Grounded Theology: Adopting and Adapting Qualitative Research Methods for Feminist Theological Enquiry

Mainstream Theology and Experience

One of my methodological concerns is to situate my work in relation to the theological concept of ‘experience’. Mainstream theologians frequently employ the so-called ‘Methodist quadrilateral’ of scripture, tradition, reason and experience (Stone and Duke, 2006: 45–46) as resources for theological reflection and insight. Whilst noting that all life is experience, Stone and Duke state that for theologians the category has the specific meaning of ‘various encounters with God, and for the awareness of God that comes through faith’ (Stone and Duke, 2006: 54). For David Tracy the theological interpretation of experience is undertaken in relation to experiences of text, image, symbol, event, ritual, or persons (Tracy, 1994: 56). Alistair McGrath acknowledges the four sources above as the bedrock of theological reflection and, in respect of experience, states that the term has acquired a specialized meaning where religion is concerned, relating to the ‘inward and subjective world of experience, as opposed to the outward world of everyday life’ (McGrath, 1997: 223). Thus, in the mainstream, theological recourse to experience is rarely recourse to the kinds of quotidian experiences from which ethnography draws its data.

Feminist Theology and Experience

In feminist research as a whole, and in feminist theology specifically, the category of experience has paramount importance. In her review of feminist theology’s methodological resources, Linda Hogan identifies two interwoven strands: ‘women’s experiences of oppression under patriarchy’; and ‘engaged action for change’ (Hogan, 1995: 16). Asserting that feminist theology emerged with the intention of claiming women’s experience ‘as authentic human experience’, Hogan nevertheless notes that the term ‘experience’ is somewhat uncritically deployed, in an often essentialist fashion and no homogeneity can be attributed to it (Hogan, 1995: 11). These caveats notwithstanding, however, Hogan concludes that, ‘The consultation of specifically women’s experiences…[is what] gives feminist theology its distinctiveness’ (Hogan, 1994: 705).

Pamela Young also asserts that women’s experience is ‘the primary category feminists have added to theological methodology’ (Young, 2000: 22). Like Hogan, Young notes a lack of explication of the term, stating that it is ‘used more often than it is defined’ (Young, 2000: 49). In an effort to rectify this, Young assesses that experience is always, first and foremost reflected-upon rather than immediate (Young, 2000: 49), and is experience not of everything in general but of GOD/DE in particular (Young, 2000: 51). She outlines five types of experience that count: bodily, socialized, feminist, historical and individual, contending however that this last ‘cannot be normative’ (Young, 2000: 67), but ‘can act as a catalyst’ (Young, 2000: 56) to wider theological reflection based on the ‘collectivity of women’ (Young, 2000: 69). Thus women’s experience becomes both norm and source for theologizing, along with scriptural and non-scriptural texts and traditions, and wider human experiences (Young, 2000: 19–20).

Like Hogan, Rebekah Miles contends that the category is problematic because of its false suggestion of commonality of experiences (Miles, 2001: 11), but notes that one commonality that does span the range of feminist theology is ‘the appeal to diverse experiences’ (Miles, 2001: 12). Ramazanoglu and Holland argue that feminist theorizing addresses not simply women’s experience but looks more widely ‘at gendered lives’ (Ramazanoglu and Holland, 2002: 147). From the point of view of my methodological approach, theologizing around gendered lives and experiences—where experience is defined both as something personally encountered or undergone and as the total of conscious events that make up an individual life—as much as from text and tradition, is claimed as a legitimate and potentially fertile ground for feminist theological reflection.

