A Black feminist approach to antiracist qualitative research methods: Commemorating the legacy of bell hooks

Abstract

Spanish

French

This article commemorates the legacy of bell hooks by bringing core themes in her oeuvre to bear on several debates on the conceptualization and use of qualitative research methods in sociology. Despite the uptake of qualitative research methods in sociology as a launching point for critical inquiry with analytical and political overtones, they have been fragmented threefold by debates about their politics (whether to humanize research subjects), practice (whether to intervene in field research), and epistemology (procedural, craft, and bricolage orientations). Reflecting on the legacy of bell hooks, this article articulates a Black feminist approach by unearthing methodological and epistemological themes underwritten in hooks’ work (inclusive pedagogy, creative dialogue, and reflexive accountability) to offer new perspectives on the three debates and, in so doing, to identify ways to better qualitative research methods as tools for emancipating the marginalized – by invigorating cross-professional and transdisciplinary dialogue, collaboration, and love.

Keywords

Antiracism bell hooks Black feminism epistemology marginalized identities qualitative research methods

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adair

(2018) Pretenure and Black: Teaching and research in the era of Trump. Women, Gender, and Families of Color 6(1): 26–31.

Anderson

(2002) The ideologically driven critique. American Journal of Sociology, 107(6): 1533–1550.

Anderson

(2022) Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Arnold

Crawford

Khalifa

(2016) Psychological heuristics and faculty of color: Racial battle fatigue and tenure/promotion. The Journal of Higher Education 87(6): 890–919.

(2018) Sociology and science: The making of a social scientific method. The American Sociologist 49(1): 98–115.

(2020) Feminist methods in a ‘post-truth’ political climate: Objectives, strategies, and divisions. Sociological Spectrum 40(2): 99–115.

(2022) Decolonization and qualitative epistemology: Toward reconciliation in the academy. Qualitative Social Work. Epub ahead of print 13 June. DOI: 14733250221108626.

Beauboeuf-Lafontant

(2002) A womanist experience of caring: Understanding the pedagogy of exemplary Black women teachers. Urban Review 34(1): 71–86.

Becker

(2000) Afterward: Racism and the research process. In: Twine

Warren

(eds) Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies. New York: New York University Press, pp.247–254.

10.

Bhopal

(2018) White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-racial Society. Bristol: Policy Press.

11.

Billo

Mountz

(2016) For institutional ethnography: Geographical approaches to institutions and the everyday. Progress in Human Geography 40(2): 199–220.

12.

Brinkmann

Jacobsen

Kristiansen

(2014) Historical overview of qualitative research in the social sciences. In: Leavy

(ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.17–42.

13.

Brosi

hooks

(2012) The beloved community: A conversation between bell hooks and George Brosi. Appalachian Heritage 40(4): 76–86.

14.

Brown

(2021) When is the ‘racist’ designation truly applicable? News media’s contribution to the debatability of racism. Television & New Media 22(2): 186–204.

15.

Burawoy

(2005) For public sociology. American Sociological Review 70(1): 4–28.

16.

Burawoy

(2021) Living sociology: On being in the world one studies. Annual Review of Sociology 47: 17–40.

17.

Charmaz

(2014) Constructing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

18.

Choo

Ferree

(2010) Practicing intersectionality in sociological research: A critical analysis of inclusions, interactions, and institutions in the study of inequalities. Sociological Theory 28(2): 129–149.

19.

Collins

(2000) Gender, Black feminism, and Black political economy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 568(1): 41–53.

20.

Collins

(2004) Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. London: Routledge.

21.

Collins

(2022) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge.

22.

Connell

(2017) In praise of sociology. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 54(3): 280–296.

23.

Contreras

(2019) The broken ethnography: Lessons from an almost hero. Qualitative Sociology 42(2): 161–179.

24.

Crenshaw

(1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 8.

25.

Crenshaw

(2017) Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality, more than two decades later. Columbia Law School. Available at: https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later (accessed 14 November 2022).

26.

Davis

(1981) Reflections on the Black woman’s role in the community of slaves. The Black Scholar 12(6): 2–15.

27.

Delpit

(1995) Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: The New Press.

28.

