| Abstrakt: |
ABSTRACTThis article discusses some of the methodological problems encountered when researching women's history from a feminist perspective. Three main categories of primary sources are identified ‐ official texts,which includes state, bureaucratic, institutional and legal texts, official reports of societies and institutions, memoranda and official letters; published commentary and reporting,which includes novels, films, photographs, advertisements, the writings of key political, social and literary figures, and newspapers; personal texts,which includes letters, diaries, autobiographies and life histories. Two main forms of analysis are described, descriptive analysisand perspective analysis.The strengths and weaknesses of each category of text for both forms of analysis are explored in relation to illustrative examples from Victorian and Edwardian England.[1] This article is based on a talk I was invited to give by Chris Pole and Professor Robert Burgess for the Economic and Social Science Research Council Research Seminar held at Warwick University, Coventry, United Kingdom, on 22 November 1991. I am grateful to all the participants in the discussion that followed for some lively comments. I would also like to thank two referees of Women's History Review,namely Liz Stanley and Deidre Beddoe, for their informative comments on the first draft of my paper. Any errors, however, remain my own. In this article I draw upon some previously published work: J. Purvis (1984) Understanding Texts,Unit 15 of Open University Course E205 Conflict and Change in Education: a sociological introduction (Milton Keynes: Open University Press) and J. Purvis (1985) Reflections upon doing historical documentary research from a feminist perspective, in R. Burgess (Ed.) Strategies of Educational Research: qualitative methods(Lewes: Falmer Press). |
