Methodological considerations

The period of self-reflection in Norwegian academic feminism may be read, as suggested by Iversen, as a period of reflection on the relationship between feminism and modernity. The

and Erik Grønseth. This blend of international and Norwegian, feminist and other influences characterize contemporary contributions as well (see. 5.6).

322 Haukaa discusses Berit Ås’ notion of women’s culture, see Ås (1974).

323 The title of her article is “Arbeiderkvinner og verdighet” (“Working Class Women and Dignity”).

324 The title of her article is “Kvinners gjensidige allianser. Altruisme som premiss for samhandling” (“Women’s Mutual Alliances. Altruism as a Premise for Interaction”).

325 The contributors in Taksdal and Widerberg (1992) give overviews of the development of feminist research in social anthropology, political science, psychology, pedagogy, sociology and economics. Wesenberg (1995) analyzes the development of women’s law, Melby (1995) developments within the discipline of history, Malterud (1997) research on women and gender in Norwegian medicine. Iversen (2002) reflects on feminism in Norwegian literary theory and comparative literature. These are but some examples. To reflect in more or less detail on the history of the research field is central to what the self-reflective discourse of the research field is all about.

discourse on modernity introduces a set of arguments against a modern notion of feminism.

What the arguments have in common, is that they all in one way or another question modernity’s standards of critique. Thus, what I have wished to investigate, is a feminist meta-debate – feminist critique against modernity’s standards of critique and the discussion of this critique – not all kinds of discussions going on within the feminist research field. Thus, I have tried to limit my analysis to publications that contribute to meta-debate. In a sense, all that have been published in the research field can be interpreted as contribution to such debate. All publications rely on certain implicit standards of critique that can be explicated and deliberated upon; they all address, in this sense, meta-questions. However, the focus here will be on what is already explicated, the meta-discourse in Habermas’ sense, and on publications that contribute significantly to such discourse: What interests me is not only the meta-claims, but also in the argumentative defense of these claims. What kind of feminist meta-critique is raised against the parameters of modernity, more precisely? And why have such processes of meta-explication within the research field at all occurred? The latter question will be addressed in 5.7, as well as in Chapter 6.

Most commentators agree that the period of self-reflection starts around 1990. I have searched systematically for relevant publications from 1990 onwards. It was, however, not a particular episode that triggered the reflexive wave. Rather, it seems to have been several processes interacting in a particular way, that made ‘something’ happen towards the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s.³²⁶ Thus, by beginning my search in 1990, it is possible I have missed publications from the end of the 1980s that are early expressions of the turn to meta-theory.³²⁷ The danger that I will miss crucial points is less likely, however.³²⁸

I stop my survey in 2002. I had to do so because of my work schedule; I do not stop in 2002 because I have any reason to say self-reflection has come to an end. Rather, the self-reflective discourse seems to persist into 2003 and 2004. I have allowed myself to include relevant

326 I will elaborate and discuss these processes in 5.7.

327 Nytt om kvinneforskning for example, began a series in the late 1980s with articles on ‘feminist key texts’.

The first articles in this series fall outside my reading here, while, for example, Gullvåg Holter (1991) on Marx and Borchgrevink (1992) on Shulamit Firestone are included.

328 Consider for example Hanne Haavind’s (1989) article “Rasjonalitet, makt og følelser” (“Rationality, power, and emotions”) where she argues that the male rationality that governs scientific practice should be replaced with a female rationality that is more faithful to our sentiments. This is an input to a meta-debate: It concerns the truth-idealization generally, and, more specifically, the critical standards of science. The point has, however, been repeated, developed and critically discussed on several occasions later. Lately, Hagemann has given an extensive account of Haavind’s article and the debate it triggered (2003: 189-216).

publications also from 2003 and 2004 in my discussion, as far as I have become aware of them and have had the time to include them. Re-printed publications, originally published before 1990, are excluded from my selection.³²⁹

In my search for publications I have taken as my point of departure:³³⁰

- Articles published in the journal Kvinneforskning,³³¹ the only Norwegian journal devoted to feminist research.

- Articles published by Norwegian researchers in Kvinnovetenskaplig tidsskrift (Swedish), in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning (Danish), and in NORA. Norwegian Journal of Women’s Studies.³³²

- Lists of publications of established scholars in the field working on gender issues.³³³

Reading relevant publications stemming from these three sources, and their lists of references, I became aware of other relevant publications.³³⁴ The publications included in my final selection are both journal articles, contributions in anthologies and conference reports, monographs or monograph-chapters, dissertations or dissertation-chapters, research reports, book-reviews,³³⁵ and even interviews. I do not claim that all relevant publications are included. From the way I have been going about, it seems possible that I may have overlooked contributions of interest published in discipline-specific journals and relevant works by less established scholars in the field.

