starting somewhere

Silence again. I've been spending the last month struggling with making order out of chaos; of making a narrative out of overlapping pieces of reality. I started somewhere. Here:

The evening of my first day at Millside hospital I had arranged to go out to dinner with a friend: part catch-up, part beginning-of-fieldwork celebration. I met her at the station and we walked through the dark streets of the city towards the restaurant. I talked about my day and, three hours later walking back, I was still talking. She listened and offered words of support whilst reminiscing herself of her first few days of fieldwork in a school three years previously. I told her about my feelings of anticipation and anxiety; about the midwife who had taken me into a room, shut the door and tearfully poured out her feelings of helplessness to me while I listened, feeling equally helpless. Without the ability to critically analyse such a new and strange experience, that first day I had simply felt it. I had felt the relief of finally beginning after weeks of bureaucratic delays; the anxiety of wondering what would happen to the woman who had just walked in in labour when there wasn’t a single free bed in the place and the distress I hadn’t anticipated – that from being around people in pain.

These emotions changed as the weeks went by. I learned that you can always find space somewhere and as the cries of pain gradually became background noise, I began to see patterns which I could begin to use to think ‘critically’ about what I saw, in a way that I hadn’t had the emotional space to do earlier on. Despite finding my own coping mechanisms for managing emotion during my fieldwork, these feelings, both the midwives’ and my own, remained key to the experience of fieldwork. To write an ethnography without them seems inaccurate and disingenuous, and yet finding a way of writing emotion into an academic text has been a challenge. As social scientists ‘we are unaccustomed to coming into contact with the personal life and vulnerabilities of the author, or with concrete details involving the human responses of particular, suffering people’(Ellis and Bochner 1999: 230). This is partly because of the traditional demands to maintain some kind of academic ‘distance’ in writing social science, but also because it is so difficult to articulate in words the complexity which emotion brings to a social context. I could spend this chapter simply describing in detail the process by which I negotiated access to the two units, passed through the NHS Ethics process and spent my time on the wards but I would be missing a layer of complexity which both enriches the story and makes it very difficult to tell.


Today I feel introspective, inspired and carpe diem-esque.

On the bus I listened to Lou Rhodes as the sun came through the window from between the orange leaves. In these two songs, she can say things better:


Lou Rhodes - Each Moment New

A wise man said to me 'don't underrate simplicity'. So I strip my life away and try to live each day by day and feel each moment new. Though so hard I try, so many failings cloud my eye and with troubled mind a sense of peace so hard to find to feel each moment new.

But I will be all I can be. Do everything with all I have in me. Life is a blessing, this much I know; and every lesson can only help us grow to feel...each moment new.

Another thing we missed, love is really all there is and together, sure most anything we can enjoy. To feel each moment new; to feel each moment new.



Lou Rhodes - No re-run

Did you ever wake one day and wonder what you'd lost? Was your life a hidden dream that only now you know the cost? There is no rerun, won't you hear me true. Do what's yours to be done and the world she smiles on you.

Did you ever love someone and never let them know? Emotion bursting at your seams but too afraid to let it show. There is no rerun, won't you hear me true. Live second to none and the world she smiles on you.

Don't you know you're a blessing put upon this earth. Can't you hear her calling? Realise your true worth. Are you gonna live your life or let it slip away? So busy waiting for tomorrow that you miss today. There is no rerun, won't you hear me true. Sell your dream for no one and the world she smiles on you.


Thanks Lou

Three days in the 'pool - Part 2

Notice how calling a post '...Part 1' cleverly implies there's a Part 2 and thus creates an obligation to provide it? See what I did there?

Spending time with lots of talkative, engaged and smart people both in presentation space and in the pub threw up all sorts of interesting ideas. Some of them are merely specific to my own work, some not. There was lots going on; it's taken me a few days to process and decide on what I really learned from the experience. So here goes: two relatively unrelated issues that I want to explore some more:

1) What happens when a queer researcher is doing fieldwork in a completely heteronormative space?

