Building a Meta-Queer Methodology: On Queer Ruptures and Procedures in Social Inquiry

• In Event: 308 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 07. Non-heterosexuality: Session II

Abstract

In Queer Methods and Methodologies, Kath Browne and Catherine Nash (2010) note that the term ‘queer’ is difficult and somewhat counterproductive to define, be it tied to an academic theory, political and activist approaches or a way to self-identify. Despite its various ambivalences, the authors want “to engage overtly with questions that intersect these workings of ‘queer’ together with (social science) methodologies, that is, those sets of logical organizing principles that link our ontological and epistemological perspectives with the actual methods we use to gather data.” (Browne and Nash 2010: 2) A recent call for papers in Women's Studies Quarterly on queer methods lays out that, “queer studies, much like women’s and gender studies, stakes its claims by working at once within, against, across, and beyond disciplinary boundaries, which provocatively blurs distinctions between ‘the field’ and ‘its methods.’” Placing the two in conversation, my question is whether ‘queer’ is something that can be applied to social science methodology in any discipline or can it, by definition, transform methodology and necessitate a kind of interdisciplinarity that is more fruitful? I suspect that the answer is the latter but generally, as graduate sociology scholars, we get rooted in a specific discipline and have no clear way to break out of disciplinary boundaries. In this article, I examine my scholarship for specific queer ruptures and procedures and briefly lay out some tenets for a ‘meta-queer methodology’ that can be applied to social inquiry across disciplines.

Author

• Simone Alexandra Kolysh, The CUNY Graduate Center