Algunas notas sobre la índole secular del laico

I had been vaguely aware throughout the fieldwork phase of the project of a sense that participants were not addressing (at least as closely as I would have liked) the topic area introduced as each interview began – their post-abuse experience. That said, because my intention had been to encourage participants to be proactive in the interview, I was loathe to be any more directive than was necessary to ensure attention to my original research agenda. In the beginning I attributed this problem to poor interviewing skills, choosing to persevere and assuming/hoping that further experience would resolve the issue.

In hindsight, the best course would have been to call a halt to fieldwork when the issue surfaced in initial analysis of the first couple of interviews – an option that simply did not occur to me at the time. Another strategy would have been to allow a little more time for reflection between each interview. In this way I would have created space to allow a more searching investigation of what was potentially creating the difficulty – or even whether it was an important problem. However, several factors made consideration of this latter course problematic. As noted above, many participants lived a considerable distance from Palmerston North and this, coupled with time and financial constraints, demanded careful scheduling of interviews according to geographic location in order to enable each area to be covered within a fairly short time – generally over the course of a three day weekend. This resulted in a return from fieldwork weekends with up to six lengthy interviews and as I had undertaken to return transcripts to participants quickly, the transcription process took priority.

By extension, concentrated interviewing and transcribing meant that little time remained for anything other than cursory preliminary analysis. Therefore, while each interview received a number of readings during the fieldwork phase, these readings were – in the main – superficial and there was little opportunity for the level of engagement necessary to identify problematic issues. In effect, the fieldwork process meant that for several months I was largely immersed in participants’ stories, either actively talking with the women, transcribing their interviews or reading (and re-reading) interview transcripts – with little space available for more abstract theoretical reflection. While this process of immersion is recommended by advocates of most qualitative research methods (Tolich & Davidson, 1999), in this instance its influence was less than helpful. The ‘closeness’ made critical reading of the stories difficult – indeed, seemingly impossible – a process complicated further by an understanding of a feminist standpoint research framework that seemed to demand acceptance of such narratives as unproblematic (and largely

unquestioned) descriptions of women’s experiential reality. Adding to this complication was a sense of loyalty and debt that I felt towards the women who had so generously given of their time and emotional energy in recounting their experiences – thus creating

resistance on my part to the notion of reading or hearing their stories as anything other than straight-forward and accurate accounts.

The extent of the problem however only reached a coherent level of intelligibility and clarity during further analysis, with the realization that while the interview data did address in some way my original research area, their post-abuse experience was far from being a vital or central area of interest to participants. This realization meant that I was suddenly faced with a range of important decisions and choices. My starting point however - acknowledging that the data as gathered did not provide sufficient material related to the original questions, was unavoidable.

Such an acknowledgement though was hugely problematic in that it would inevitably (and severely) restrict any potential for in-depth analysis or comment – at least in relation to the original research questions. Any attempt to avoid or sidestep this recognition however would require that I do significant violence to participants’ stories in order to force their words into my research framework. Such a course was simply not an option. Such ‘choices’ brought another equally large issue to the fore as I was confronted with the question of what could be done to salvage the data gathered – data which I knew to be rich, even if not in my preferred area. To simply abandon the investment of time and energy already committed by both myself and participants seemed untenable. In an attempt to stave off this possibility I turned yet again to the women’s accounts, searching for a recovery strategy. This time however I approached the data aiming to avoid (as much as was humanly possible) any pre-determined agenda, reading participants’ narratives as simply that – accounts of significant or memorable experiences of living through abuse.

Once I returned to a more inductive reading of the transcripts and thus (somewhat ironically) assumed a more orthodox feminist research strategy - beginning from

women’s experience and accounts and allowing these to guide the research (Acker et al., 1983; Smith, 1987), my questions around the validity of my original research agenda were quickly answered. ‘Resilience’ and post-abuse life were simply not topics of

importance for these women. It was then a matter of returning once more to the interview tapes and transcripts in order to gain an understanding of participants’ priorities – rather than my own. Following this process, the project assumed a hugely altered shape. I now began to ask questions concerned with the relationship between shame and abuse: Why and how was shame so closely linked to the experience of abuse? Did a sense of shame influence and/or shape the women’s responses to the abuse in their lives? How did shame even become linked to victimization in the first place?