This book marks a pivotal moment in the intensifying dialogue between the philosophical approach of critical realism and the fields of feminist theory and gender research. During the last three decades, these fields have been decisively influenced by poststructuralist perspectives. As such perspectives are increasingly being challenged, this book argues that critical realism is able to serve as a fruitful resource for carving out new paths for feminist theorizing and research. At the same time, it argues that feminist insights on gender and knowledge production have the potential to significantly enrich the field of critical realist philosophy as well. Hence, this book serves as a forum for a number of interventions that, in different ways, explore synergetic potentials as well as tensions between critical realist and various feminist perspectives. It engages in debates over the conditions of knowledge production and the relationship of knowledge to the world, offers new ways of understanding sex, gender and power, as well as the intersectional interplay of diverse power relations, and explores how critical realism relates to new materialist and postpositivist realist approaches. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Critical Realism.

Interest in agile development continues to grow: the number of practitioners adopting such methodologies is increasing as well as the number of researchers investigating the effectiveness of the different practices and proposing improvements. The XP c- ference series has actively participated in these processes and supported the evolution of Agile, promoting the conference as a place where practitioners and researchers meet to exchange ideas, experiences, and build connections. XP 2010 continued in the tradition of this conference series and provided an int- esting and varied program. As usual, we had a number of different kinds of activities in the conference program including: research papers, experience reports, tutorials, workshops, panels, lightning talks, and posters. These proceedings contain full - search papers, short research papers, and experience reports. Moreover, we have also included in these proceedings the abstracts of the posters, the position papers of the PhD symposium, and the abstract of the panel. This year we had two different program committees for evaluating research papers and experience reports. Each committee included experts in the specific area. This approach allowed us to better evaluate the quality of the papers and provide better suggestions to the authors to improve the quality of their contributions.

This book marks a pivotal moment in the intensifying dialogue between the philosophical approach of critical realism and the fields of feminist theory and gender research. During the last three decades, these fields have been decisively influenced by poststructuralist perspectives. As such perspectives are increasingly being challenged, this book argues that critical realism is able to serve as a fruitful resource for carving out new paths for feminist theorizing and research. At the same time, it argues that feminist insights on gender and knowledge production have the potential to significantly enrich the field of critical realist philosophy as well. Hence, this book serves as a forum for a number of interventions that, in different ways, explore synergetic potentials as well as tensions between critical realist and various feminist perspectives. It engages in debates over the conditions of knowledge production and the relationship of knowledge to the world, offers new ways of understanding sex, gender and power, as well as the intersectional interplay of diverse power relations, and explores how critical realism relates to new materialist and postpositivist realist approaches. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Critical Realism.