Les attentes dans la relation d’enquête. Ce qu’elles nous apprennent sur l’objet d’étude
Abstract
This text proposes a reflection about the researcher-participant relationship, resulting from fieldwork with pregnant women experiencing housing difficulties. The ethnographic research tracking these women, carried out in the Île-de-France region, consisted in close follow up, sometimes also for their partners, during their pregnancies and beyond. This method has made possible to study, in a longitudinal way, the challenges of a medical care supposed to be universal. The text focuses on consent, and even motivation, to participate in this ethnographic approach. In the course of the fieldwork, the expectations of the women being followed took on different meanings according to the context of their pregnancy and the roles they assigned to the ethnographer. These women’s reasons for being involved suggest a deprivation, of any kind, that the research relationship would fill. We discover that the participants’ expectations constitute a significant source for understanding the subject studied.
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