Breaking Out Again

In the early 1980s feminist social science remained highly positivist in its ideas about the research process. Consequently, the original Breaking Out had a signal impact on ideas about feminist research. Its authors, Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, were concerned to emphasise that most aspects of positivism were antithetical to feminist principles and practice, and also that so-called qualitative styles of research tended to be as positivist as more scientistic and quantitative ones. In the first edition Liz Stanley and Sue Wise argued that academic feminists should be less concerned with the choice of method and techniques and much more concerned with the choice of epistemological bases and claims of different styles of feminist research. In making these arguments they challenged large areas of existing feminist social theory, including ideas about socialisation and the hegemony of structural approaches which denied the theoretical and political importance of everyday practice and experience. This new edition provides a detailed discussion of the sociological, political and academic context in which Breaking Out was first written, and reviews its reception among feminist scholars. A new concluding section considers recent development in feminist social thought, including essentialism, deconstructionism and epistemologies of the oppressed. In this section the authors offer a new thesis for the feminist agenda, based on their notion of fractured foundationalism. Breaking Out thus provides a context to current debates concerning the feminist research process as well as its own new perspective. As a refreshing contribution to feminist social theory, it will be widely read by students in women's studies and sociology.