Qualitative Methods in Theological Enquiry

Apart from faithfulness to women’s experience, however vaguely defined, there is no unanimity amongst feminist theologians as to the suitability of one methodological approach over another. In practice, however, few make use of qualitative ethnographic research methods in collecting and analysing data of experience. These are more usually assembled from published factual and fictional/poetic accounts, generalized from analyses of oppression, and/or extrapolated from the personal reflected-upon experiences of the theologian herself, but are rarely gathered in the form of stories from individuals specifically interviewed for a particular piece of research. Feminist theology is generally an ‘intense—and often solitary—communion with texts’ (Scharen and Vigen, 2011: 3), the product of which is more ‘texts-about-texts’ (Fulkerson, 2011: xi). Notable exceptions to this are Mary McClintock-Fulkerson’s Changing the Subject (Fulkerson, 1994), Jone Salomonsen’s Enchanted Feminism (Salomonsen, 2002), Theology by Heart by Ellen Clark-King (Clark-King, 2004) and the aforementioned collection of papers edited by Scharen and Vigen (Scharen and Vigen, 2011).

Interviews as Unreliable Sources

The use of interviewing as a means of collecting data is not unproblematic. Although frequently the first choice for data collection in an ethnographic enquiry, based on a commonly-held assumption that interviewing is ‘prospecting’ for ‘true facts and feelings’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 2002: 114), some commentators (e.g. Atkinson and Delamont, 2006; Silverman, 2007) are highly critical of the prominence this method has achieved. Silverman (2007) cites a cultural obsession with personal interviews in what he calls the Interview Society (2007: 43), which buys into a romanticized view of personal interviews as capable of giving coherent access to people’s authentic ‘deep interiors’ (2007: 46).

Judith Butler asserts that none of us can give a coherent account of ourselves (2005: 53). This does not preclude narration—we still tell our stories, despite the fact that our accounts have no ultimate coherence—but it does ‘produc[e] it “in a fictional direction”’ (2005: 37), making for a so-called crisis of representation (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005: 18–19), the product of an unreliable narrator and an equally unreliable researcher. Silverman, however, tempers repeated assertions that all narrators are perforce unreliable with the acknowledgement that this does not therefore render interview data unsatisfactory (2007: 54). In addition, he notes that many qualitative researchers turn to the interview not in search of ‘deep interiors’ but for the far more pragmatic reason that, when there are experiences about which we know little or nothing, we quite sensibly ask people who have had those experiences (2007: 54). It was in that spirit, rather than in any romantic search for my narrators’ deep interiors, that I addressed myself to the narratives of Trans* people.

Grounded Theory Overview

While participant observation is the methodological approach most commonly deployed in the theological studies cited above, and the one recommended by Fulkerson as ‘a marvelous way to initiate access to [real life experiences]’ (Fulkerson, 2011: xi), I opted instead for a grounded theory approach to the collection and analysis of data from my interviews. Initially developed in the late 1960s by two sociologists, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, grounded theory has evolved along two slightly different paths (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 9). For this project, I used that version of the method developed by Strauss and Corbin and first published in 1990, for reasons that I outline below. The basic principle of grounded theory is that the researcher derives insights from the data rather than imposing preconceived theory upon the data. Theory thus derived, it is claimed, ‘is more likely to resemble the “reality” [of the situation being researched] than is theory derived by putting together a series of concepts based on experience or solely through speculation’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 12). Characteristic of the method is its rigorous and orderly approach (Glaser, 1978: 2) that includes all the steps from data collection to the finished writing (Glaser, 1978: 15). As a way of thinking about the world, it takes seriously what narrators have to say about that world (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 6), whether or not any true resemblance to reality might actually be claimable.

Glaser emphasizes the methodical, highly-structured and highly scienticized nature of the process, insisting that none of the steps from data collection through many layers of coding and analysis to final writing may be skipped, with a warning that skipped steps will produce flaws in the final product (Glaser, 1978: 16). Strauss and Corbin, however, state that grounded theory is both science and art, requiring one to be not only systematic but also creative (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 13). They emphasize the imaginative, fluid and flexible aspects of their approach, stating that they offer guidelines and suggested techniques rather than a set of inflexible commandments (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 4), and acknowledge that many researchers will approach grounded theory as a ‘smorgasbord’ from which it is perfectly right and proper to pick and choose elements, sometimes blending techniques from elsewhere with the authors’ own (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 8–9). Since some of the central concerns of my study were with fluidity and flexibility generally, Strauss and Corbin’s iteration of grounded theory was more apposite for its development of researcher characteristics such as: suppleness and openness, an ability to sustain ambiguity and a willingness not to pin things down too soon (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 6); an appetite for ‘the interplay between [the researcher] and the data’, drawing on one’s own experiences as foundations for deriving insights (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 5); scepticism in relation to existing theories and a desire to measure these against the data; and a willingness to be shaped by, as much as to shape, the data (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 42).

