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••• Feminist Knowledge and Socio-cultural Research •••

in sociology was pivotal and best expresses my engagement with issues of gender, power,
knowledge, class, race, sexuality, and social structures, both empirically/methodologically
and theoretically. Feminist research is inherently linked to action. My earlier work on
feminist aesthetics looked to develop an understanding of the foundations in social life
for a feminist aesthetics of modernism rooted in an analysis of the transformative, liber-
ating potential of women’s art. Examples of empirical feminist research that have been
major influences are the work by Maria Mies with women in Cologne, India and Holland,
and Jalna Hanmer and Sheila Saunders’ community action work in Leeds on violence
against women and the photo therapy work of Jo Spence and Rosy Martin.
Contemporary literature on prostitution can be interpreted as following the conceptual
trajectory of feminist thought and analysis linked to modernity, postmodernity and the
shifts and transformations taking place in the 1960s but rooted in much earlier social and
cultural changes. Feminist theorists have engaged with discourses on prostitution and
health, the law, prostitutes’ rights and activism (McLeod, 1982; Phoenix, 1999; West, 2000;
Campbell and O’Neill, 2006). Historical analyses focus upon the relationships between
women working as prostitutes and the state, working-class communities and the regula-
tion of the body (Finnegan, 1979; Walkowitz, 1980; Corbin, 1987; Roberts, 1992). Sex
tourism, consumption and feminist debates on power, rights and knowledge (Truong,
1990; O’Connell-Davidson, 1998; Bishop and Robinson, 1997; Kempadoo and Doezema,
1998) add important challenges to debates that have focused on binary distinctions
between good and bad girls in the literature and public imagination (Nagle, 1997).

Participatory Action Research: Critical Theory in Praxis

At an international conference, Academic Knowledge and Political Power, organized by
Richard Harvey Brown at the University of Maryland, Department of Sociology, 20–22
November 1992, I was introduced to the work of Orlando Fals Borda and William F
Whyte as Richard saw parallels in my paper with participatory action research. My paper
at the conference focused upon two years of fieldwork with sex workers, epistemologi-
cally underpinned by my sociological approach – critical theory as feminist praxis.
Following this introduction to PAR, I embarked upon a process of assimilating and using
the methodology in my work with marginalized groups – sex workers, communities
1
affected by prostitution and asylum seekers and refugees. This research and accompany-
ing publications stress three major themes in my empirical work. First, the importance of
stories and storytelling. Second, the importance of alternative ways of re-presenting these
stories in visual/artistic form. I am interested in the ethno-mimetic re-presentations and
in exploring the language like quality of art. Third, the importance of working with peo-
ple as subjects through PAR. PAR is a social research methodology, which includes the
stereotypical subjects of research as co-creators of the research. It creates a space for the
voices of the marginalized to become involved actively in change or transformation.
Participatory action research is little used in the UK. Rarely will it get a mention in
research methods texts, other than in the literature on development, and it is most

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