Chapter 1 - WHERE THEORY AND PRACTICE MEET: A WAY TOWARD TRANSFORMATION

Summary

It is usually at the edges where the great tectonic plates of theory meet and shift that we find the most dramatic developments and upheavals. When four tectonic plates of liberation theory – those concerned with the oppressions of gender, race, class and nature – finally come together, the resulting tremors could shake the conceptual structures of oppression to their foundations.

[P]erhaps it is at the margin, not at the center, where we can find authorization to work out alternatives that can remake experience, ours and others. In that sense, I suppose, the margin may be near the center of a most important thing: transformation. Change is more likely to begin at the edge, in the borderland between established orders.

This chapter is concerned with theory, the development of a framework to shape analysis of the subject matter – women healing. It will, therefore, consider the interrelationship of these ‘great tectonic plates’ that Plum-wood acknowledges – gender, race, class and nature – in the development of a lens for reading. It also prepares the methodological ground for the interpretation of the wide range of texts and text-types that constitutes this study.

Such a movement between theory and practice is not simply a move from hermeneutic to methodology. As Beverley Skeggs acknowledges,

[m]ethodology is itself theory. It is a theory of methods which informs a range of issues from who to study, how to study, which institutional practices to adopt (such as interpretative practices), how to write and which knowledge to use.