329 This implies for example that some of the articles on women’s law in Tove Stang Dahl’s Pene piker haiker ikke (1994a) are included, while others, originally published before 1990, are excluded.

330 The selected publications are listed in Appendix.

331 Issued four times a year. The name of the journal was changed in 1994 from Nytt om kvinneforskning to Kvinneforskning. Kvinneforskning was not a peer reviewed journal until 1/2000. This may be linked to the relatively late academization of Norwegian feminist research: For a long time, delivering adequate knowledge to the women’s movement and the femocrats was more important than living up to formal academic standards (Halsaa 2003, Hernes 2004, but questioned by Blom 2003). The intensified reflexive discourse in the period of self-reflection might be read as a catching-up in light of this late academization (see 5.7).

332 I have also searched through some international journals, Signs, Feminist Theory, Feminist Review, Gender Studies and The European Journal of Women’s Studies. This confirmed my prima facie impression that Norwegian academic feminists rarely publish on feminist theory outside Scandinavia. Of the five journals mentioned here, I found most Norwegian contributions in The European Journal of Women’s Studies. I have not systematically searched after publications on feminist theory by Norwegian researchers in other more topic- or discipline-specific international journals. Some of the contributors have, moreover, published significantly in international journals, even if they have not published internationally on feminist theory.

333 I had acquired knowledge of the central figures from previous investigation of the field (for example Holst 2001, 2002). Their lists of publications are often publicly available on the web (university web-sites, home-pages etc.).

334 I have also looked thoroughly through several discipline-specific journals. It would be fair to say that my search for publications in the social sciences has been somewhat more thorough than my search for publications in the humanities, law and psychology, not to mention the natural sciences and medicine.

335 Mostly, book-reviews are excluded. I have, however, included some that I found particularly well suited to illustrate a certain point.

Furthermore, I have read the publications more or less thoroughly before including them or excluding them from my selection of texts. The articles published in Nytt om kvinneforskning/Kvinneforskning have been closely read. This reading is the backbone of my analysis. Due to the time-limit on this project, I have been forced on other occasions to make decisions of inclusion or exclusion following a brief reading-through, and based on what titles, subtitles, introductions, abstracts, or previous knowledge about the author, suggest about the content of the publication.³³⁶ Had my schedule allowed it, I would of course have preferred to have considered all candidates thoroughly.

The publications in my selection are mostly written by feminist researchers with positions³³⁷ at Norwegian universities, colleges, and research institutes. A few of the authors are, however, freelance-writers,³³⁸ have positions in non-governmental organizations,³³⁹ or in state bureaucracy (“femocrats”).³⁴⁰ A few hold, at the time of writing, positions at universities abroad.³⁴¹

336 The content of different publications by the same author sometimes overlaps. In cases of great overlap between two or more publications, I have allowed myself to include only one of them.

337 Doctoral scholars included. I have included contributions from graduates, when they have published their graduate thesis as a research report (for example Rustad 1996 and Rekdal 2002), or turned parts of it into a journal-article or a book-chapter (for example Solhøy 1999 and Engebretsen 1999). I have not had the time to go through all relevant graduate theses, even though I suspect many of them touch upon interesting reflexive issues. This suspicion is linked to the hypothesis that there may be a connection between the period of self-reflection and generational patterns (see 5.7, and my analysis of some graduate theses in feminist sociology in Holst 2001: 173-184).

338 See for example Owesen (2000/2001) and Spjeldnæs (2000/2001).

339 See for example Strøm (1995), Bostad (1995) and Salimi (1997).

340 See for example Gulbrandsen (1998) and Aas (1998). That contributors in academic publications have positions outside the academic field, reflect the late academization of the research field, and that there are still close connections between parts of the research field, femocrats and activists (see Halsaa 1996, 2003, and 5.7).

