CHAPTER 2: Literature review

One can easily see that the new feminist analyses unsettle traditional assumptions about knowledge as they challenge familiar beliefs about women, men, and social life. How could it have been otherwise when our ways of knowing are such an important part of our way of participating in the social world? Sandra Harding, 1987, p. 189.

Although a large portion of feminist analyses may not qualify as "new" anymore, they continue to unsettle well-established traditions in academia. This chapter builds from feminist standpoint theories to argue that collaborative research between university-based and non university-based researchers could be a space where different standpoints are included to develop a more complex understanding of social phenomena. There are, however, certain contextual factors that are required for this space to be generated. I argue that current academic structures and understandings do not foster the inclusion of a variety of standpoints and therefore the potential of collaborative research is not fully realized.

In the first part of this chapter I explore the literature on collaboration, arguing that the central concept is that of relationships. I contend that what some researchers have described as challenges in collaborative projects can be understood as indications of different ways of engaging in knowledge generation. I describe two contrasting examples of collaboration between university-based and non university-based researchers. In the second part of the chapter I argue that standpoint feminism is a useful lens to understand the potential of collaborative research between university-based and non university-based researchers. I start by describing standpoint feminism, then turn to two examples of "other" ways of knowing. After that I analyse how current conditions do not foster the actualization of the potential of collaborative research. I finish the chapter with a look at the notion of fostering collaboration's potential.

Collaborative research

I have described elsewhere (Niks, 1995) that collaboration can be considered an umbrella term that, when used as an adjective, describes different processes all sharing one characteristic - that they are done by more than one person. Regardless of the negative connotation it developed during the Second World War,¹ collaboration is currently a term that is generally perceived as a positive one. It refers to the possibility of people helping each other and learning from each other.

¹ 'Collaborator' and consequently 'collaboration' were terms reserved for those individuals who helped the Nazis by revealing where resistance soldiers or those persecuted were hiding.