Grounded Theory Process

Strauss and Corbin state that the essence of grounded theory is that concepts emerge from the data rather than being forced onto it, a process that requires sensitivity to the ‘aha moments’ that result from the interplay of the data with the mind of the researcher (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 33–34). This requires the researcher to take seriously what the narrator says and attempt an accurate representation of the narrator’s voice (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 43), acknowledging that, while the account one has been given is neither full nor final, ‘the data do not lie’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 45); approached openly and sensitively, stories will tell us something new and something true about the way lives are lived.

The bulk of the analysis derives first and foremost from the data, with recourse to the literature being made only when the coding summons the researcher there (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 44). The literature is a two-edged sword; familiarity with one’s discipline enhances one’s sensitivity to the data but can also block creativity and the serendipitous ‘aha’ moment. Moreover, given that concepts arise from the data, one cannot know in advance what literature will be most valid (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 49). It is this process that I applied to the analysis of interview texts, discussed below, knowing however that aspects of it are open to critique (see, for example Thomas and James 2006; Allan, 2003; and Charmaz, 2005). A detailed consideration of this matter is beyond the scope of this article, however.

Theologizing ‘Experience’

It is, of course, erroneous for me to claim that my theologizing is of narrators’ experiences themselves, when what in fact I theologized was a text produced by my, as opposed to anyone else’s, transcription of a digital sound recording of an interview. This text was at least two steps removed from the actual process that took place between the narrator and me and, what is more, obtained from narrators upon whose stories I could not rely for any authenticity, whose narrations were shaped by their own positionality, by the information I gave them in advance and by the form of the invitation to speak that I issue at the interview, among many other factors. None of this, however—the unreliable narrator, my influence on the outcome, the fictive nature of the final text, the unfathomable gulf that separates what was originally experienced from what I have finally excerpted onto the page—invalidates my claim that individual experiences are legitimate texts upon which to base theologizing.

Meister Eckhart states: ‘All beings are words of God… / Sacred books are we, for the infinite camps in our souls / Every act reveals God and expands His being’ (Ladinsky, 2002: 112). This reflection on human beings as both words from GOD/DE—creatures spoken into being by an act of Divine creation—and books about GOD/DE—creatures whose every act tells us more of the nature of the Divine creator—is at the heart of my theological understanding that each individual has something different to tell of imago Dei. The notion that every act reveals GOD/DE, not just the good or the beautiful or the numinous, is central to what my project seeks to convey. By collecting stories and analysing their themes as speaking of Divine presence, I seek to make known something of each narrator’s existence as a word from GOD/DE and a book about GOD/DE, regardless of how utterly unreliable we are as ÆR ² creatures. What I theologized around was not, therefore, narrators’ models of GOD/DE, but rather the narrators themselves as each a unique book from GOD/DE, each text in some way demonstrative of imago Dei.

A Grounded Theology Approach

As a British Quaker, my experience of worship is in unprogrammed ³ meetings, in which we sit in silence, listening for the ‘still, small voice’ of the Spirit, waiting to discern what it is that GOD/DE requires of us individually and corporately. Fundamental to Grounded Theology is my deployment of an analogous practice of listening or ‘silent waiting’, throughout the research process, not only in the interview situation but also at the transcription, analysis and writing-up stages, as I discuss below. As a theologian, it is impossible for me to separate my spiritual life from my academic work. And since much of my spiritual experience is in silent Quaker worship, silent waiting is my primary mode of address when faced with non-coherent data of whatever kind.

