Biko Agozino

Methodological issues in feminist research

This paper outlines some of the issues raised for a man contemplating research on women. Many of the issues are serious but they only make such a research more difficult and not impossible. The present male researcher was abie to gain the cooperation of some individual women and the organisations that support women in prison by taking feminist methodological issues seriously in his study of ‘Black Women and the Criminal Justice System’. This paper concludes that feminist research has very useful insights which should be adopted by all researchers whether or not they are feminists especially because such insights often derive from more conventional approaches with which feminist writers do not fully agree.

Committed Objectivity in Race-Class-Gender Research

This article argues that objectivity and commitment are different but that they are articulated rather than being separate issues in social research. This article challenges those who believe that objectivity is impossible or undesirable as well as those who believe that commitment is undesirable in social science. This approach is close to the call by Sandra Harding (1991, 1993) that the methods of science should be applied to science itself by raising the women question in science and the science question in womens studies. Here, she develops her earlier analysis of feminist research agenda in science in terms of empiricism, standpoint epistemology and post-modern feminism. In this paper, a slightly different formulation will be advanced to resolve what could be said to be a false dichotomy between objectivity and commitment. Committed objectivity or objective commitment could be used to capture the inextricability of the articulation of the processes of commitment and objectivity. The article concludes that both objectivity and commitment are necessary elements of good research by all researchers irrespective of (or even because of) race-class-gender differences.

Review Essay: Democracy and Imperialism in Africa: Reflections on the Work of Claude Ake Social Science as Imperialism: The Theory of Political Development. By Claude Ake. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1982. Pp. 236.

Claude Ake was killed in a tragic air crash in Nigeria in 1999 but before that he had already contributed enough to knowledge to ensure that he would live forever as all true scholars do. One of his most enduring contributions was his book on Social Science as Imperialism where he analyzed the theories of development and came to the convincing conclusion that they serve the interests of imperialism unabashedly or, might we say, arrogantly (Ake, 1982, under review). This should serve as a reminder to criminologists that it is not enough to critique imperialism as if we have nothing to do with it because often the theories and methods we develop and the students we educate end up serving imperialism directly and indirectly. Michel Foucault recognized this with the knowledge-power axis although even he conveniently remained mum about imperialist power and the decolonization struggle. What is most arrogant is that those who serve imperialism without shame turn round to say that they have the expertise to teach the oppressed how to develop democratically. Ake consistently offered alternatives to the arrogance of imperialist scholarship through clear analysis that won him the respect and admiration of the masses of the people beyond the walls of academia. At the time of his death, he was directing a Centre for Critical Sociology 35(4) 565–572

30.00 (paper). ISBN: 9789781211300. Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. By Claude Ake. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2000. Pp. 208.

James: The Black Jacobins Sociol• ogy is a video about the contributions of CL.R. James to sociology. CL.R. Jamess work ranges from political organizer, political theorist, literary critic, to novelist and cricketer, but hardly any scholars have recognized his gifts to the field of sodology. In this interview, Professor Gordon Rohlehr isolates and highlights the specific instances of Jamess contributions to social thought. The inclusion of this interview in the video will challenge sodobgists of today to appredate what the disdpline has been missing.