I really hadn't thought through the implications of being an out lesbian woman working in a maternity unit. This seems a bit of an oversight now: maternity units are overwhelmingly catering for heterosexual couples (of course not exclusively, but I didn't hear reference to a single queer woman during my time in either of the units I was spending time in). I also failed to find any lesbian or gay midwives and only perhaps one or two other healthcare workers who were either out (to me) or who I could identify by means of gaydar. The place is straight. Midwives gossip about their husbands and boyfriends, about their children and impending family weddings and, in attempting to keep up with the enthusiasm for wedding dresses, I passed.

I hadn't decided on an outing strategy before hand and, when faced with the realisation that perhaps I needed one, I opted for 'don't ask don't tell'. Then, in the one moment in the first unit when an 'ask' occurred, I bottled. I never lied; I just diverted the truth. The 'ask but didn't tell' moment felt significant for me. This was almost the first time I had done this in almost 10 years and I felt like I betrayed myself, my partner and the midwives who were trusting me with all sorts of their secrets. I was in a situation whereby I was trying to coax out other people's 'truths' about their lives; asking them to talk about themselves and what they care about and yet unwilling to do it myself. Things were a little easier in the second unit. It was smaller, I became closer to the people working there, I was more confident with what I was doing and they made it pretty clear they were easy with anything. I came out selectively but gossip will spread and I have absolutely no problem with that.

Being in an albeit temporary closet is not a familiar feeling for me and it's difficult to explain why I stayed inside. Perhaps those of you who work in similar places might understand what I'm getting at without having to dig around for a coherent explanation. I can't even find any academic articles about queer researchers' experiences doing research in straight places. There's lots on the advantages of being gay when doing research with gay people and one book 'Out in the Field' on gay anthropologists' stories of doing fieldwork, but at nearly 15 years old, things have moved on.

All I want is to read a shared story and now it looks like I'm just going to have to be the one who writes it.

2) Don't take your moral position for granted.

Tony Watson of Nottingham University was an outraged man. On stage he stood and, verging on tears, told us how during his time spent observing the life of a small family construction firm in England, the disreputable manager of the firm had run off with the wife of his contractor. The contractor had been abused and bullied by his boss, cheated out of money and, in the end, out of his relationship. Yes, it was a particularly masculine telling of the story; the women remained half-drawn as characters and as much as I liked Tony as a person, I would have pulled him up for that. But narrative failings aside, Tony had spent a lot of time with these families. He had come to know them well and through a long and drawn out tale of betrayal and anger, he tried to ask us what to do. Should he tell the story in published form as it was? Was this morally justifiable? How could he himself come to terms with his own feelings about the experience?

When it came to the audience discussion, one comment shifted my thinking in a way that I haven't experienced for some time. Rather than simply finding a way to deal with his outrage, Tony might choose to explore his moral position as historically and culturally situated, rather than simply taking a position of moral outrage. Why did Tony feel this way about the adultery? In that moment I realised how so often we assume our values are the way they are for a reason; that situations are essentially right or wrong. But when you think outside of yourself; when you look at yourself as someone born of a particular time and a political situation, your certainties begin to need justification. The joy of doing this kind of research, or simply of being able to see someone else's life so close up is that it allows you to understand your own, differently.

Three days in the 'pool - Part 1

This week I was in Liverpool: home of The Beatles, European Capital of Culture 2008, one time nurturer of slavery and, in the early 21st century, a really nice city. I thought it was great: a perfect mix of shiny new and decrepit, with quirky shops and bars and the many fruits of a committed investment in the arts this year (thanks to tonnes of money for the European Capital of Culture gig). The YHA youth hostel was also fantastic.

I feel bad for being surprised. My city has a reputation for being boring, ugly and industrial which I truly believe it only very slightly deserves. I am trying to remember not to diss until I have proof.

