Reading normalised knowledge production from a feminist perspective: A case study

This article presents a feminist reading of the introductory part of a Swedish university textbook from the field of social work. We show how a textbook like this, whose aim is to represent the “normal” state of a discipline, is conditioned by discursive circumstances beyond the control of individual authors, such as the normalisation of what is seen as central and what is seen as less important within the discipline, and how these circumstances reproduce patterns that still challenge feminist standpoints. Although pluralism and tolerance are the explicit aims of the editors, a seemingly neutral narrator voice, and the consequent way of presenting different research methods and theories as perspectives open for choice, come to hide existing hierarchies of power within the discipline. Pluralism and discrimination can thus actually coexist