Denzin

(2002) The interpretive process. In: Huberman

Miles

(eds) The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion. New York: Sage, pp.349–366.

29.

Duneier

(2002) What kind of combat sport is sociology? American Journal of Sociology 107(6): 1551–1576.

30.

Duneier

(2019) Qualitative methods. In: Ritzer

Murphy

(eds) The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp.57–65.

31.

Ferree

Hess

(2002) Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement across Four Decades of Change. London: Routledge.

32.

Flores

(2016) Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance and Wraparound Incarceration. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

33.

Flug

(1990) Organized labor and the civil rights movement of the 1960s: The case of the Maryland Freedom Union. Labor History 31(3): 322–346.

34.

Hammersley

(2004) Teaching qualitative methodology: Craft, profession or bricolage. In: Seale

Gobo

Gubrium

, et al (eds) Qualitative Research Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.549–560.

35.

Hester

Squires

(2018) Who are we working for? Recentering Black feminism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15(4): 343–348.

36.

hooks

(1984) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press.

37.

hooks

(1989) Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, MA: South End Press.

38.

hooks

(1990) Ain’t I a Woman. Boston, MA: South End Press.

39.

hooks

(1994a) Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. London: Routledge.

40.

hooks

(1994b) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

41.

hooks

(1995) Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt.

42.

hooks

(1999) All about Love: New Visions. New York: HarperCollins.

43.

hooks

(2000a) Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.

44.

hooks

(2000b) Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Psychology Press.

45.

hooks

(2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Psychology Press.

46.

hooks

(2009) Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. London: Routledge.

47.

Hsiung

(2016) Teaching qualitative research as transgressive practices. Qualitative Inquiry 22(2): 59–71.

48.

Humphrey

(2013) Dilemmas in doing insider research in professional education. Qualitative Social Work 12(5): 572–586.

49.

James-Gallaway

Turner

(2021) Mobilizing betrayal: Black feminist pedagogy and Black women graduate student educators. Gender, Work & Organization 28: 24–38.

50.

Jerolmack

Murphy

(2019) The ethical dilemmas and social scientific trade-offs of masking in ethnography. Sociological Methods & Research 48(4): 801–827.

51.

Kovach

(2010) Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

52.

Lorde

(1983) There is no hierarchy of oppressions. Bulletin: Homophobia and Education 14(3/4): 9.

53.

Nash

(2013) Practicing love: Black feminism, love-politics, and post-intersectionality. Meridians 11(2): 1–24.

54.

Newman

(2002) No shame: The view from the left bank. American Journal of Sociology, 107(6), 1577–1599.

55.

Okello

(2018) From self-authorship to self-definition: Remapping theoretical assumptions through Black feminism. Journal of College Student Development 59(5): 528–544.

56.

Ott

Dickinson

(2019) The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage. London: Routledge.

57.

Patterson

Kinloch

Burkhard

, et al. (2016) Black feminist thought as methodology: Examining intergenerational lived experiences of Black women. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5(3): 55–76.

58.

Roth

(2004) Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

59.

Roulston

Shelton

(2015) Reconceptualizing bias in teaching qualitative research methods. Qualitative Inquiry 21(4): 332–342.

60.

Sabati

(2019) Upholding ‘colonial unknowing’ through the IRB: Reframing institutional research ethics. Qualitative Inquiry 25(9–10): 1056–1064.

61.

Smith

(2012) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.

62.

Starks

Trinidad

(2017) Choose your method: A comparison of phenomenology, discourse analysis, and grounded theory. Qualitative Health Research 17(10): 1372–1380.

63.

Thompson

(2019) When I was a Swahili woman: The possibilities and perils of ‘going native’ in a culture of secrecy. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 48(5): 674–699.

64.

Tomlinson

(2018) The vise of geometry: Distorting intersectionality at the scene of argument. Meridians 16(1): 1–36.

65.

Tuck

Yang

(2014) Unbecoming claims: Pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry 20(6): 811–818.

66.

Valente

(1996) Momma knows best: Chicago’s Corla Hawkins simply won’t let kids fail. People 18: 42–47.

67.

Wacquant

(2002) Scrutinizing the street: Poverty, morality, and the pitfalls of urban ethnography. American Journal of Sociology 107(6): 1468–1532.