I enjoyed wondering around the city (I even went for an early morning run around the regenerated docks), but I was really there for a conference on the subject of ethnography. Ethnography for those of you as yet unenlightened, is a method of doing research whereby the researcher spends many hours, weeks, months and sometimes years integrating themselves into the culture of a village, school, hospital or any other area of a manageable size. You observe daily life, help out a bit and generally loiter with intent.

It has a dodgy history: steeped in colonialism and empire. Once upon a time ethnographers were those white guys who made trips into the jungle to observe the primitive lives of native savages. Here's Malinowski sort of demonstrating what I mean:

Things have moved on in so many ways. Yes, white guys still go into jungles to do research on people not like them, but these days with almost excruciating levels of reflection on ethics, power and ethnic difference. The discipline of anthropology has atoned for its sins by decades of penitence, guilt and reflexivity. People have begun to study cultures close to home: to make what they may have thought familiar, strange. The idea is that to truly understand people's daily lives (or at least their daily working lives), you need to pay attention to the tiny actions which no one notices because, well, they just do them. Think back to your time at high school: how many weird rules or happenings can you remember? I bet they all made perfect sense at the time but now....er....what were we thinking?

I think ethnography is a wonderful and very special method of research. It embraces uncertainty, bias, complexity, creativity and messiness. It doesn't try to order life in a way that it can never truly be ordered. In ethnographies, writing is seen as a craft, through which a picture of a tiny corner of life is painted. That painting is then used to help us understand whole other parts of the world. Like a little patch of purple on a mural which, if you notice it, suddenly makes you see all the other patches of purple where you never saw them before. The flip side is that you're left trying to craft a story from versions of the truth woven together, so complex you barely know where to begin.

The messiness and creativity in ethnographic research makes it open to attack for lacking such things as 'rigour' and truthtelling or that it's woolly and biased. I'm not going into why I think this is nonsense right now - explanations available on request; but to be in a space with 70 other people who all think ethnographic research is amazing is a rare and welcome treat.

I have also come to the conclusion that ethnographers are disproportionately extrovert people. Few shy people would put themselves through the experience of walking into somewhere and trying to persuade a large number of people to let them watch their work. Trust me, it's horrible. 70 extroverts in a confined space for three days with an enormous amount of free wine: fun, exciting, educational, hilarious, never dull but completely and absolutely exhausting.

A little piece of calm

Sorry it's been so long since the last post. It's not passed me by that I moaned that no one was reading the blog, dragged a load of people over to take a look and then provided no reward. Sorry.

It's been one of those weeks where it feels like there are a thousand things to do, the house is descending into chaos through lack of attention and I'm becoming progressively more manic. Time to calm down girl.

Part of the mania comes from the knowledge that I'm really coming to the end of my fieldwork and it's time to start the writing. My supervisor has heavily hinted (as in demanded) that I write a significant amount before term starts in October and teaching begins and I get distracted again. The pressure isn't kicking in in quite the right way. Instead I'm playing the trick of doing a million things that 'really need to be done right now', just to avoid doing the thing I don't want to do.

Being conscious of my busyness has also got me thinking about the timescale of a PhD. I'm now realising why these things take so long to do; and I'm saying that in a country where the aim is to get the whole thing done in 3 years rather than the 6+ it takes in most of the rest of the world. It's a process of getting into grooves in thought and action, losing them, reclaiming, getting back on the journey and then getting diverted and stuck in a jam, one after the other after the other, again and again. I suspect if we all filled every moment of our time in a constructive fashion we'd have it done in 18 months but, hey, who does that?

The thing is, when I'm in the maternity units, things are busy, but not for me. I sit still on a chair, drink tea and watch other people rush from one job to the other without a moment to breathe. I feel guilty most of the time for not being able to help. Yes, I answer the door, welcome people, I've started to take phonecalls, but in the end I'm on a different timescale. The 'help' I'm giving, hopefully, will come some years down the line. It's not an immediate thing in the way that birth is (once the interminable meandering start has settled into a regular rhythm).