In After Method (Law, 2004), sociologist John Law commends the Quaker practice of silent waiting as one of a number of valid methods for manifesting otherwise non-coherent data (Law, 2004: 147). Law asserts that, since life is messy, incoherent, inconsistent and impossible to universalize, we need to think about methods of enquiry that are ‘broader, looser and more generous’ (Law, 2004: 4), that acknowledge that there is no security in our data, no unified world of knowables (Law, 2004: 9), that are slow and uncertain, risky and troubling (Law, 2004: 10), quiet, vulnerable and modest (Law, 2004: 11), and focused on process not product, paying attention to how what we do crafts the realities of which we speak (Law, 2004: 152). Silent waiting is one such method, with the potential, asserts Law, to ‘reduce the dazzle of noise and make the kind of silence that will allow the faint signal of…spiritual mystery to be revealed, made audible, and amplified’ (Law, 2004: 118).

Transgressive data—dreams, emotions, sensual experiences, prayerful attention—are arguably as legitimately part of an enquiry as ‘real’ or ‘hard’ data, though rarely recognized as such. But in theology, perhaps more than anywhere else, since theology deals with that which we must take on trust, such data should be acknowledged. Laurel Schneider asserts that ‘Theology that pretends a distance from prayer is fooling itself’ (Schneider, 2008: 5), while Pete Rollins declares that theology should be ‘a place where God speaks’ rather than ‘that which speaks of God’ (Rollins, 2006: xiii). Of course, to claim my theology as a place where GOD/DE speaks may not demonstrate quite the quiet, modest vulnerability that Law commends above. Nevertheless, since attention to the still small voice of GOD/DE for ‘accidental epiphanies’ and ‘spirited accidents’ (Poulos, 2009: 50) to guide my efforts is fundamental to my self-understanding both as a spiritual person and as a theologian, I cannot but hope that this is indeed what this Grounded Theology exhibits, not with any security that what I perceive demonstrates ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, but as a risky endeavour that offers the ‘grown-up regard’ of being ‘fully present to the bodies of others…[that] shatters illusions and static categories’ (Schneider, 2008: 205) with regard both to my narrators and to GOD/DE.

Reciprocity

Anne Oakley (1981) asserts that the classic non-interventionist dominological ⁴ relationship between researcher and researched is depersonalizing to both interviewer and interviewee (Oakley, 1981: 37) to the point of being ‘morally indefensible’ (Oakley, 1981: 41). It is thus imperative to consider issues of reciprocity in relation to concerns with the balance of power. Early feminist assumptions were that an encounter that is conducted more as a ‘conversation between equals than as a hierarchical interview in which the interviewer holds all the power’ (Etherington, 2004: 39) would serve to minimize differences in status and create a climate in which intimate sharing by the researched was seen as being valued, honoured and reciprocated (Etherington, 2004: 62). Often, assessment of reciprocity is accompanied by essentialist claims that women are by nature conversationalists and thus better at cooperatively ‘constructing meaning together’ (DeVault, 2002: 94). bel hooks, however, contests the idea that women speakers automatically treat each other with seriousness and respect, asserting that white women do not listen to black women in this way (DeVault, 2002: 90). Moreover, since Oakley, reciprocal strategies have been re-evaluated on the grounds that they can engender manipulation and ‘leading’ of conversations by either party (Olesen, 2005: 255).

While, after due consideration of the arguments for and against, I wholeheartedly concurred with the view that expressions of reciprocity are an essential element of ethical interviewing, for this project I decided against conversational ‘joining in’ as a way of demonstrating that reciprocity. I decided thus for two main reasons: first, because I did not want to lead the conversation but rather follow it wherever the narrator chose to take it; and second, because I saw no reason to make the conversation about me on any significant level during the time the narrator allotted to the interview. This does not mean that I did not share anything of my own life and experiences outside that space, or that I did not intervene verbally and non-verbally to reassure the narrator of my attention and to keep the narrative flowing, but rather that the space of the interviews was wholly devoted to what the narrators wanted to say about themselves.

