activist topics. Consequently, there has not been much critical discussion amongst researchers and writers on feminist theories or methods in Sri Lanka. Even definitions or categorisations of what constitutes feminist / gender / women’s studies3 have yet to be discursively debated or theorised. This may reflect a wider gap in the theoretical and epistemological4 aspects

of research methodology training within Sri Lankan universities. As a lecturer working within academia it was my observation that, where given, methodology training tended to be basic, narrow, discipline-bound, highly technical and dated. At the time I started this book, lectures on the application of scientific methods to Humanities subjects were still being given as ‘fresh perspectives’ on research methodology. This seems to indicate that research methodology had, in certain instances, not progressed beyond a positivist framework based on empiricism – which sees scientific knowledge as the connection between ideas and realities (Ramazanoglu and Holland 2002). Furthermore, my personal experience as a graduate student in a Sri

Lankan Women’s Studies programme (in the mid-1990s) consisted of training in a methodology module which did not reflect extensive awareness of feminist research methodologies. Certainly, at the time, there was insufficient provision for even the most fundamental of methodological debates in the classroom, such as the qualitative / quantitative divide or merger and its implications for feminisms, or the inscription of reflexivity. A colleague and I attending the programme can testify to a degree of anxiety at the time as to whether feminist research methodologies in dissertation writing (such as the inclusion of subjective experiences) would be accepted by the university hierarchy. This reveals the hegemony within academia with regard to what is deemed acceptable and legitimate as serious academic enquiry – since positivism reigns as the institutionally sanctioned methodological approach. Counter-hegemonic activity within academia, such as utilising feminist

research methodologies, took place in an environment of institutional uncertainty. This indicated the vulnerability of the discipline of Women’s Studies and its methodologies at the time. While some effort has been made in subsequent years to rectify the situation for the programme concerned, the application of feminist research methodologies in student research is still not considered to be of critical value by the rest of the academic establishment. Yet this state of affairs belies feminist research literature that subscribed to knowledge paradigms and approaches in a discipline like English Studies – given its interdisciplinary epistemological possibilities. English for instance, showed subscriptions to a range of critical approaches including deconstruction (Derrida 1976) which reads a text without prioritising one single meaning.