are the explicitly self-conscious ways in which women usedfocus groups as “research” to build “theory” about women’severyday experiences and to deploy theory to enact politicalchange. Interestingly but not surprisingly, this praxis-orientedwork was dismissed by male radicals at the time as little morethan “gossip” in the context of “coffee klatches.” (Ironically, thisdismissal mirrors the ways in which qualitative inquiry is peri-odically dismissed for being “soft” or “subjective” or “nonscien-tific.”) Nevertheless, second-wave feminists persisted in build-ing theory from the “standpoint” of women’s lived experiences,and their efforts eventually became a powerful social force inthe struggle for equal rights.In many respects, the CRGs of second-wave feminism helpedset the agenda for the next generation of feminist activism. AsHester Eisenstein (1984) noted, these groups helped bring per-sonal issues in women’s lives to the forefront of political dis-course. Abortion, incest, sexual molestation, and domestic andphysical abuse, for example, emerged from these groups aspressing social issues around which public policy and legisla-tion had to be enacted. Importantly, these issues had previouslybeen considered too personal and too intensely idiosyncratic tobe taken seriously by men at the time, whether they were schol-ars, political activists, or politicians. By finding out which issueswere most pressing in women’s lives, CRGs were able to articu-late what had previously been considered individual, psycho-logical, and private matters to the agendas of local collectivesand eventually to social and political agendas at regional andnational levels.Working within the movement(s) of third-wave feminism,Madriz used focus groups in powerful ways, some of which areevidenced in her 1997 book,Nothing Bad Happens to Good Girls:Fear of Crime in Women’s Lives.In this book, Madriz discussedall the ways in which the fear of crime works to produce aninsidious form of social control on women’s lives. Fear of crimeproduces ideas and dispositions about what women “should”and “should not” do in public to protect themselves, enablingdebilitating ideas about what constitutes “good girls” verses“bad girls” and severely constraining the range of everydaypractices available to women.With respect to research methods, Madriz called attention tothe fact that most research findings on women’s fear of crimehad previously been generated from large survey studies of bothmen and women. This approach, she argued, severely limits therange of thought and experience that participants are willing toshare and thus leads both to inaccurate and partial accounts ofthe phenomenon. In other words, it is hard to get people—women in particular—to talk about such sensitive topics astheir own fears of assault or rape in uninhibited and honestways in the context of oral or written surveys completed aloneor in relation to a single social scientist interviewer. This generalproblematic is further complicated by differences in power rela-
