Methodological Instability and the Disruption of Masculinities in Postmodern Times 

Kevin G. Davison, Ph.D.
The National University of Ireland, Galway

Higher Education Close Up3 – Qualitative Research Conference
Lancaster University
24-26 July, 2006

Introduction

The existence of the experimental method makes us think that we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by. (Wittgenstein: [1953] 2002, 197)

	Researching men and masculinities with a critical, profeminist, postructuralist, lens requires men qualitative researchers to employ a continual reflexive process that acknowledges the various ways the subjectivity of the researcher is intimately connected to research participants through the very object of investigation – hegemonic masculinity. Yet, Haywood & Mac an Ghaill note that “male ethnographers [...] have systematically failed to acknowledge the implicit male knowledges, understandings and desires that we share with the male participants’ [...] biographies” (1998, 133). If gender is “a complex of actual relations vested in texts” (Smith 1990, 163) then research into how masculinity is texted, both physically and academically, becomes as equally important as the multi-disciplinary inquiry into masculinities itself. 
This article is drawn from my own qualitative, feminist poststructuralist research on masculinities and schooling over a ten-year period (Davison 1996, 2000a, 2000b, 2003 & 2004). I believe that my own history of researching masculinities and schooling has produced insightful moments as well as awkward, disturbing, and risky moments with my research participants. What makes these research experiences both dangerous and delightful is grounded in the inquiry itself - masculinity. To talk to different men about, say, their favourite music, most likely would not create the same amount of anxiety, nervousness, pride, shame, anger, boasting, privilege and pain that may accompany talk about masculinity. By interrogating my own research practices I will attempt to draw out some of the complexities of the research process during a time when the postmodern condition has undermined what were thought to be the foundations of gender, subjectivity, and empirical research. 

Methodologically Comfortable

Critical masculinity scholarship is political. Many times in my academic career I have turned to colleagues and lamented about how easy it would be if I were researching something more banal, such as toothpaste choice. But gender research, grounded in a feminist analysis is political. It always seems to involve strategic negotiations with ethics boards, institutions, administrators, and research participants to attempt to make everyone feel safe. Safety and ethically responsible research, of course, is something that all researchers should endevour to advance. Yet gender research seems to be thickly tainted with suspicion of bias, a radical political agenda, and the threat of contamination by the mere use of the word ‘sexuality’ in schools. 
	When I began to examine masculinities and schooling for my Masters research (1996) I met great resistance by teachers, schools, and school boards, to my proposal to speak with young men students about masculinity and schooling. Despite the fact that the school that I had selected to research had a progressive program in place that attempted to promote the discussion of gender issues with young men, I had anticipated that there would be a concern that my research might sanction an uncontainable discussion about (homo)sexuality. As deCastell and Bryson note “the educational lying game, as in the movie similarly named, is about how not to see or to acknowledge, nor, therefore, to act upon the complexities and contradictions staring you straight in your face” (1998, 237). This systematic denial of the complexities of gender in educational institutions acts to prevent the theorization and understanding of gender, for theory may unsettle, it may threaten and “upset rooted ideologies by exposing the mechanics of their working” (Trinh 1989, 41-42). The resistance to consider a complex analysis of gender is paired with a desire to retain and protect the social and gendered order, both inside and outside of schools, ‘as is’ - in the service of hegemonic  men and masculinities 
	 While the cautiousness on behalf of the school to talk about gender, specifically masculinity, did not entirely surprise me, I was taken aback by the amount of effort that went into the silencing of gender issues. As Foucault has noted: “Silences … are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (1980a, p.2). The resistance to a critical examination of the privileging practices of masculinities is a part of the greater discourse of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, I resigned to begin my inquiry with adult’s memories of masculinities in schools. However, even though I found adult men who volunteered to talk to me about masculinities, it turned out that the process of interviewing these men was far from an uncomplicated process.
	In general, I was very nervous interviewing men. My experience with hegemonic masculinity and growing up learning to be a man has taught me to fear and mistrust men. Many of the interviews were awkward at first due to this fear and mistrust. Kaufman believes that this fear of other men arises from a self-hatred. “Fear of other men can get turned against ourselves. The extent of male self-hatred is probably the most surprising thing about patriarchal culture” (1993, 204). Kaufman adds that fear and hatred among men “…rarely exists in a pure, unadulterated form because it is combined with real respect, fear, and admiration of other men. It is also hard to spot because many men turn their vilification against women, or distinct groups of men, such as gay men or members of particular racial or ethnic groups who seem different” (1993, 205). I found many of my interviews with men to be a conscious negotiation process between us. I reflected in my research journal after an awkward interview:

While I normally don’t have a problem talking about my past and/or experiences, with Paul I held back. The interview was very much a negotiation process of who would disclose certain information from our past and how much. I think I was reluctant to reveal much to him and he reciprocated.

 I felt nervous with that particular interview participant and at times felt threatened by his presence which had an effect on the interview. Paul seemed to embody many of the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity that I could not, and would not, conform to. I was afraid that I was being judged by him as un-masculine and I felt awkward and nervous. This illustrates, some of the difficulty and personal danger of researching masculinity. As Jeff Hearn states:

To face other men is to face myself, and vice versa; to face the violence and to greet the love of other men is to see myself, and so realize more clearly what makes me personally and men collectively. (1987, 9)

Of course, researching masculinities can also impact the life of the researcher in a positive way in that it can trigger a reflexive process that can lead to intellectual and personal growth. 
In another interview I was faced with blatant misogyny and homophobia from an interviewee that was a part of his understanding and practice of hegemonic masculinity. Revealing my dis-comfort or challenging the interviewees’ views might have changed the dynamics of the interview and possibly silence the interviewee. Again, I reflected in my research journal:

The interview was very strange. I felt comfortable at first [is this about comfort?] but some of his comments disturbed me, some were misogynistic and others were homophobic. I did not feel threatened or unsafe, but I felt the urge to shift the balance away from two men talking about women and gay men. I disagreed with him often but I did not contradict him or argue with him. He did not ask my opinion. His words were hard to take.

I think an important question was revealed in the reflection notes after the interview: “is this about comfort?” Beyond the general concern for safety, my first reaction would be to declare that no, research interviews are not about my comfort level; they are not about me interviewing whom I feel comfortable with. Yet on closer inspection, comfort is central. Hegemonic masculinity can create a discomfort with those who do not conform to it, to coerce conformity. My experience in interviewing men helps to illustrate how hegemonic masculinity is shaped or defined around a dis-comfort based in a dis-trust and competing power dynamics.
	In interviews sessions I was often conscious about my embodiment of masculinity, about how I sat, how I held my hands etc. Beyond mere self-consciousness or nervousness, it illustrates the how the physical embodiment of masculinity can shape the research process.  How experiences are recounted can often depend upon the comfort of both the interviewer and the interviewee (Anderson & Jack 1991). It is, therefore, important to take into account the position of gender and gendered perceptions in shaping the research process, and in considering the results, as they commonly impact the degree of comfort in a research interview setting. 
	The shifting discomforts and interplay between masculinities illustrates that any two people in an interview process will always have “multiple and specific identities that shape how the process takes place and, ultimately how the text gets developed” (Tierney 1994, 102). That is to say that research is “a continuous dialogue between the interpreter and the interpreted” (Van Maanen 1988, 93). Yet, as Haywood & Mac an Ghaill point out, “there is no simple ‘reading off’ from the experience to a specific subject position; rather, as with all accounts, such representations involve complex interpretations of social reality” (1998, 128-129). It is important for researchers to account for these complexities in the research design and in the analysis by incorporating the utilization of multiple inquiry-approaches which “move us toward ways of knowing which interrupt relations of dominance and subordination” (Lather 1991, xvii). However, such interruption, explains deLauretis, involves “leaving or giving up a place that is safe [...] for another place that is unknown and risky, that is not only emotionally but conceptually Other, a place of discourse from which speaking and thinking are at best tentative, uncertain and unguaranteed” (1988, 139). Not all researchers are willing to embrace such hazardous research conditions. Yet, Britzman adds that: “educators must risk the obvious to access the transformative. This requires a more explicit and risky education, an understanding that education is already about risking the self and about the desire to be open to the idea that some risks make people more interesting” (Britzman 1995, 89). 

