Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä is Professor and Head of Cultural Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, and Docent (Adjunct Professor) at the University of Turku. She is a recognized specialist in studying the changing European soundscapes. During her research career she (author name Järviluoma) has published 139 international and national refereed articles, books, chapters and other publications, among others the results of the large international follow-up project Acoustic Environments in Change (2009) and the widely used textbook Gender and Qualitative Methods (Sage 2003; also SageRM Online 2010). Her whole publication career has been permeated by a strong interest in research methodology, the history of disciplines, interdisciplinarity, and gender. She is the General Secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and the President of the Finnish Society for Cultural Studies. She participates in the editorial boards of four international journals, and is a steering board member of the Nordic Network on Researching Music Censorship (NORDFORSK 2010-2013. She has intensively been involved in bridging the gulf of theory and practice in the participatory music ethnography project Becoming Audible! and its outcomes.
Gender and Qualitative Methods outlines the practical and philosophical issues of gender in qualitative research. Taking a social constructionist approach to gender, the authors emphasize that the task of the researcher is to investigate how gender//s is//are defined, negotiated and performed by people themselves within specific situations and locations. Each chapter begins with an introduction to a specific method and//or research subject and then goes on to discuss gender as an analytical category in relation to it. Areas covered include: field work; life story; membership categorisation analysis; and analysis of gender in sound and vision. Written in a clear and accessible way, each chapter contains practical exercises that will teach the student methods to observe and analyze the effects of gender in various texts and contexts. The book is also packed with examples taken from women and men's studies as well as from feminist and other gender studies.
