Predicaments of problems as a paradigm in the study of gender and sexuality

In this presentation I would like to share a particular dilemma I am confronted with. It concerns the issue that studying social problems and injustices are the legitimate ground in public health and development studies.

Most of our work focusses on a variety of harms in order to understand and, eventually, resolve them. The focus on problems, however, may result in a particular tunnel vision that limits what we may call the production of knowledge. This happens through a threefold process:

• the research agenda limits the scope of a topic to its problematic characteristics only,
• as a result it leaves out other non-problematic data, and
• it consequently builds (onto) a body of knowledge where problems dominate our perspective on the matters we study.

In other words, the question I want to tackle is whether our research epistemology is imperfect or that a focus on problems is a necessary paradigm in the study of social questions.

I will focus my presentation on the study of sexualities in Africa. During the last decades a body of knowledge on 'African sexuality' has taken root. A closer look reveals a subtle process of defining women’s sexuality in African societies as not just complex but fundamentally flawed, and men’s sexuality as not just complex but fundamentally coercive. I certainly do not want to deny the dreadful difficulties many people in Africa face, yet, I am suspicious about reinforcing a pessimistic research agenda.

See for more information:

Roy Huijsmans