Methodologically Sexual

	The first person to respond to my call for research participants to speak about masculinity and schooling for my Masters research left a one word message on my voicemail: “Faggot.” I felt unsafe and I began to have fears that other callers could be potentially violent homophobes. I had to seriously consider my own safety as a methodological issue. Where could I interview perspective participants? How could I ensure my safety during and after the interview? The suspicious schools were correct, research into masculinity is undeniably about sexuality (Kimmel 1994). More to the point, sexuality is important to consider methodologically. 
	In my experience, sexuality is central to my own masculine identity and to how others define me as masculine. Because I do not conform to a hegemonic masculine standard, my sexuality, in turn, is often seen as suspiciously un-heterosexual. In high school, my peers concluded that I was gay based on gay stereotypes such as dress, speech, mannerisms, the way I hold my body, the shape of my body, the lack of physical strength or coordination etc. Of course, the deposit of such historical details is not disconnected to my interest in researching masculinities in schools. “By encouraging an educator to examine disjunctures, ruptures, break-ups, and fractures in the ‘normal school’ version of the unified life-subject and her own and others’ educational practices, autobiography can function to ‘queer’ or to make theory, practice, and the self unfamiliar” (Miller 1998, 370 emphasis in original). Thus, researchers’ subjective biographic details often impact not only the field of study, but also the methodological process. 
 	What becomes evident in examining the complexities of masculinities in educational institutions, and more specifically the research process, is that: “Research, as it turns out, is symptomatic of something larger than the intentions of the researcher. Moreover, research is not outside of its own traumatic formulations and conditions” (Britzman 1997, 34). The process of research is similarly intertwined with the politics of gendered subjectivity. The mis-perception of my sexuality by interview participants had a methodological effect on the interview process. I became more aware of the impact of researcher subjectivity when I interviewed a female participant. When we met each other at the public library we awkwardly talked a little about ourselves and our backgrounds, jobs, education, etc. I told her that for my Bachelors degree I majored in History and minored in Women’s Studies, and I told her that I worked as a full-time secretary. I was somewhat uneasy about what she may have thought about my “non-traditionally masculine” background, education, and choice of employment. 
	During the interview I felt that she was being very frank and was quite comfortable discussing her heterosexual experiences in school, including a story of having been date-raped. I began to believe that her comfort rested in her belief that I was gay, and therefore less threatening to her as a woman. I felt the need to ‘come-out’ to her as a straight man, but I could not find the place to do so in our discussion/interview. I reflected afterwards in my research journal:

How would this [coming-out as straight] have changed my dialogue with her? Would she have ‘disclosed’ as much? Would she have been nervous? She talked about her sexuality openly but I concealed mine. What happens when half the dialogue is about sexuality and the other is mute? Which dynamics are preserved/silenced which are lost/stolen?