341 For example Toril Moi (Duke University, US) and Eva Lundgren (University of Uppsala, Sweden). However, I concentrate on their publications in Norwegian journals or by Norwegian publishers, and thus omit several of their publications. Generally speaking, I have excluded from my selection of texts translated contributions written by feminist researchers with positions at universities outside Norway, and with no formal institutional connections to the Norwegian research field. This is why I have included articles by, for example, Kirsten Ketcher, professor at the University of Copenhagen, and Sara Heinämaa, professor at the University of Helsinki, from the period they were professor II at the University of Oslo (published in Norwegian journals or in books with Norwegian publishers), but excluded, for example, professor at the University of Minnesota Naomi Scheman’s contribution in Lotherington and Markussen (1999), and the contributions by Linda Alcoff (US), Alison M. Jaggar (US), Rosi Braidotti (the Netherlands), Ulla Holm (Sweden), Eva Lungren-Gothlin (Sweden), Katri Kaalikoski (Finland) and Ullaliina Lehtinen (Finland) in Preus, Vetlesen, Kleven, Iversen and von der Fehr (1996). Kvinneforskning has published several articles of this sort. It could be argued that these publications also should be included; that the authors are participating in the discussions of ‘Norwegian academic feminism’ qua authors of articles often translated into and published in Norwegian, by Norwegian publishers, for a Norwegian-speaking audience. Why put so much weight on the national origin of the author and formal institutional connections? Would it not in fact be more reasonable to exclude for example publications in English or Swedish by authors born in or with formal institutional connections to Norway, published in non-Norwegian journals and by non-Norwegian publishers? My emphasis on national origin and formalized institutional bonds is linked to

Finally, a note on the term ‘feminist research’.³⁴² Many of those whom I refer to here as feminist researchers, refer themselves to what they are doing as women’s research or gender research, or even men’s research.³⁴³ There are three reasons why I have nevertheless opted for the term feminist research. One is that the self-reflective discourse in the research field is very much a discourse on feminism: Contributors, whether they think of themselves as women’s researchers, men’s researchers or gender researchers when they undertake empirical investigations, conceptualize their meta-reflections very often as reflections on the implications of a feminist commitment. Another reason is that the established international label applied to the kind of discussions I am analyzing here is ‘feminist’.³⁴⁴ A third reason is that the term gender research³⁴⁵ might be taken to refer also to research carried out outside the field of research whose meta-debates I am analyzing here. In Norwegian kjønn³⁴⁶ denote both

‘sex’ and ‘gender’, kjønnsforskning both research on ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.³⁴⁷ Research on kjønn (qua ‘sex’) is also being carried out, for example, in the fields of medicine, biology and experimental psychology. Contributors to these fields do not participate in the self-reflective discourse on feminism I am studying here, however, or at least only minimally. That is: They are only included if they have published reflexive pieces on feminism in the different sources I have searched, and not many have.³⁴⁸

my ambition to comment on the relationship between the reflexive turn and the political-cultural context (state feminism). To do so I need to focus on agents of reflexivity (so to speak) that have stable connections to this context. In this sense, the justification of my operational definition of ‘Norwegian academic feminism’ is analytical. I do not mean to position myself in a normative debate about which publications should be referred to as Norwegian and which should not.

342 That is used interchangeably with terms such as ‘feminist inquiry’, ‘academic feminism’ and ‘feminist publications’.

343 For overviews of men’s research in Norway, see for example Øvrelid (1996), Oftung (1997) and Slottemo (2000).

344 Consider also my discussion of Susan Haack’s criticism of feminist epistemology in Chapters 1-4.

345 The terms women’s research and men’s research are simply too exclusive. Each of them excludes, for example, the other.

346 This is, however, also the case with other languages. Consider for example the German term Geschlecht.

347 Hence, the Norwegian language is in a sense up to date with recent developments in international feminist theory on this point. Whereas to distinguish between the biological (sex) and the social (gender) dimension of the relationship between women and men was commonplace for a long time, many theorists now argue for the need to deconstruct this distinction, and reconceptualize what it means to be a ‘woman’ (for defenses of this view in Norwegian debates, see for example Solheim (1998, 1999), Moi (1999) and Lundgren (2001). Widerberg reflects interestingly on this point in her article “Translating gender” (1998).

348 Looking at Nytt om kvinneforskning/Kvinneforskning it seems there were more contributors coming from outside the human and social sciences (broadly speaking), in the early years than of late. If we consider those who have contributed substantially to feminist meta-debates from outside the human- and social sciences (law and social psychology included), there are generally very few. There are exceptions, such as professor of medicine, Kirsti Malterud. She is, however, not surprisingly, working with medical problems from a sociological and cultural perspective, and in cooperation with human and social scientists. One of the few who has tried to relate ‘feminism’ to theories of sex or gender within the natural sciences, is Tone Bleie. She is, not surprisingly, a social anthropologist. It should also be noted that there are contributors within the human and social sciences