Fieldwork is this funny mix of mania and calm. Rushing to the hospital, rushing home, rushing to do interviews and so on. But when I'm there the pace, for me, slows down. And now I'm getting to the end that slowness becomes a little boring. I think I might be experiencing what they call in the business 'theoretical saturation': when you're not really seeing anything new and it all becomes a bit same old.

It's time to go now and move to the next stage. I need to take a little of the calm with me and spread it over the rest of my life. Breathe, breathe...pause...write.

Hellooo? (can ya hear the echo?)

Ok, I admit it. I'm a performer. I like an audience. I don't think there's anything much wrong with that.

I thought when I started this blog that it would just be a place to dump things, safe in the knowledge that no one would read it anyway so I could say what I like as badly as I chose. Turns out that's not the case. OK, I was right that no one reads it, but actually, I'd sort of like some company.

Even if you haven't the faintest idea what I'm rambling on about - please drop by and say hello by comment. I'll reciprocate.

Promise.

I don't feel so fluffy now

I've been thinking again this week about the ethics of ethnographic research. Not so much the NHS version of ethics, which usually runs along the lines of: 'if you are planning on injecting your participants with some little-researched substance, make sure you've got their signature first' or 'our 36 page ethics review form which will probably eat away six months of your life is only there to ensure the safety of patients'. (Cynical? Moi?)

No, I'm more concerned about the subtle ways in which the seemingly harmless process of collecting people's stories can become a sensitive, problematic and sometimes frought experience.

I'm not sure I could explain what I'm trying to say any better than Alison Bechdel already has. Alison is the author of 'Fun Home', a graphic-memoir of her childhood growing up in a house full of secrets and denial. It's an astounding book. But aside from the story, what is gripping about this book is that it illustrates how 'truth' is a shaky concept. In the book, Alison writes her version of the truth, a version which is different to that of others in the story. There is no 'real' story about what happened, just interpretation: was her father's death suicide or a tragic accident? Who knows. But it also doesn't really matter. Alison believes it was suicide, and so suicide it becomes.

In an interview with The Guardian in 2006, Alison reflected on what happens when you write your own truth, and when that truth is different from the truth of other characters in your story:

"I've discovered that there's something inherently hostile about having someone else write about your life, no matter how well-intentioned that other person might be," Bechdel says. "It violates their subjectivity. That's the really awful thing about this book: I made my mother and my brothers objects in my version of this story."

That's ethnography. I am making people objects in my story. I can't get round the fact that I am writing about the midwives' lives and whatever I interpret as the 'truth' simply becomes the truth, for the purpose of the thesis at the very least. I listen, I watch, I respect what they have to say about their world but in the end I'm the one who does the writing.

I remember being paralysed by the analysis of my masters interviews. What if I got it wrong? What if I misinterpreted their stories? What if they just didn't like what I said? What if they felt betrayed? It was only when I concluded that there probably wasn't anything I could do about it that I could actually begin to write the story I wanted to write. And so the ethics became even more dodgy. How come I get to decide how the story goes?

So I'm back in that place and having to come to the same conclusion as last time. The only problem that this time I've got to know these people so well. They've pretty much become my friends; now I'm worried I'm about to slowly violate their subjectivity and there wasn't anything about that on the NHS Ethics Committee form...

thought for the day

A couple of years ago I went on a writing retreat with a group of feminists from the university. We hung out in a Welsh manor house and did some writing workshops. Some people brought their teaching prep, some didn't. We got pissed, talked politics, went for walks, had fun.

I had the uncommon luxury of not having anything to do except write whatever I wanted to write. I got out the transcripts of my interviews with midwives I made for my masters dissertation and I reworked their stories. Little nuggets of story-truth trimmed and tightened until there was practically nothing left. Never quite finished, but presentable:

Ella’s Story

I was cycling past that day when her husband called me in
to promise to be their midwife.
- Just like before, Ella, when Ashra was born

So I pulled a few strings, as you do.
We were six women in a small, hot room.