While it is only speculation that the woman’s perception of my sexuality and/or gender impacted the interview, but  it seems evident that “Every story one chooses to tell is a kind of censorship, it prevents the telling of other tales” (Rushdie 1983, 68).  How might the interview have changed if I had made it clear that I was straight? Of course, it was not my intention to deceive the participant in order to gain richer data from her, but it is important to consider how the dynamics can shift and the experiences disclosed can change based on (perceived) sexuality.
	After this interview I interviewed a man who, part-way through the interview, revealed to me that he was gay, and, in contrast to my interview with the woman above, I nervously ‘came-out’ as straight. He seemed to be somewhat taken aback. He admitted that he assumed that I was gay. There were a few awkward moments where I explained that many people make that assumption. He was not sure what to say next. While I felt more comfortable not hiding behind his assumption, I was conscious that the dynamic had shifted and he spoke to me differently with the knowledge that I was a straight man. He made a point of contrasting his experience as a gay man to my experience as a straight man. For example, in talking about Gym change rooms in school he made a point of stating that he preferred men undressed but women with their clothes on. He added, “I’m sure you preferred them undressed...” This awkward moment of two men objectifying the male and female body made me uncomfortable, which was contrasted with the comfort I felt when I ‘came out’ to him as straight.
	In conducting my doctoral research (2003a) I attempted to gain entry to schools to talk to high school young men about masculinities and schooling. While I did manage to gain access and ethical approval of the local School Board to conduct research in a high school, this involved a great deal of negotiations and crafty wordsmithing to ensure all mention of sexuality was excised. After spending three weeks conducting ethnographic research with young men I found that, as an outsider to the school, I was not able to surmount the degree of mistrust among men to be able to engage on a deeper level with high school boys about masculinities and schooling. Furthermore, I was once again aware of how my own body and subjectivity got in the way of the greater research process. How I dressed, and how my physical build was read in particular ways by the young men high school students often acted to shut down opportunities to openly discuss masculinities because I myself was seen as suspicious and an untrustworthy confidante. Therefore, I chose to alter my methodological approach so that I was no longer researching in schools, but over the internet instead, where the distance between the physical bodies and the contributions of the research participants could partly subvert the way the subjectivity of the researcher might hinder the collection of important insights into masculinities (see Davison 2003a for more methodological details on this research).
	In research I am currently engaged in that investigates the impact of common colonial educational histories and the various practices of masculinities in Canada, Australia and South Africa, I was once again reminded of how researcher subjectivity is deeply implicated in the research process. When interviewing high school young men, a co-researcher had commented to me that she observed that the young men seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to talk about gender with an older woman who could possibly be seen as a nurturing, and safe sounding board for the various ways the students are currently making sense of masculinities in school. However, my interviews with young men were very different as the detail and ease of conversation between a man researcher and a young man participant were very strained. Furthermore, in my interviews with some of the young men I found myself self-censoring questions about homophobia that I knew were important. If my reading of the student indicated that they might perceive a question about homophobia as a reflection of the adult man interviewer’s assumption of the student’s (homo)sexuality and gender performance, I would often choose to avoid questions about homophobia. If the participant felt that he was being assessed, he may loose trust in the interviewer and be less open in responding to the interview questions. Additionally, there were times were I felt such questions about homophobia might be perceived as a reflection of my own suspicious (un-hetero)sexuality, and could cause a similar shutting down of the research participant.
These various confessional tales (Van Maanen 1988) may raise doubts about of my own competence as a researcher, but the issue I wish to highlight here is not simply about the style or capability of an individual man researcher, but rather the dynamic of how discourses of gender and bodies can have an almost unavoidable impact the research interview situation, regardless of the precision of the technique and skills of the researcher. A more positivist or traditional researcher might see these accounts as indicative of the need for greater objectivity of the researcher, and a lesson not to engage with the messy subjectivity in research. But I would argue that such messiness cannot be contained. Researchers leak and seep their subjectivity continually and unavoidably, and therefore, it would potentially strengthen the research to work with the subjectivity to identify how the dynamic of gendered discourses shape the research process, rather than attempting to control it. Scheurich states:

The complex play of conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, fears, power, desires, and needs on the part of both the interviewer and the interviewee cannot be captured and categorized. In an interview, there is no stable ‘reality’ or ‘meaning’ that can be represented. The indeterminate totality of the interview always exceeds and transgresses our attempts to capture and categorize. (1995, 249)

Striving for greater objectivity can further retrench and support hegemonic masculinity by cautiously avoiding particular topics such as homophobia, and counter-hegemonic practices. This partly illustrates the power and strength of how dominant discourses of masculinity can act to prevent the articulation of alternative masculine practices.

