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Feminist Knowledge

CHAPTER ELEVEN and Socio-Cultural
••••••••
Research

Ethnomimesis, feminist

praxis and the

visual turn

Maggie O’Neill

Introduction

This chapter explores cultural sociology in practice by focusing upon the author’s par-
ticipatory action research with female sex workers. An interpretive feminist account of
women’s life histories, rooted in immersion in the feeling worlds of participants is re-
presented through fragments of women’s narratives, live art and photography. This
approach is defined as ‘ethno-mimesis’, and is rooted in four key concepts: (1) the inter-
relation between feminist thought and practice/praxis involving a methodological
process of immersion, interpretation, commentary and criticism; (2) the importance of
critical feminist theory; (3) interpretive ethnography as a way of understanding
women’s lived experiences, especially the development of critical standpoint episte-
mologies; and (4) cultural sociology as praxis – as transformative.
Through cultural sociology in practice (as praxis) sociologists can better understand the
socio-cultural-political (macro) relations and inter-relations, and the multiple (micro) ‘real-
ities’ we might want to transform. Accessing and documenting lived experiences in a
reflexive, critically aware way can lead us to a better understanding of psychic processes
and socio-cultural structures and processes. This knowledge in turn can help us to develop
transformative possibilities through conducting participatory action research (PAR).
The author’s concept of ‘ethno-mimesis’ is defined in this chapter through a combina-
tion of participatory action research and participatory arts informed by the work of
Adorno and Benjamin. Ethno-mimesis draws upon ‘feeling forms’ such as photographic

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