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

the voices of citizens through scholarly/civic research as participatory research not
only can serve to enlighten and raise our awareness of certain issues, but can also
produce critical reflexive texts that may help to mobilize social change. The
emphasis is upon methodologically and theoretically extending the legacy of phe-
nomenology through a hermeneutic, reflexive understanding in co-operation with
the stereotypical subjects of research working together across genres (socio-cultural
research/arts/community development), and in the process developing hybrid
texts generated from ethnographic research (fieldwork/life history interviews/
in co-operation with community development) and re-told through artistic re-
presentations. This renewed methodology is embedded within critical theory as
feminist praxis – for our task is not just to understand the world but also to seek
to change it, by addressing and challenging sexual and social inequalities with the
‘stereotypical subjects’ of research. We can do this not only with words, but also
with images, visual re-presentations, with ethno-mimetic texts, through cultural
sociology in practice.

Notes

1 See ‘Global refugees: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis’, with Bea Tobolewska, in J. Rugg,
and D. Hinchcliffe (eds) (2002) Divers (C)ities: Recoveries and Reclamations. Intellect Press:
Bristol and Portland, Oregon, USA. ‘Global refugees: citizenship, power and the law’ in Law,
Justice, and Power: An Impossible but Necessary Relationship. S. Cheng (ed.) University of
California at Irvine: Univesity of California Press, 2003. See also the special section in
Sociology, ‘Global refugees: towards a sociology of exile, displacement and belonging’, Spring
2003, 37.
2 See Hillis Millar’s excellent book Illustration (1992) for a thorough account of the develop-
ment and role of cultural studies as ‘performative praxis’.
3 For example, funded by the AHRB the author conducted PAR with ‘refugees’ from Bosnia-
Herzegovina, and together with community arts and community development we facili-
tated the re-presentation of life history narratives in photographic form (by the people
themselves as co-creators of the research) for exhibition in 1999–2001. ‘Global Refugees:
the Bosnians in Nottingham – past, present and future’ was accessed by a relatively wide
audience in the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham, and also discussed in local newspaper
articles. The latter served to re-present the Bosnian community in ways that challenged
negative stereotypes of ‘refugees’ and presented their stories of resistance, loss and exile
in creative, informative ways, thus validating their voices and creative reconstructions/
re-presentations of their lives before the war, through the war and now living in the UK.
This work was able to help a wider population than might ordinarily access the ethno-
graphic research data to see and better understand the experiences of displacement, loss,
‘longing’ and re-settlement in the UK which is part of the experience of being in exile, a
refugee, an asylum seeker. The ethnographic research was developed in collaboration with
the Bosnian Association, Nottingham, City Arts Nottingham and the City Council
Community Development. The latest work including PAR with an Afghan community in
London was exhibited with the Bosnian work at Watermans Multi-media Centre, High St,
Brentford, in November and December 2002.
4 This was presented at the BSA in Edinburgh 1998 and published as a visual essay in Feminist
Review’s special edition Sex Work-Reassed, October 2000.

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