Reflexive Methodology

Abstract

The subjects of this study are minority groups who, though strong in belief, are frequently vulnerable as individual believers who are swimming against the prevailing consumerist current. I shall therefore discuss not only the means by which I gained access to informants and the manner in which I collected data, but also how I deliberated on what might be a feminist way to proceed with my research and the conclusions I reached. In the interviewing and follow-up process, like Donna Luff (1999) and Ann Phoenix (1994), I discovered that the interviewer is not always in a position of power and that there were converse issues of power for which the body of feminist theory on interviewing had not prepared me.