Contribution short abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork as an embodied practice is influenced by a researcher’s pregnancy and various sociocultural understandings of pregnancy and birth. Risk discourse, medicalization and the commoning of pregnant and foetal bodies directly affect ethnographic knowledge production.

Contribution long abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork is an embodied practice that is influenced by intersectional identities and the researcher’s body. It is therefore not surprising that pregnancies and births affect the course of fieldwork and the ethnographic methodology applied. For example, the sometimes newly ascribed identity and social role of “mother” has a direct impact on social interaction and the overall research process.

In the limited literature on the topic of pregnancy and fieldwork, ethnographers discuss how pregnancies and births affect the planning and structuring of research processes and thus the design and implementation of research projects. For example, they describe how medical routines are often taken into account in these plans, but that these routines are also frequently reinterpreted and questioned. Risk discourse is central in the policing also of pregnant ethnographers, related to the medicalization of pregnancy and the commoning of pregnant and foetal bodies.

In this talk I discuss pregnancy in the context of ethnographic fieldwork and how different understandings and definitions of pregnancy and birth influence ethnographic field research. I argue that this is particularly the case when the researcher is pregnant, but also when breastfeeding and/or is accompanied by a toddler. Normative ideas and expectations of pregnant people (e.g. with regard to their mobility, social interaction and nutrition) are also applied to researchers, and may be adapted or questioned by them, with varying effects on the research.