Studying Up

	What must also not be forgotten in this dance through methodological minefields is that the research in question is about men and masculinity - which can be occupied as a place of privilege. Jennifer Nelson’s research on pro-feminist men in Canada illustrates there is a conspicuous absence of methodological research which addresses “studying-up” (1997). Most feminist and feminist standpoint research has traditionally been “by women, about women’s lives” (Ibid, 26). Nelson points out that “we have yet to incorporate theories about the necessity and the particular problematics of studying the more powerful ‘Other’ into general conceptions of methodological ethics” (Ibid, 30) How is it that researchers can critically address gender issues either from the standpoint of privilege or by soliciting data from those who may benefit from gender privilege? Can we step out of a discourse that privileges us as researchers as we inquire into the privileges themselves? Researchers often enter the research process “from a particular historical and epistemological standpoint” (Luke 1997, 52). Thus it is important to keep in mind that the researcher’s own position and privilege is a “‘readable’ text subject to interpretation” (Ibid).  
Additionally, it is important to consider how the dynamic of men researching masculinities might offer an outlet for young men to perform, rehearse, navigate, validate, and sometimes solidify hegemonic masculinity. If a critical gender analysis is employed in such an investigation, Martino claims: “It is the use of such an interpretive analytics that enables one to think about the various ways in which the male researcher and adolescent boys are inserted into a game of truth in which they learn about what it means to be male” (Martino, 2003). Martino suggests employing a Foucaultian analysis allows for a greater examination of the production of ‘truth effects’ both as a part of the greater Enlightenment view of scientific research, as well as gendered ‘truth effects.’
The structure of a research interview, regardless of how much trust can be established, resembles an interrogation of information – a confession. “Through the development of such confessional techniques, individuals were incited to discover the truth about their sexuality as an index of their subjectivity and then to verbalise this truth to others” (Martino 2003). Thus, this confessional process can play a role in establishing for both the researcher and the participant, validated ‘truths’ about masculinities. Yet, Foucault questions this truth-telling and truth-making process: “The question I raise between the reflexivity of the subject and the discourse of truth is: How can the subject tell the truth about itself? (1996, 360) Even if we were to assume a lack of naïveté on the part of the researcher in assuming that research produces truth, the institutionally sanctioned research process, may act to legitimize particular gendered practices, by engaging with young men about gender and by allocating research funds to serve hegemonic masculinity, which would not be in line with the aims of a feminist poststructuralist researcher. Furthermore, Foucault cautions: “It’s not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time (Foucault 1980, 133). Therefore, the goal might be to point to the way ‘truth effects’ of gender are produced and uncritically accepted in particular institutions such as public schools and in academic research.

Masculinities and Methodologies

The trained eye of the connoisseur of men [sic] is supposed to receive finer and closer connections, until what looked like a net is tightened into cloth. (Benjamin 1978, 309).

	As Benjamin explains, masculinity scholars have employed a variety of methodological strategies to attempt to get closer to the texture of gender in the lives of men and boys, and sometimes attempt to weave a new fabric of masculinity. Many of the interviews I conducted over the years have forced me to reconsider my position and status as a researcher. LeCompte and Goetz ask: “To what extent are researchers members of the studied groups and what position do they hold?” (1982, 37). I often have to ask myself “How does being a straight white man, who looks like a gay white man affect the interviews I am doing and the data I am gathering?” I asked myself this question because it became obvious to me that this straight/gay “status,” and the way I was performing masculinity was affecting the research interviews I was conducting. Corrigan points out that “for too long [...] social analysts have both left themselves out of any social account and often worked with initial categories that deny in advance the possibility of ambiguous and contradictory discoveries” (1990, 228). These contradictions do not have to be methodologically paralyzing. Instead they might open up spaces for new understandings of gender and may be places to begin to re-theorize gender. 

