Approach

The research steps outside of the usual biomedical or public health approach to sexual and reproductive health. Rather a postcolonialist, poststructuralist feminist approach and in-depth qualitative methodologies are utilised to illuminate the multiple and complex social processes embedded in sexualities and reproduction. While it is acknowledged that interventions (e.g. sexuality education programmes, good antenatal care, the provision of safe and accessible abortion, the provision of good postnatal care, and the promotion of non-discrimination in workplaces) have the potential to make a difference in men’s and women’s sexual and reproductive lives, there are also multiple ways in which such programmes and the surrounding public discourses concerning sexuality, gender and reproduction can serve in often unintended and unwitting ways to perpetuate rather than undermine existing gendered, racialised and class-based power relations and stereotypical assumptions. The CSSR research programme highlights how particular discourses, narratives, practices and power relations concerning sexuality and reproduction promote inclusion or exclusion, belonging or marginalisation, equity or inequity, justice or injustice, access to, or denial of, sexual and reproductive rights.

In addition to the theoretically informed empirical work, the research programme contributes to theoretical and methodological debates in sexualities and reproduction, in feminist theory and in qualitative research. In line with the theoretical paradigm, the methodologies used involve data collection through interviews, focus group discussions, observations, online discussions, gathering relevant media and policy documents, recordings of interventions, and focussed ethnography. Analytical methods include narrative analysis, discourse analysis, narrative-discursive analysis, conversation analysis, qualitative content analysis, and performative/performance analysis, depending on the project.

Last Modified: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:07:01 SAST