Tracy Morison

A Performative-Performance Analytical Approach Infusing Butlerian Theory Into the Narrative-Discursive Method

Judith Butler’s theory of performativity provides gender theorists with a rich theoretical language for thinking about gender. Despite this, Butlerian theory is difficult to apply, as Butler does not provide guidance on actual analysis of language use in context. In order to address this limitation, we suggest carefully supplementing performativity with the notion of performance in a manner that allows for the inclusion of relational specificities and the mechanisms through which gender, and gender trouble, occur. To do this, we turn to current developments within discursive psychology and narrative theory. We extend the narrative-discursive method proposed by Taylor and colleagues, infusing it with Butlerian theory in order to fashion a dual analytical lens, which we call the performativity-performance approach. We provide a brief example of how the proposed analytical process may be implemented.

When veiled silences speak: reflexivity, trouble and repair as methodological tools for interpreting the unspoken in discourse-based data

Researchers who have attempted to make sense of silence in data have generally considered literal silences or such things as laughter. We consider the analysis of veiled silences where participants speak, but their speaking serves as ‘noise’ that ‘veils’, or masks, their inability or unwillingness to talk about a (potentially sensitive) topic. Extending Lisa Mazzei’s ‘problematic of silence’ by using our performativity–performance analytical method, we propose the purposeful use of ‘unusual conversational moves’, the deployment of researcher reflexivity and the analysis of trouble and repair as methods to expose taken-for-granted normative frameworks in veiled silences. We illustrate the potential of these research practices through reference to our study on men’s involvement in reproductive decision-making, in which participants demonstrated an inability to engage with the topic. The veiled silence that this produced, together with what was said, pointed to the operation of procreative heteronormativity.

Online Research Methods in Psychology: Methodological Opportunities for Critical Qualitative Research

This special issue showcases the contributions of mostly early career researchers to illustrate the methodological opportunities and challenges that arise in doing critical qualitative research on the Internet. As we discuss, the articles included in this special issue demonstrate innovative qualitative methods that can be applied to Internet research and the steps that need to be taken to conduct rigorous and ethical qualitative research, from a critical psychological perspective. This special issue focuses on a range of methodological issues that can arise while conducting qualitative research online. The authors are seen to acknowledge the power relations that shape online spaces and relationships, and to reflexively and continually consider their roles in data collection or generation. The articles presented in this special issue also highlight ways in which critical qualitative researchers can innovatively negotiate the ethical issues that can occur within a dynamic context, and challenge the status quo through conducting this type of research. Online spaces continually change and present ongoing opportunities and challenges for researchers, yet, this special issue illustrates how critical qualitative researchers are well equipped to continue developing this line of research.

Heterosexual Men and Parenthood Decision Making in South Africa Attending to the Invisible Norm

This article reports on a qualitative study about male involvement in parenthood decision making (i.e., decisions related to becoming a first-time parent) in which the focus was on White, heterosexual men. Little is known about the roles and involvement of these men in decision-making processes. They comprise an invisible norm in research as heteronormative assumptions about parenthood cause them to be overlooked. This oversight—exacerbated by the pervasive problem perspective in social science—forms the research rationale. Conducted within a gender-relational framework, the study included 23 heterosexual, White South African women and men with a view to exploring how gender constructions influence this process and affect the gender power relations. Interviews with participants were analyzed using a narrative–discursive method and the findings show how an assumption of childbearing shaped the data and may have implications for female–male power relations in reproductive partnerships.

Stigma Resistance in Online Childfree Communities The Limitations of Choice Rhetoric

People who are voluntarily childless, or “childfree,” face considerable stigma. Researchers have begun to explore how these individuals respond to stigma, usually focusing on interpersonal stigma management strategies. We explored participants’ responses to stigma in a way that is cognisant of broader social norms and gender power relations. Using a feminist discursive psychology framework, we analysed women’s and men’s computer-assisted communication about their childfree status. Our analysis draws attention to “identity work” in the context of stigma. We show how the strategic use of “choice” rhetoric allowed participants to avoid stigmatised identities and was used in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, participants drew on a “childfree-by-choice script,” which enabled them to hold a positive identity of themselves as autonomous, rational, and responsible decision makers. On the other hand, they mobilised a “disavowal of choice script” that allowed a person who is unable to choose childlessness (for various reasons) to hold a blameless identity regarding deviation from the norm of parenthood. We demonstrate how choice rhetoric allowed participants to resist stigma and challenge pronatalism to some extent; we discuss the political potential of these scripts for reproductive freedom. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQs website at http://pwq.sagepub.com/supplemental

Gay men as parents: Analysing resistant talk in South African mainstream media accounts of queer families

There is increasing visibility of dissident sexualities and genders in media debates about families, including resistant discourses that challenge delegitimising claims about queer families. There remains, however, a lack of research that assesses the ways in which discourses seeking to defend queer parenthood function to challenge or, at times, reinforce hetero-gendered norms. Families formed by gay men have generally received less attention, both in the media as well as academic scholarship. In this paper, we explore resistant discourses deployed in mainstream print media, attending particularly to news reports about queer fathers and their children. Through a critical thematic analysis of South African newspapers, informed by feminist discursive psychology, we identify four themes in resistant ways of talking: de-gendering parenthood, normalising queer parents, valorising queer parenting, and challenging the heteronormative gold standard. We conclude with the political implications of such resistant talk, as part of a project of transforming restrictive hetero-gendered norms.

From Deviant Choice to Feminist Issue: An Historical Analysis of Scholarship on Voluntary Childlessness (1920–2013)

Abstract Existing reviews of research on voluntary childlessness generally take the form of narrative summaries, focusing on main topics investigated over time. In this chapter, the authors extend previous literature reviews to conduct a systematic review and content analysis of socio-historical and geopolitical aspects of knowledge production about voluntary childlessness. The dataset comprised 195 peer-reviewed articles that were coded and analysed to explore, inter alia: the main topic under investigation; country location of authors; sample characteristics; theoretical framework and methodology. The findings are discussed in relation to the socio-historical contexts of knowledge production, drawing on theoretical insights concerned with the politics of location, representation and research practice. The shifts in the topics of research from the 1970s, when substantial research first emerged, uphold the view of voluntary childlessness as non-normative. With some regional variation, knowledge is dominated by quantitative, hard science methodologies and mostly generated about privileged, married women living in the global North. The implications of this for future research concerned with reproductive freedom are outlined.

Resisting Erasure: Bisexual Female Identity in South Africa

ABSTRACT Bisexual erasure refers to the cultural de-legitimation of bisexuality as an intelligible sexual identity. There is little South African research that considers how this occurs. Generally bisexuality is “a silenced sexuality” both in popular and academic discourse. Research has not attended to (women’s) “self-aware bisexual identities”, tending to focus on men’s bisexual practices or other people’s perceptions of bisexuals. This article is intended as a starting point for further local research. Using an intersectionality approach, it looks at how race, class, space and gender intertwine with sexuality in ways that further compound marginalisation or provide avenues for resistance to dominant norms from an autobiographical perspective. The analysis shows how bisexual erasure occurs through acts of non-recognition and misrecognition, as well as instances of resistance.