Positioning myself as a minimally interventionist and deeply attentive listener more than an active questioner is highly significant in the process of Grounded Theology. Silently waiting on a narrator in this way creates not only ‘a space in which anything can be heard’ from the narrator but also a space in which GOD/DE ÆRSELF might hear and be heard, ‘a space for God to attend to the people’ (Muers, 2004: 149). Furthermore, giving up the power to speak in favour of accepting the role of listener can stand as an overt renunciation of power (Muers, 2004: 161).

Listening

As Holstein and Gubrium note (Holstein and Gubrium, 2000: 130), absolute silence in an interview stands in danger of bringing an interaction to an end. However, the act of paying attention through focused listening, in which the listener is intent only on the narrator her/himself and not also on the need to contribute to a conversation, ‘can be a powerful sign of regard—and caring—for one another’ (Ropers-Huilman, 1999: 31). This is especially so if the interviewer begins with a ‘not-knowing attitude’ (Etherington, 2004: 21), as I did, asking the narrator to tell me what the person thought I needed to know rather than to answer questions that I needed to be answered, a process described in more detail below. This shift in relationship from interviewee and interviewer to narrator and listener was an important one for me in terms of my understanding of how I controlled and gave up control of the process, although my narrators may have experienced this differently. My silence was, of course, action rather than non-action, as productive of consequences for the narration as conversational reciprocity, no better than any other approach but, I believe, offering some rebalancing of power in giving the narrator almost total control over the content of their story within the parameters that my interview invitation had set.

Giving attention to a narrator does not require joining in to exhibit reciprocity; listening is always a mutual act of seeing and being seen (Jones, 2004: 190). As an attentive listener, I offered narrators a hearing that sought to be mild, modest, moderate, available, vulnerable, welcoming, patient, tolerant, receptive, attentive and respectful (Muers, 2004: 56–57), that ‘allow[ed] unexpected or unexplored possibilities to emerge’ for both of us (Muers, 2004: 59). This is the very opposite of the objectionable non-interventionist interview situation that Oakley describes, because I expressed wordless but fully engaged reciprocity, a ‘faithful’ attending (Muers, 2004: 17)—both faithful to the narrator’s intentions and full of faith in the still small voice to guide the process—and a care not to let this become just another technique to control the narrator or a way to avoid responsibility for dialogue (Muers, 2004: 62). I contend that a strategy of active listening of this kind acts as a counterbalance in what Muers designates as a culture of communication that sees speaking as power and listening as weakness (Muers, 2004: 56).

Characteristics of Grounded Theology

In terms of qualitative research methods, Grounded Theology is a transgressive approach, one that is at the same time a method of enquiry and a spiritual practice. Accidental epiphanies and ‘aha’ moments come from the renunciation of control that attentive listening requires, in which the narrator and the subsequent data do what they do regardless of the researcher’s wishes. Grounded Theology honours all experiences, both quotidian and numinous, according the utmost importance to what the narrator says as the only resource from which to begin; other resources complement or expand upon the story but never dictate its form. While Young contends, above, that the collectivity of women’s experience must always take priority over individual experience, Grounded Theology asserts that attention to the individual counterbalances the possibility that ‘women’s collective experience’ might become an unchallenged idol.

Grounded Theology approaches research as far as possible without preconceptions, seeking insight from the data rather than imposing potentially idolatrous theories upon the data, paying attention to the person who is, as it turns out, as unknowable as GOD/DE. To acknowledge the crisis of representation is to stand against reification, for if I know that my narrators are ultimately unrepresentable, I am less likely to attempt to make them into things.

Furthermore, in honouring narrators as words from GOD/DE and books about GOD/DE, I simultaneously assert that they are not reified or, in theological terms, idolatrous models of GOD/DE, even though they are imago Dei. While grounded theory is focused on the things of the world, the end point of Grounded Theology is attention to GOD/DE; theologizing around human experiences is always a means to that end, the end of drawing down GOD/DE’s good into the world. The attention that Grounded Theology pays is to GOD/DE and for the world in the name of justice for Trans* people; thus, attention to the One is attention to the other. In Grounded Theology attention is given in the form of the interview, analysis and theologized account.