Understanding of subjects produced by a multiplicity of discourses will necessarily lead to internal conflict and contradiction. These conflicts in turn create an arena where the governing conceptions of a particular discourse suffer a sort of slippage wherein predominant roles and values lose their claims to absolute authority and subsequently can be altered. (Gutterman 1987, 220)

For example, in the same way that discourses of feminism since the mid-1960s created contradictions and tensions in the lives of many women, qualitative social change for women has occurred.
Scheurich steps back from the process of research to examine some of the assumptions that make up the foundations of research interviewing. He argues that  “interview interactions do not have some essential teleological tendency toward an ideal of ‘joint construction of meaning’ [...] interactions and meaning are a shifting carnival of ambiguous complexity, a moving feast of differences interrupting differences” (Scheurich 1995, 243).  Perhaps it is helpful to consider that the texting and reconstructing of lived realities is much more of a process of creating fictions than it is about reproducing factual or truthful accounts. As Nixon points out, this is not unlike the production of masculinities: “Like all identities, masculinities are, to borrow Jeffery Weeks phrase, invented categories. They are the product of the cultural meanings attached to certain attributes, capacities, dispositions and forms of conduct at given historical moments. […] Identities are necessary constructions or necessary fictions…” (Nixon 1997, 301). If as Tierney points out, “a text is a construction among multiple constituencies - subject, researcher, narrator, author, and ultimately, reader” (Tierney 1994, 106), then perhaps there is a need to examine the dual texting processes in both research on masculinities and the production of masculinities through discourses of the self (Foucault 1988).
	In the case I cited earlier regarding my interview with a woman who imparted a detailed account of being date-raped, my particular subjective position seemed to allow me access to experiences that she might not have told a man who she perceived as straight. Is this kind of ‘passing,’ even when researching up, an ethical methodological strategy for researchers to employ? When interviewing men, gay or straight, our mutual readings of sexualities gave direction to my interviews. My curious gender and sexual positioning, and the resulting reaction to it by the participants, illustrates the impossibility of being a completely objective researcher who attempts a distinct separation between the researcher and the subjects of study. For in almost all interviews who I was, or who I was perceived to be, became unavoidably entangled in the interview itself and made it clear to me that, as researchers  “we are [undeniably] part of the social world we study” (Hammersley & Atkinson: 1983, 14).

Conclusion

	Much of my research experience to date has illustrated that it is impossible for an interviewer to present her/himself “truthfully” in an interview setting. Although we are unable to escape the multiple discourses that shape our understanding of the world, we are able to provide a critical analysis of the research process that can partly disrupt and demystify regimes of truth (Foucault 1988) even while participating in and contributing to particular constructions of truth through the production of academic literature. 
Because personal definitions of masculinity and femininity are contextually fluid and changeable, the interview process, not unlike gender (Butler 1990), becomes a performance that determines how knowledge is negotiated between two parties. Both interviewee and interviewer make presumptions based on their perceptions about each other. These presumptions, perceptions and mis-perceptions, in turn, become a part of the presented “results” of the research. Because it is impossible for either the interviewer or interviewee to present themselves fully and unconditionally as impartial and objective, the research itself becomes a reflection of the negotiated performance of the interview. As Wittgenstein has reflected: “One thinks that one is tracing the outline of a thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it” (1953/2002, 41). There is a need for greater researcher reflexivity to acknowledge the entanglement of masculinities, methodologies, and subjectivities. To be transparent about the contradictions inherent in the research process, positions the researcher to effect greater social change for:

The more society is conscious of its inner contradictions, the more powerfully revolutionary endevours are revealed within its culture. If, however, people are of the opinion that conditions cannot be essentially changed, or society and its possibilities will change within a reasonable period, then no one will feel obligated to seek fundamental changes. (Konder 1993, 219)
 
Research that attempts to address the need to critically rethink masculinities might do well to point to the way research and gender both produce ‘truth effects’ and to demystify this seemingly ‘common sense’ process. However, “it is not only a matter of the inclusion of multiple points of view, it is the recognition that any point of view is itself historical, social, and fluid, rather than yet another piece of the ‘truth’ to be discovered” (Frank 1997, 21). 

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