Methodological issues and challenges for a feminist community psychology: An introduction to a special issue

This is the second of two special issues of AJCP on feminism and community psychology, which were developed as an initiative of the Women's Committee of the Society for Community Research and Action. The purpose of these special issues is to illustrate the commonalties shared by feminist and community approaches, ways in which each field can be used to inform the other, and the challenges and successes each field has faced in living up to its values. In Part I we presented articles that dealt with specific topics that can be usefully understood and addressed through feminist approaches. In Part II (this issue) we chose articles that investigate the role of methods in a feminist community psychology. As Mary Crawford and Ellen Kimmel write, "we cannot unlink what we know from how we know it" (1999, p. 3). It is this relationship that we wish to examine in this special issue: the relationship between how we gain knowledge and the kinds of realities that knowledge is used to construct. While working to conceptualize the issues involved in a feminist community psychology, we identified seven themes that we think represent particularly important threads linking feminist and community psychology perspectives. Those themes are as follows: 1. integrating a contextualized understanding, 2. paying attention to issues of diversity, 3. speaking from the standpoint of oppressed groups, 4. adopting a collaborative approach, 5. utilizing multilevel, multimethod approaches, 6. adopting reflexive practices, and 7. taking an activist orientation and using knowledge for social change. The first three themes were discussed in the previous special issue. The last four of these themes are discussed in this special issue. These themes are not meant to serve as strict guidelines for separating feminist research from non-feminist research, or even as a delineation of "best practices." Continuing with the metaphor of weaving introduced in the first special issue, these themes are presented as procedural threads that reflect a pattern of feminist and community psychology values. These threads represent the basic foundation of the cloth, upon which a multitude of designs, reflective of varied traditions, may be woven. The inclusion of these basic foundational threads in the tapestry increases the probability that the values and goals of both feminism and community psychology will be incorporated in the finished piece.