Power, pregnancy and prison:the impact of a researcher's pregnancy on qualitative interviews with women prisoners

This chapter explores how a researcher’s pregnancy impacted on a series of qualitative semi-structured interviews with women prisoners. I will argue that the utilising of a more general feminist approach which is sympa- thetic to the needs of women and which has the notion of reflexivity and a commitment to less exploitative research at its centre was in the case of this research preferable to adopting a full feminist standpoint. Feminist standpoint theory reflects the view that ‘women (or feminists) occupy a social location that affords them/us a privileged access to social phenom- ena’ (Longino 1993, 201). In Money, Sex and Power (1983), Nancy Hartstock claimed that it was women’s unique standpoint within the social world that provided the justification for feminists’ claims at truth. In the research on which this chapter is based, commonality was certainly found between myself and the women prisoners in terms of both our gender and our experi- ences surrounding children, pregnancy and motherhood and this enhanced the research process. There were, however, other differences that our shared gender could not overcome, for example, in terms of class, power and sta- tus that meant our experiences of the social world were poles apart. I could not therefore claim to have epistemological privilege as other inequalities between us had to be considered and the approach used here therefore, while feminist in nature, stops short of a full feminist standpoint

Once Upon a Problem

This article investigates the specificity of sociological materials and methods in relation to other disciplines and practices (art, literature, science and journalism) and questions the opportunities for sociological attentiveness, experimentation and failure in the context of contemporary UK professional, institutional and academic/intellectual constraints. It asks whether materials and methods are ‘sociological’ to the extent that they tell about the problems of society, or whether it is the unique relation of sociology to its materials and methods that defines sociological practice. Exploring these questions in relation to a project that was researched and written during an extended period of unpaid leave (ie outside the profession and the institution), the article also examines some of the consequences of a changed relation between sociology and experience. What would be the implications if the aim of sociology was not only to theorize and explain experience but also, sometimes, to be an ‘informed provocation’ of experience? The second part of the article considers what the concept of ‘make-believe’ might offer sociology – not in terms of what sociology is, but rather in terms of what it does with its materials and methods. Finally, the article returns to the most common material that sociologists work with – words – and asks how it is possible to stay receptive to the vitality of words as forces in the research process