Data Collection Process

I used a number of forums to circulate requests for interviewees: a flyer in a trans studies conference pack; posts on a number of communal blogs for trans/genderqueer interest groups; a poster at a trans-affirming church service; personal contacts; and posts to faith-specific email lists. I cited my interest in theories of gender deconstruction and how these might fit in to a revisioning of feminist theology, and outlined my academic and spiritual backgrounds. I specifically orientated my requests towards people of faith not only because I was hoping to encounter Trans* models of GOD/DE but also because, being aware that many Trans* people have been very wounded by the transphobia of religious groups, I did not want to co-opt non-faith-based stories for purposes that may have been inimical to their narrators.

I undertook unstructured interviews, having no list of questions or topics that I wished to cover but rather a single invitation to ‘tell me what you think I need to know about your story’. In pre-interview emails and blog entries, I explained a little of what we would be doing in the session, reiterating some of the detail from the flyers and adding that I was hoping that ‘you tell your story in the way that seems most natural to you’ and that, though I was most interested in the intersections between gender and spiritual journeys, to the good and to the bad, ‘I leave it up to you to decide what and how to tell’. This strategy elicited extensive and very rich narratives, the shortest of which took an hour in the telling, the longest almost five hours, with most being around two-and-a-half hours.

Interviews: the Impossibility of Neutrality

One structuring aspect of the interview I conducted is the way in which, even though I aimed to offer the broadest possible scope for narrators to control their own stories, my own categories imposed themselves on the interaction from the start. As described above, I asked particularly for ‘stories’, a category that immediately shapes a narrator’s expectation of what type of telling is required. Furthermore I requested a specific kind of story, a ‘spiritual life story’, emphasizing one aspect of experience over all others. I also spoke of ‘journeys’ as a structuring metaphor, as if some kind of progress from a start to a finish is a given, and ‘intersections’ between gender and spiritual journeys, as if the two are necessarily separate experiences. And I declared my affiliations to ‘feminist theology’, ‘gender deconstruction’, and ‘Quakers’, leading my narrators to perceive me in specific ways.

The feminist label was potentially problematic because of antipathy engendered by anti-Trans* feminists, and the reference to gender deconstruction for its associations with the erasure of transsexual experience as described by, for example, Julia Serano (Serano, 2007) and Viviane Namaste (Namaste, 2000). However, neither of these was more problematic than my links with faith and theology, given that very many Trans* people feel particularly badly served by religion in general because of the evident transphobia of many faith groups. And all had the potential to create expectations that I might respond to stories in particular, perhaps not necessarily sympathetic, ways. Interviews are, then, by no means a ‘neutral conduit’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 2002: 112) through which the unalloyed details of a life are given; as with any social encounter, the stuff of the story is jointly constructed between narrator and listener, even before the processes of transcription, analysis and writing-up take place, simply by virtue of an interview having been solicited in the first place.

Transcription

Decisions about transcription, as any other part of the process, have ethical implications. What to transcribe, in how much detail, and how to arrange the words of the page, are not neutral choices but affect how a subsequent reader will address the data (Riessman, 1993: 12). Any transcription, no matter how detailed, is necessarily ‘incomplete, partial and selective’ (Riessman, 1993: 11). It is advised, therefore, to adopt a practice that preserves ‘some of the “messiness” of everyday talk’ (DeVault, 2002: 103) in order that the ‘authenticity’ of the originating voice may have some presence on the page. Notwithstanding the fact that this is problematic advice since it supports a romanticized view of the narrator as having a ‘deep interior’ that is authentically representable, I nevertheless assert that transcribing in this way does in some small way give a flavour of the narrator’s speech.

