Getting Lost: Feminist Efforts Toward a Double(d) Science (Suny Series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences)
In this follow-up to her classic textTroubling the  Angels, an experimental ethnography of women with AIDS, Patti Lather  deconstructs her earlier work to articulate methodology out of practice and  to answer the question: What would practices of research look like that  were a response to the call of the wholly other? She addresses some of the  key issues challenging social scientists today, such as power relations  with subjects in the field, the crisis in representation, difference,  deconstruction, praxis, ethics, responsibility, objectivity, narrative  strategy, and situatedness. Including a series of essays, reflections, and  interviews marking the trajectory of the author's work as a feminist  methodologist,Getting Lostwill be an important text for courses in  sociology of science, philosophy of science, ethnography, feminist  methodology, women and gender studies, and qualitative research in  education and related social science fields."The gift of this text is the seriousness with which Lather brings feminist  poststructural thinking to bear on urgent issues of knowledge creation as  they relate to actual lives. Who wouldn't love a book that asks for a `less  ascetic, pious science,' gets naked methodologically and otherwise, and  draws on theological writings?" -- Susan Talburt, author ofSubject to  Identity: Knowledge, Sexuality, and Academic Practices in Higher  Education"Lather opens up to full scrutiny her own work as an ethnographer,  including stuck places, false starts, and dead ends. This deconstruction  allows the reader to see the usefulness of working the ruins. She puts  `post' ideas to work in terms of what research means and does, and posits  `getting lost' as a way of knowing and thus enriches feminist methodology,  critical ethnography, and philosophy of science. This book made me hopeful,  for the first time in a long while, that social science after the critique  of science is possible." -- Mary Margaret Fonow, coeditor ofBeyond  Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.