ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the epistemic grounds of our study - the principles of critical and feminist methodology and the ways in which they can be applied to the analysis of maternity care in Russia - and describes our research design and our methodological reflections on being sociologists in medical settings. The primary site of our research and source of our data is the Hospital - a highly technologically developed and well-equipped maternity facility, a complicated and closed institutional setting. We also supplement the data collected there with additional sources - data from other maternity care-related projects. We analyze our positioning in these ethnographic settings as a constant process of multiple negotiations and interactions with interlocutors, in which our professional identities and positions are sketched. We conceptualize this as a process of “becoming sociologists.” In particular, the chapter covers those situations of interactions in which the position(s) of the sociologist(s) was explicitly problematized (identification; examination; “doing sociology” in interaction; and creating trust). We come to conclusion that belonging to the circle of “ours” is important, but the position of a sociologist in a biomedical facility is fragile and must be repetitively proven in the field.
