Drawing from Feminist Epistemologies to Research Resistance: The Case of Single Moms in Hanoi.
(2020) Resistances: Between Theories and the Field — published
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- Authors
Murru, Sarah 
- Abstract
- (en) In this chapter, I critically approach epistemologies for the study of resistance. In order to do so, I draw on the reflections brought by my fieldwork among Single Moms in Hanoi. Here, I faced a group of women living multiple subordinations: as women in a patriarchal society; as mothers in a country that considers maternity as a public matter to be regulated since it concerns the upbringing of the next generation of citizens; and as outcasts, the status of Single Mom being down looked and marginalized. Based on similar preoccupations in the field of Gender Studies and Resistance Studies – unveiling and rehabilitating categories of subjects that had been left out of scientific inquiry and targeting complex configurations of domination and power relations in order to understand how subjects can effectively challenge them – I propose to draw from the Feminist Framework for Research (FFR) for the study of resistance. That is to say, a research framework that acknowledges a militant goal for research, which entails locating power relations that are at play in the production of knowledge, recognizing the subjectivity and situatedness of a research project, conducting research collaboratively with the subjects of inquiry, starting from their lives and experiences of subordination, and finally, building knowledge that intends to be empowering. In this perspective, the framework for doing research on resistance will allow to grasp resistance the way it is experienced by subordinates themselves, in its multiplicity and complexity, as a diffuse social practice and in a dynamic relation with power.
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Citations
Murru, S. (2020). Drawing from Feminist Epistemologies to Research Resistance: The Case of Single Moms in Hanoi. In Murru Sarah, Polese Abel (ed.), Resistances: Between Theories and the Field. Rowman & Littlefield. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/223506