Out in the street the ice-cream van and its off-key Greensleeves passed
Leaving me, one hand on a perineum
the other clutching a 99

oh yes, flake please
no sauce

Quickasaflash silver-fish baby slid into my hands.

The ice-cream fell, and as it melted into the carpet they gawped.
Stopped short mid-lick.
Ice-cream running down between their fingers as the blood ran down between mine.

Alison’s Story

He hit her about.

I’d asked her, like we ask them all and this time particularly because of her broken jaw. But it’s difficult when there’s a check-box to fill; and she’d stayed shtum with him sat right there.

She did tell me, at 2 am; when he’d kicked off and, right then and there, she walked.
Out the door, down the road, ignoring the shouts, she was purposeful and unusually proud.

She’d drop in to see me, I’d arrange visits on her own, helped her set herself up in her new home. I like to think I played a part in her decision to leave; just quietly raised her confidence. Made her feel special for the very first time.

I see lots of women like her, but she’s the one I remember. When people ask.

making the tea and keeping people happy

In the course of my PhD I have made many cups of tea. Tea, in fact, has been the key to the success of my fieldwork. On my very first day at Millside Hospital I wrote in my fieldnotes, with impressive foresight I think: 'That kettle and I are going to be good friends'; and so I was right, we would be.

What my making endless cups of tea symbolised was someone taking care of the midwives I was working with. Taking care of someone is emotionally and physically tiring; it is something that midwives do all shift, every shift and yet caring needs to be passed from one person to another like an endless circle of karma. You cannot care for someone unless you are cared for yourself. The surprise and delight of the midwives at my offers of 'tea, anyone?' was both sweet and sad; they didn't appear to be cared for in a way that enabled them to have the resources to care for others.

I don't think that the structure of supervision, unique and central to the midwifery profession, is enough. Yes statutory supervision was an astounding achievement for the fledgling profession in 1902; it has helped ensure the safety of women and babies; it has provided some kind of emotional support for midwives, but there is too much complacency. There is an assumption that midwives can cope with a job in which they are supporting vulnerable women in pain and often dealing with grief as well as happiness, without regular counselling or emotional support. Simply having a statutory annual supervision leaves them open to exhaustion and burn out. I'm not the first person to notice that.

Care of midwives is crucial to the future of the profession. Empowering midwives in order that they may empower women is crucial. Giving midwives the space to articulate their own concerns so that they can advocate for women is crucial. Tea is also nice. I didn't mean to be doing these things during my fieldwork, it was just that I had the time where no one else did. I sat and listened to their stories, I became a sounding board and counsellor, I made tea.

The difficulty now is managing the expectation that change might come from what I have done. That the 'evidence' that I write in a thesis can actually act as political leverage within the Trusts where I have spent time, in order that midwives might be better cared for. I hope so; but I don't feel I can promise. Perhaps the way will come afterwards. Perhaps I need to stick around: make a fuss, listen, speak, write and fight after this thesis is done. And perhaps I will.

Here at last

I've come late to blogging. The party started years ago and I've been the shy girl in the corner, watching, reading, following, but never quite daring to say anything.

So, I have decided that things have got to change.

My plan is that this blog is a place to deposit ideas, musings, theories, rants and other detritus from the process of writing my PhD over the coming year and will hopefully continue beyond. One of it's primary roles is a strategy for breaking through writer's block; the idea being that when I'm writing on a website that practically no-one reads, with no restrictions of academic convention or rigourous use of evidence that somehow I'll be able to actually write.

This seems to be going well so far. I have written this post in about 1 minutes 30 seconds. Believe me, if this was an academic article I would have been sweating for about 3 hours by now. Perhaps I could just keep a blog for a year, print it out and submit that, instead of the enormous soup of complexity I am about to start cooking.