ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the problems raised in the conceptualisation and implementation of much mainstream research, which tends to perpetuate rather than challenge social divisions by accepting taken-for-granted premises about social relationships. It implies a new framework of political will to confront inequalities in the research process and in wider society, and to be politically committed to contributing to social change. The chapter describes an active involvement in challenging assumptions based on unequal social relations, through reflexive, explicitly committed participation in the process of social change. For Dorothy Smith the outcome of persistence conceptual imperialism is to impose the concepts and terms in which the world of men is thought as the concepts and terms in which women must think their world. Essentialist critiques of oppressive structures and their impact on women, have paved the way for an alternative imperialism based on the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.
