ABSTRACT
Early trajectories and tools of feminist inquiry were concerned with critiquing positivist assumptions governing research, recovering lost voices to create a fuller, more nuanced portrait of human experience, and engaging in ethical relational research practices sensitive to the power relations that permeate research. It is important to acknowledge that the field of feminist methodologies is complex, characterized by productive tensions, divergent concerns, and allegiances. To undertake research within this diverse field merits ethical engagement with its various philosophical and historical commitments. Feminist discussions of ethics remain a distinguishing feature of feminist methodology. These concerns have extended beyond the standard ethical guidelines that universities' Institutional Review Boards (IRB) issue requiring researchers to obtain informed consent of research subjects and to demonstrate that their research participation would not cause them harm. The subtitle of the co-edited collection, Beyond Methodology, was Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research, an effort on our part to capture the lived quality of conducting research as feminists.