All my interviews were recorded and transcribed in full, since I did not want to make any decisions prior to the analysis about what might or might not be relevant to my enquiry. Transcription was thus a lengthy process, as was the subsequent analysis. Attentive listening was as essential a component in transcription as it was in the interview, as I tried, however inaccurately, faithfully to render what I heard of each narrator’s story. I made a full transcription, which is to say that, through repeated listening, I recorded every verbal and phatic utterance, both the narrator’s and my own. I adopted a stanza format (Etherington, 2004: 116), inserting line breaks to represent natural interruptions and hesitations in speech, to break up ‘what might seem a dense format that might otherwise be less accessible’ (Etherington, 2004: 56).

Analysis

It is on the analysis of data that the substance of the project hangs, and here also that the exercise of researcher power is arguably most marked. In the analysis I decided what my narrators meant to me, both how to theologize around their stories in a way that embodies that of GOD/DE, and how to represent their voices in a way that brings some of the person I encountered to the reader, all the time acknowledging the impossibility of either task. Analysis involves ‘listening to the texts, in silent contemplation, in a way that takes them “beyond” themselves’ (Muers, 2004: 17), beyond what the narrators tell of their lives and into what their lives tell of GOD/DE, into ‘aha’ moments and accidental epiphanies.

Following the practices of grounded theory, I did not approach the data with any predetermined set of categories that I hoped to find but followed themes that presented themselves to me over the course of five or six passes through each interview transcript, each pass taking a considerable amount of time to complete, sometimes many weeks, as I patiently waited for the data to speak. At each pass I added codings to the text, marking up sections and assigning themed keywords or phrases to them. Once a theme or group of themes rose to prominence above all others in a story, I then conducted an extensive literature search for material to analyse, illustrate and theologize the theme, not limiting my searches to any specific discipline. Thus, I drew not only from feminist and mainstream theologies and philosophies and gender studies, but also from areas as diverse as Renaissance studies, medicine, English literature, pedagogic research, history, communications theory, mythology, social sciences, cultural studies, physics, psychology, philology and mathematics.

Writing Up – Giving Voice

In giving voice to the narrator, the researcher recognizes a responsibility not only to the one who told the story but also to the ones to whom that story is relayed (Riessman, 1993: 10–11) and to the story the researcher has to tell; these competing demands necessitate a constant negotiation of choices. With every good intention, control is exercised over the data the audience sees; the power of giving voice is always ultimately with the researcher. What I offer then is never a representation of the narrator but always an interpretation, and I recognize that these interpretations may be ‘simultaneously considered positive and negative by those who hold a stake in them’ (Ropers-Huilman, 1999: 26).

Nowhere is it more apparent that the researcher has ultimate control over the visible shape of the narrator’s story than in the reporting of research. Every decision I made resulted in saving or losing aspects of a story. That being the case, I presented extensive excerpts in a style Hollway and Jefferson call ‘pen portraits’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000: 70), in order to ‘make the person come alive for the reader’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000: 70), although I acknowledge the romanticism implicit in Hollway and Jefferson’s assertion here that a narrator might be presented so completely as to come alive for a reader. These pen portraits contain material descriptive of the narrator, sufficient to give a vivid picture of the narrator for a reader who will not have access to the raw data. In providing details that exceed the analysis I subjected them to, I hope to have created a space for different readers to read differently, holding the texts open for ‘further acts of hearing’ (Muers, 2004: 20), as a way of preserving the narrators’ voices from being wholly drowned out by my re-narration.

Moreover, in order to expand readers’ access to the text beyond these pen portraits, I included an appendix for each narrator, giving not the whole of the interview transcription but the verbatim quote in its context, with line numbers to guide the reader from the excerpt in the main text to the verbatim section in the relevant appendix. This combination of resources aimed to enable multiple readings and interpretations of the text beyond what I presented. The appendices are particularly important since I decided, for the sake of readability, to ‘polish’ the quotes in the body of the text. ⁵ This polishing is sometimes more like paraphrasing, since some of the original extracts are extremely long and discursive. I hope, in this, that I have not done too much violence to the narrators’ unique speaking styles and have retained the spirit, if not the letter, of their utterances. Ultimately, I contend, it matters more that each of these stories is told in some detail in an accessible way than that an inevitably unsustainable claim to accurate representation of speech is asserted.